Colonial Education in India 1781–1945, 5-Volume Set 9780815376552, 9781351212168, 9780815380610, 9781351212120

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COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

Edited by Pramod K. Nayar Volume I Commentaries, Reports, Policy Documents

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Pramod K. Nayar; individual owners retain copyright in their own material. The right of Pramod K. Nayar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-7655-2 (set) eISBN: 978-1-351-21216-8 (set) ISBN: 978-0-8153-8061-0 (Volume I) eISBN: 978-1-351-21212-0 (Volume I) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Publisher’s Note References within each chapter are as they appear in the original complete work.

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, POLICY DOCUMENTS

Acknowledgements

xv

Introduction

1

1 Warren Hastings, ‘Minute on Madrasas, 17th April 1781’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 7–9

9

2 J. Duncan, ‘Letter, 1st January 1792’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 10–11

12

3 ‘Rules for Hindoo College, 1792’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 11–12

14

4 Charles Grant, extract from Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain (1792/1797), 148–167

16

5 Holt Mackenzie, ‘Note on Public Education, 17th July 1823’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 57–64

31

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6 ‘Letter from the Committee on Public Instruction, 18th August 1824’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 93–98

38

7 H. T. Prinsep, ‘Note on Vernacular Education, 15th February 1835’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 117–129

43

8 T. B. Macaulay, ‘Minute on English Education, 2nd February 1835’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 107–117

55

9 William Bentinck, ‘Resolution, 7th March 1835’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 130–131

65

10 H. T. Prinsep, ‘Minute on Vernacular Education, 20th May 1835’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 134–139

67

11 Letters and debates from the Calcutta Monthly Journal (November 1836), 271–278, 299–308

72

12 Lord Auckland, ‘Minute on Native Education, 24th November 1839’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 147–170

102

13 Charles Trevelyan, extracts from On the Education of the People of India (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1838), 36–43, 50–57, 78–91, 106–115

124

14 ‘Appendix: Extract from the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Indian Government to Inquire into the State of Medical Education’, in Charles Trevelyan, On the Education of the People of India (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1838), 207–220

139

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15 Sarah Tucker, extract from ‘Central School for Native Girls’, in South Indian Sketches, Part I (London: James Nisbet, 1848, 3rd edn), 73–84

147

16 William Adam, extracts from Report on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar (1835, 1836, 1838) (Calcutta: Home Secretariat Press, 1868), 1–6, 19–20, 131–132, 217–220, 258–262, 271–274, 307–309, 314–317

153

17 Extracts from Report of the General Committee on Public Instruction of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal for the Year 1839–40 (Calcutta: G. H. Huttman, 1841), i–v, xxxvii, ccxxxii, clv–clix, xciv–civ, ccxxxiii–ccxxxiv

174

18 Priscilla Chapman, extract from Hindoo Female Education (London: R. B. Seeley and W Burnside, 1839), 64–97

206

19 Extract from Report on Public Instruction in the North-Western Provinces, 1850–51, in J. A. Richey, Selections from Educational Records Part 2 1840–1859 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922), 257–258

219

20 J.E.D. Bethune, ‘Minute, 23rd January 1851’, in J. A. Richey, Selections from Educational Records Part 2 1840–1859 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922), 28–31

221

21 J.E.D. Bethune’s speeches at Kishnaghar, in General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency (Calcutta: F. Carberry, Military Orphan Press, 1852), iii–xv

224

22 Extracts from General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, 1844–45 (Calcutta: Sanders and Cones, 1845), iii–v, xlii, xliv–xlviii, lxxi–lxxxiii

235

23 C. H. Cameron, extracts from Address to Parliament on the Duties of Great Britain to India, in Respect of the Education of the Natives, and Their Official Employment (London: Spottiswoode and Shaw, 1853), 50–51, 60–64, 80–81, 101–103, 114–121, 137, 149–151, 153–155

254

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CONTENTS

VOLUME II

COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, POLICY DOCUMENTS

1 ‘Wood’s Educational Despatch, 19 July 1854’, in J. A. Richey, Selections from Educational Records Part 2 1840–1859 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922), 365–393

1

2 ‘Letter, 10th March 1854, from the Council of Education to the Government of Bengal’, in J. A. Richey, Selections from Educational Records Part 2 1840–1859 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922), 119–125

26

3 Christian Education for India in the Mother Tongue: A Statement on the Formation of a Christian Vernacular Education Society (London: William Nichols, 1855), 3–41

32

4 ‘Vernacular Publications and Literacy’, in Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government (Calcutta: John Gray, General Printing Department, 1859), xix–xx

60

5 Martha Weitbrecht, extracts from The Women of India and Christian Work in the Zenana (London: James Nisbet, 1875), 55–66, 110–114, 129–134

62

6 ‘The Sarah Tucker Institution, Tinnevely, South India’, Indian Female Evangelist (Jan–July 1878), 9–16

73

7 ‘Difficulties of Zenana Teaching’, Indian Female Evangelist (Oct 1878), 154–159

79

8 James Johnston, extract from Our Educational Policy in India (Edinburgh: John Maclaren and Son, 1880), 37–57

84

9 ‘Recommendations’, in Report of the Indian Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1883), 311–312, 590–602, 604–618

99

10 Extracts from Report of the Indian Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1883), 480–491, 494–517, 524–549

viii

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CONTENTS

11 Extracts from Report of the Bombay Provincial Committee (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1884), 71–83, 156–162, 165–167

208

12 Extracts from Papers Relating to Technical Education in India 1886–1904 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1906), 1–4, 29–34, 50–54, 83–85, 116–117, 131–133, 246–249, 251–253

237

13 William Lee-Warner, extract from The Citizen of India (London: Macmillan, 1900), 162–177

282

14 Report of the Indian Universities Commission (Simla: Government Central Printing Office, 1902), 16, 27–29, 51–52, 63–69, 81–84

289

15 J. G. Covernton, extracts from Vernacular Reading Books in the Bombay Presidency (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906), 1–3, 23–26, 44–49, 80–81

308

16 Leonard Alston, extract from Education and Citizenship in India (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1910), 144–195

317

VOLUME III

1

2

3

4

COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, POLICY DOCUMENTS

H.R. James, extracts from Education and Statesmanship in India (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), 74–91, 118–132

1

Indian Educational Policy, Being a Resolution Issued by the Governor General in Council on the 21st February 1913 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1915), 1–47

19

A. H. Benton, extracts from Indian Moral Instruction and Caste Problems (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1917), 1–10, 31–32, 92–112

43

Extracts from The Calcutta University Commission [Sadler] Report (1919), Vol. 1: 19–30, 143–194, 318–326; Vol. 6: 2–6, 132–135, 169–171

67

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CONTENTS

5

6

7

8

Extracts from Village Education in India: The Report of a Commission of Inquiry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), 15–23, 66–74, 129–137

135

F. F. Monk, extracts from A History of Stephen’s College (Delhi, Calcutta: YMCA, 1935), 3–15, 111–131, 188–199

150

Extracts from Progress of Education in India, 1937–1947: Decennial Review [Sargent Report], Vol. I (Central Bureau of Education-Ministry of Education, 1948), 155–160, 165–170, 231–240, 295–308

178

Sister Nivedita, extracts from Hints on National Education in India (Calcutta: Brahmachari Ganendranath, 1923, 3rd edn), 6–65, 95–110

216

VOLUME IV INDIAN RESPONSES 1 Raja Rammohan Roy, ‘Letter to Amherst, 11th December 1823’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 98–101

1

2 ‘Petition by Students of Sanscrit College to Auckland, Seeking Continuation of Funding for Sanskrit, 9th August 1836’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 145–146

5

3 K. M. Banerjea, ‘An Essay on Native Female Education’ (Calcutta: R.C. Lepage & Co., British Library, 1848), 1–123

7

4 ‘An Appeal from a Native Christian of the Punjab to the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society’, Indian Female Evangelist (July 1875), 289–291

62

5 Evidence of Syed Badruddin Tyabji on Muslim Education, Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1884), 497–508

65

x

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6 Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. II (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1881), 223–242, 255–259, 261–270, 302–313, 11–14 (Appendix)

89

7 Jotiba Phule’s statement to the Education Commission, Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. II (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1881), 140–145

186

8 Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1884), 282–302, 351–353, 373–376, 397–411, 412–418, 433–434, 442–443, 452–453, 462–470, 471–474, 478–479

195

9 S. Satthianadhan, extracts from History of Education in the Madras Presidency (Madras: Srinivasa Varadachari & Co., 1894), 36–38, 73–76, 109–112, 165–168, cxiii–cxxi

306

10 Gopal Krishna Gokhale, ‘Speech in the Imperial Legislative Council on the Primary Education Bill, 16th March 1911’, Speeches of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Vol. 2 (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1916, 2nd edn), 718–803

322

11 Appendix to the Report of the Commissioners. Vol XX: Minutes of Evidence Relating the Education Department Taken at Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and London (1915), 46–55, 119–129, 138–143

368

12 Jadunath Sarkar, ‘The Vernacular Medium’, Modern Review 23 (1918), 2–7

431

13 K. M. Panikkar, ‘The Educational Problems of Indian Education’, Modern Review 23 (1918), 8–17

439

14 H. V. Dugvekar (ed.), extracts from National Education (Benares: Balabodha Office, 1917), 4–10, 29–33, 62–86

453

xi

CONTENTS

VOLUME V INDIAN RESPONSES 1 Aurobindo Ghose, extract from A System of National Education (Madras: Tagore & Co, 1921), 1–67

1

2 J. Ghosh, extract from Higher Education in Bengal under British Rule (Calcutta: The Book Company, 1926), 104–197

17

3 Lokmanya Tilak, ‘National Education’, in Bal Gangadhar Tilak: His Writings and Speeches (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1922, 3rd edn), 81–88

57

4 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, extracts from Basic National Education (Wardha: Hindustani Talimi Sangh, 1939), ix–x, 3–5, 14–22, 25–28, 57–70, 75–76, 79–89

61

5 Extracts from Messages to Indian Students (An Anthology of Famous Convocation Addresses) (Allahabad: Students’ Friends, 1936), 40–80, 91–119, 120–127

88

6 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘Thoughts on the Reform of Legal Education in the Bombay Presidency’, in Hari Narake et al (eds), Writings and Speeches Vol. 17, part 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), 5–18

124

7 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘Memorandum of Association of The People’s Education Society, Mumbai, 8th July 1945’, in Hari Narake et al (eds), Writings and Speeches Vol. 17, part 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), 429–438

134

8 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘On Grants for Education’, Bombay Legislative Council Debate, 1927, in Hari Narake (ed.), Writings and Speeches Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014, 2nd edn), 39–44

141

9 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘On the Bombay University Act Amendment Bill 1’, Bombay Legislative Council Debate, 1927, in Hari Narake (ed.), Writings and Speeches Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014, 2nd edn), 45–53

147

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CONTENTS

10 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘University Reforms Committee Questionnaire – Responses by Ambedkar, 1925–26’, in Hari Narake (ed.), Writings and Speeches Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014, 2nd edn), 292–312 Index

155 176

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I must first and foremost thank my wonderful editors at Routledge: Simon Alexander and Kimberley Smith for their cooperation, quick responses and general warm understanding. It has been a pleasure working with you. This project had its inception in the course of conversations with Anna Kurian on colonial discourse. When I mentioned these texts, Anna suggested that it may be useful to compile some of them at least into a volume. She mentioned in passing the previous two 5-volume collections (Women in Colonial India and Indian Travel Writing, which were also, incidentally, her ideas) that I put together for Routledge, adding that this would be a nice trilogy of primary documents in colonial history. So here it is at last, Anna: the manifestation of your idea. And thank you again for ideas, encouragement, insights, and above all, for your unstinting loyalty and affection. To my exemplary support system at home, my parents and parents-in-law, Nandini and Pranav, I owe an incredibly large quantum of gratitude. They clear the paths before me in ways they do not themselves, perhaps, understand and make the journey rewarding. For Mary Hammond’s invitation to contribute to The Edinburgh History of Reading, and her incisive comments on the early draft of my essay ‘Moral Readership and Political Apprenticeship: Commentaries on English Education, India 1875–1930’, I express many thanks. Friends who allow me my space, and yet monitor that space with their affections and solicitous enquiries about health and work, are integral to what I do, and to them I owe much: Neelu (not a day without a message), Soma Ghosh (also indispensable as a Librarian), Josy Joseph, Ajeeth (very busy man, but always available on the phone), Shruti Sarma, Premlata, Haneef (5 a.m. and Haneef’s message will arrive), Om Dwivedi, Archana Sardana, Vaishali Diwakar. My school friends, Ibrahim Ali and Naveed Ahmed, deserve special mention here for their continued presence in my life. Nandana Dutta has been a wonderful friend, for the extraordinary patience and grace with which she discusses theory and for her affection. To Molly ‘Chechu’, very special thanks for her prayers directed at the betterment of her ‘little one’. To Sireesha and Bhaskar in the Department of English—thank you for your company these last two years, you have made the workplace better. To Narayana Chandran, continual source of information, bibliographic referencing and amazing insights, I am still counting how much I owe you. xv

INTRODUCTION

Indian education records were first compiled in the magnificent H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (1920), and J. A. Richey (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part 2, 1840–1859 (1922), both of which provide valuable materials for the study of imperial history. Taking its cue from the Sharp-Richey volumes, this five-volume set compiles a variety of historical documents, from 1780 to 1945, on Indian education. The compilation is neither exhaustive nor comprehensive—the sheer quantity of documentation on Indian education by officials, educationists, campaigners and interested parties, both Indian and British, requires a library of its own. What this multivolume set seeks to do is offer a sampling of materials that embody the various debates, points of view and conflicts over the medium of instruction; the modalities of administering colleges/institutions; the content of educational texts ‘prescribed’; and social and economic concerns around the demographics of the students, teachers and institutions, among others. ‘Education in India’ as a broad category involved, as these documents show, fields like technical education; medical education; education for various social groups and segments (girls, Muslims); legal education; religious and moral education; languagemath-science education; etc. Many reveal the Orientalist tropes and polemical moves of their age (for example, in the representations of Indian women and their education). The Anglicist-Orientalist debate, the principal one of the nineteenth century, has already been well documented (Zastoupil and Moir 1999). The entire debate, as Charles Trevelyan put it in On the Education of the People of India (1838), Turns upon two points: the first of which is, whether English or Sanskrit and Arabic literature is best calculated for the enlightenment of the people of India; the other whether, supposing English literature to be best adapted for that purpose, the natives are ready to avail themselves of the advantages which it holds out. (See excerpts in Vol. I, No. 13) Documents such as these have enabled an understanding of the processes and contests through which English education was effected through the subcontinent. 1

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

Critical studies of the rise, expansion and impact of Western education through the scrutiny of these documents have been on the rise for a few decades now, with much of the early work still in thrall to the Saidian paradigm. Gauri Viswanathan’s pioneering Masks of Conquest (1989) attempted a political reading of the manner in which English literary studies arrived in India, its dissemination and its impact. Later works, taking issue with Viswanathan, or siding with her, examined policy documents, right from Macaulay’s now-infamous Minute of 1835, for their politics and prejudices. Broadening out the object of study, works by Tim Allender (2016), for example, mapped the construction of Indian femininity through textbooks and education in colonial India, or book history (Darnton 2001). More recently, discipline-specific studies such as Sumathi Ramaswamy’s Terrestrial Lessons (2018) have uncovered the making of disciplines such as geography in colonial India. The role of textbooks, printing and book distribution in the expansion of Western education has also come in for attention (Talwalker 2005; Finkelstein 2008; Topdar 2015). The debates over moral instruction of the Indians, the ‘problems’ associated with their increasing political awareness and the nature of the textbooks necessary as a result of the latter have also been the subject of study (Nayar forthcoming). The British authorities were clearly not a united house when it came to the several questions around the education of the native subjects. In what follows, we shall examine some of the debates and concerns captured by the documents in the volumes here. The aim is not to either summarize or direct the reading of the documents, but simply to demonstrate the range and intensity of some of the debates. The documents speak for themselves and to discern their underlying politics and prejudices does not require a framing argument by way of an Introduction or Protocol! J.E.D. Bethune argued fervently that, while the Indian students must be ‘induced to cultivate also their native language’, he believed that it is through the ‘English scholars’ alone that we can expect a ‘marked improvement in the customs and ways of thinking’ of the Indians (see Bethune’s Minute of 1851, Vol. 1, No. 20). Sarah Tucker (of the Tucker schools) mourned the isolation of the purdah-clad woman of the upper classes and declared that, in lower-class families, the women are ‘household slaves’ (see Tucker document, Vol. 1, No. 15). Priscilla Chapman argued that several Indians took to English education enthusiastically, and it ‘shows both a zeal and capability for receiving such knowledge, as may qualify them for employment under government’. But the same enthusiasm cannot be found from within Hindu societies for their women: ‘we must not therefore indulge any expectation of measures promoting the female welfare, being originated, or finding ready support from the Hindoos themselves’ (see the excerpts from Chapman’s Hindoo Female Education, Vol. 1, No. 18). There were practical problems in teaching Hindu girls, as fieldnotes and letters by activists documented: native women’s indolence, the numerous festivals that interrupted all schedules, poor health and of course early marriage and motherhood (see ‘The Difficulties of Zenana Teaching’, published in Indian Female Evangelist, 1878, in Vol. II, No. 7). With debates such as these, the Report of the Indian Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1883) in its recommendations proposed that ‘conditions of aid to 2

INTRODUCTION

girls’ schools be easier than to boys’ schools, and the rates higher—more especially those established for poor or for lower-caste girls’. This same Report recommended that the ‘standards of instructions’ in girls’ schools be ‘simpler’ than that in boys’ schools! (See Vol. II, No. 9.) Other reports expressed their happiness at local and native initiatives in the direction of women’s education. Thus, the Report of the Bombay Provincial Committee (1884) gave extensive coverage of the setting up of the Arya Mahila Sabha. The Report noted that the public meeting of this society was held without a ‘single European officer present’, which demonstrated that it was not ‘the work of a passing impulse’ but ‘prompted by earnest conviction’ (see Vol. II, No. 11). Support for the project of educating Indian women also came from other Indians. For instance, K. M. Banerjea’s essay of 1848 placed the blame for inattention to women’s education squarely on Hinduism where, he says, ‘provision has been religiously made for the mental development of the boys’ but the ‘Shasters [shastras—sacred scriptures in Hinduism] have thrown many obstructions in the way of female education’. Banerjea firmly believes that ‘if all men are derived from the same original stock, the female mind must be as capable of improvement in the East as it is in the West’ (see Vol. IV, No. 3). Raj Kumar Sarvadhikari, deposing before the Bombay Provincial Committee declared: ‘while you educate the men, you should also educate the women, or else all plans for reforming the Hindu society will fail’ (see excerpts from Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 8). Raja Rammohun Roy famously argued against the establishment of a Sanskrit College and in favour of scientific and rational education for the Indians in his nowwell known 1823 letter to Lord Amherst (see Vol. IV, No. 1). Others, however, petitioned the government to continue funding to Sanskrit colleges (see Vol. IV, No. 2). The Adam’s Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar (1868) pondered whether the Sanskrit schools served any purpose in the domain of public instruction: ‘If there were no Sanscrit Schools, their existence would not perhaps be desirable merely for the purposes of public instruction’. The Reports go on to admit that since the language is believed to be ‘the language of the gods’, ‘instruction communicated through this medium will be received by the learned class with a degree of respect and attention’. It is also a ‘common medium of instruction in the different countries and provinces occupied by the Hindu race’. The Reports endorse the continuation of government support for these schools because, if they are neglected ‘the hostility of the learned will be often incurred’ (see excerpts from Adam’s Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar, Vol. I, No. 16). As in the case of Sanskrit, proponents of Hindi as a medium, of Hindi schools and textbooks had set up societies to promote the language. The petitions of the Kayastha Pathshala, Allahabad, the Pandits of Benares and various associations from Meerut and other cities, conscious of the caste-class-language triad, were submitted to the government and the various education commissions through the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Members of the Hardu Union Club argued in its petition that their mother tongue ‘is most decidedly’ Hindi and this 3

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

should be the medium of instruction in schools in favour of Hindi. This club also forwarded this strange argument that ‘in no language are there to be found so many immoral book[s] as in Urdu,’ and hence it could not function as a medium of instruction. (See excerpts from Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 8.) A petition from the Meerut Association argued that ‘Urdu has as little penetrated into or influenced the masses as English has’. Sanskrit, ‘being a national classic’, as they put it, must be taught alongside Hindi and Urdu can be an ‘optional’. (See excerpts from Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 8.). Others, such as Uday Kumar Singh, the Raja of Bhinga (in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh), appear anxious that the public education system would not cater to the upper-caste/-class children. In a petition submitted to the Education Commission, Singh argues that this kind of education is ‘unfitted to young men in general, and the sons of the upper class in particular, for the faithful discharge of their duties which may devolve on them in after life’. He argues for moral instruction, discipline and aesthetic education as integral to the growth of the scions of upper class families (See excerpts from Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 8.) A few statesmen and commentators saw Western education as central to the project of unifying India into the Empire. J.H. Cameron records that ‘the people of India are already divided into unsympathising castes, bands and nations’ and the British should think of unifying them (see Vol. I, No. 23). The role of education in making ‘good’ citizens of Indians often revolved around moral instruction. Indeed, the Bombay Provincial Committee (1884) asked its respondents to reply to the following question: ‘Does definite instruction in duty and the principles & moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government Colleges and schools? Have you any suggestions to make on this subject?’ A. H. Benton in Indian Moral Instruction and Caste Problems (1917) mourned the fact that there were too many competing moralities in India, all embedded in their religious texts and literature, and none helped develop a sense of social responsibility and duty (see Vol. III, No. 3). Leonard Alston, Director of Non-Collegiate Students in Economics and History, Cambridge, and temporary Professor at Elphinstone College, Bombay, asks similar questions of the social purpose of indigenous systems of education in Education and Citizenship in India (1910, see Vol. II, No. 16). The subject was hotly debated. When people like R. A. Hume and William Beatty argued in favour of moral instruction R. G. Bhandarkar said: It appears to me that, placing dry moral receipts before young men is not a very efficacious method of making them virtuous or instilling moral principles into their minds. The teacher’s effort should be directed to the 4

INTRODUCTION

cultivation of the emotional side of the pupil’s nature, where lies the root of morality. . . . For this purpose nothing, I believe, is better suited than the best prose and poetic literature of such a great country as England. (Evidence Taken before the Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 5) Kashinath Trimbak Telang, a judge of the Bombay High Court, filing his dissenting minutes to the Report of the Indian Education Commission on the subject of moral instruction, argued that the effects of state education on the morals of the (Indian) students has been ‘mischievous, not to say disastrous’. He continues: if collegiate education is to subserve one of its most important purposes, and is to cultivate the intelligence so as to enable it to weigh arguments and form independent judgments, then these moral lessons present an entirely different aspect. At that stage, it is almost entirely unnecessary to instruct the intelligence, while it is of great use to discipline the will and to cultivate the feelings. The proposed lectures will, I fear, have little or no effect in this latter direction; while in some individual cases their effect in the former direction, being meant to operate not on the intellect but on conduct, may be the reverse of that which is desired. (see excerpts in Vol. II, No. 9) The debate drove the discussion into other realms—such as the content of the textbooks being printed. Works discussing textbooks, such as J. G. Covernton’s Vernacular Reading Books in the Bombay Presidency (1906), offered detailed portrait of the kind of reader the English educationists—and their native supporters/opponents—had in mind when preparing, recommending or criticising these reading materials (see Vol. II, No. 15). That moral instruction and physical education would stir the native, naturally indolent, out of their state was a view expressed by, among others, in the Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, which stated: the sedentary habits of the higher castes are proverbial, and we consider that a regular course of physical exercise would have a specially good effect upon the minds and bodies of most Indian students We therefore recommend that physical development be promoted by the encouragement of native games, gymnastics, school drill, and other exercises suited to the circumstances stances of each class of school. (1883: 127) Numerous opinions, from both English and native thinkers, circulated on religious education in schools and colleges, the founding and maintenance of religious institutions funded by the government and the education of specific sections of the 5

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population—Muslims, the underprivileged classes, to name two. When a petition was submitted to Warren Hastings in 1781 to set up a Madrassa, he decided that such an institution was providing a useful service, and it was only the ‘want of suitable accommodation’ that prevented a consolidation of their work. Hastings, in his Minute of 17 April 1781, announced the allocation of land for a building for the Madrassa (see Vol. 1, No. 1). Many scholars campaigned for the cause of Muslim education, seeking active government encouragement and support. Badruddin Tyabji and Syed Ahmed Khan both stated their case in considerable detail. Tyabji argued that the Muslims of the Bombay Presidency were ‘perfectly indifferent if not averse’ to English education. He argued that Hindustani and Persian should be introduced into the primary schools for the Muslims. Tyabji also admitted that the Muslims in India remained in thrall of the glories of their past empire, combined with the fear that ‘European education is antagonistic to the traditions of Islam’. Tyabji stated that ‘That the ignorance prevailing amongst Muhammadans is to a great extent due to the absence of all educational facilities for them, and in particular to the absence of education through the medium of Hindustani’. He argued: ‘The Muhammadans have not hitherto been treated with sufficient consideration in regard to educational matters, and that a fair share of the Government, as well as municipal grants should be applied specially for their benefit’ (see excerpts from Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission Vol. IV, No. 5). Like Tyabji, Syed Ahmed Khan also stated that ‘the Muhammedans certainly believed that the philosophy and logic taught in the English language were at variance with the tenets of Islam’. However, Khan was also of the opinion that the Mussalman community has no right to expect Government to adopt any denominational measure for them. The system of education established by Government is equally open to all sections of the population, and it cannot, and should not, show any partiality for a particular class or section. Khan was emphatic that ‘the failure of the Muhammadans to derive an adequate share of benefit from it [the system of education] is their own fault’ (see excerpts from Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 8). Other public figures documenting the history of English education in India, such as Syed Mahmood, appear to have concurred with Tyabji and Khan, that the Muslims themselves were to blame for not accepting English education. Mahmood wrote in his History of English Education in India that the Muslims stayed away from the new education, to disastrous results: ‘[the Mahomedans] whose attitude towards English education was far from friendly’. Mahmood continued: Such feelings of aversion towards English education entertained by the Mahomedans . . . stand in sharp contrast to the attitude of the Hindu 6

INTRODUCTION

community. . . . This difference in the sentiments of the two communities towards English education, is the real key to the reasons of the vast disparity of progress of English education which the two nationalities have respectively made. The effects of this disparity have been most baneful to the interests of British India in general, and to the Mahomedan community in particular. (54) The requirements of different segments of Indian society were clearly different. Thus Jotiba Phule, presenting his case before the Education Commission, stated: ‘the present system of education, which, by providing ampler funds for higher education, tended to educate Brahmins and the higher classes only, and to leave the masses wallowing in ignorance and poverty’. He drew attention to the link between caste, education and employment opportunities and the forms of employment: With regard to the question as to educated natives finding remunerative employments, it will be remembered that the educated natives who mostly belong to the Brahminical and other higher classes are mostly fond of service. But as the public service can afford no field for all the educated natives who come out from schools and colleges, and moreover the course of attaining they receive being not of a technical or practical nature, they find great difficulty in betaking themselves to other manual or remunerative employments. Hence the cry that the market is overstocked with educated native. who do not find any remunerative employment. It may, to a certain extent, be true that some of the professions are overstocked, but this does not show that there is no other remunerative employment to which they can betake themselves. (Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. IV, No. 8) In addition to these debates, numerous histories of Western education in India, including institutions such as St Stephen’s College (see Vol. III, No. 6), were produced, evidence marshalled from various native and English experts appended to the massive Reports published through the last decades of the nineteenth century and early twentieth. Writing in the midst of the Indian freedom struggle, questions of ‘national education’ haunted the Indian mind. The speeches and writings from Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and others (see Vol. V) alongside the convocation addresses by Madan Mohan Malaviya, Jadunath Sarkar and others debated the purpose, effect and future directions of Western education in a country slowly coming into its own as a ‘nation’. With B.R. Ambedkar’s emphasis on education for the ‘suppressed classes’ and the historically oppressed, another layer was added to the debate on education for India and Indians. 7

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Besides these debates and concerns, the documents reprinted here also provide insights into the governance of institutions—fees, hostel rules, admission procedures, examination systems (including some examination papers and answers) – across India. Technical and legal education, a part of the educational mission of the British government, also had its fair share of documentary materials, some of which have been excerpted here. Despite the politics, prejudices and outright misunderstandings that one can discern in the correspondence, minutes, reports and commentaries, the Indian educational records are impressive for their sheer meticulous detailing and attempt at ordering what was clearly a contested field. That the British disagreed among themselves as to whether they wanted Indians trained into clerks—as the oft-cited Macaulay Minute stated—or into free-thinking citizens taking responsibility for their country and futures is embodied best in the materials in this collection. Needless to say, much of this material is in bad shape, with missing pages or illegible text, but these texts remain crucial documentation for a cultural history of English education in India.

References Allender, Tim. Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1932. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016. Darnton, Robert. ‘Literary Surveillance in the British Raj’, Book History 4 (2001): 133–176. Finkelstein, David. ‘Book Circulation and Reader Responses in Colonial India’, in Robert Fraser and Mary Hammond (eds), Books Without Borders, Volume 2: Perspectives from South Asia. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008. 100–111. Mahmood, Syed. History of English Education in India, Its Rise, Development, Progress, Present Condition and Prospects. Being a Narrative of the Various Phases of Educational Policy and Measures Adopted under the British Rule from Its Beginning to the Present Period (1781 to 1893). Aligarh: Mohammedan Anglo Oriental (MAO) College, 1895. Nayar, Pramod K. ‘Moral Readership and Political Apprenticeship: Commentaries on English Education, India 1875–1930’, in Mary Hammond et al (eds), The Edinburgh History of Reading. Forthcoming. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. Territorial Lessons: The Conquest of the World as Globe. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2018. Report of the Indian Education Commission. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1883. Talwalker, Clare. ‘Colonial Dreaming: Textbooks in the Mythology of “Primitive Accumulation”’, Dialectical Anthropology 29 (2005): 1–24. Topdar, Sudipa. ‘Duties of a “Good Citizen”: Colonial Secondary School Textbook Policies in Late Nineteenth-century India’, South Asian History and Culture 6.3 (2015): 417–439. Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. London: Faber and Faber, 1989. Zastoupil, Lynn and Martin Moir (eds). The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843. Surrey: Curzon, 1999. 1–72.

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1 WARREN HASTINGS, ‘MINUTE ON MADRASAS, 17TH APRIL 1781’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 7–9

Minute by the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, dated the 17th April 1781.1 In the month of September 1780 a petition was presented to me by a considerable number of Mussulmen of credit and learning, who attended in a body for that purpose praying that I would use my influence with a stranger of the name of Mudgid O’din who was then lately arrived at the Presidency to persuade him to remain there for the instruction of young students in the Mahomedan law, and in such other sciences as are taught in the Mahomedan schools for which he was represented to be uncommonly qualified. They represented that this was a favourable occasion to establish a Madressa or College, and Mudgid O’din the fittest person to form and preside in it, that Calcutta was already become the seat of a great empire, and the resort of persons from all parts of Hindoostan and Deccan, that it had been the pride of every polished court and the wisdom of every well regulated Government both in India and in Persia to promote by such institutions the growth and extention of liberal knowledge, that in India only the traces of them now remain, the decline of learning having accompanied that of the Mogul Empire, that the numerous offices of our Government which required men of improved abilities to fill and the care which had been occasionally observed to select men of the first eminence in the science of jurisprudence to officiate as judges in the criminal and assessors in the Civil Courts of Judicature, and (I hope this addition will not be imputed to me as ostentation on an occasion in which the sincerity of what I shall hereafter propose for the public patronage will be best evident by my own example) the belief which generally prevailed that men so accomplished usually met with a distinguished reception from myself [which] afforded them particular encouragement, to hope that a proposal of this nature would prove acceptable to the actual Government. 9

Minute by Warren Hastings, 1781.

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 Minute by Warren Hastings, 1781–contd.

This was the substance of the Petition which I can only repeat from my memory, having mislaid the original. I dismissed them with a promise of complying with their wishes to the utmost of my power. I sent for the man on whom they had bestowed such encomiums and prevailed upon him to accept of the office designed for him. He opened his school about the beginning of October and has bestowed an unremitted attention on it to this time, with a success and reputation which have justified the expectation which has been formed of it. Many students have already finished their education under his instructions and have received their dismission in form and many dismissed unknown to me. The master supposing himself limited to a fixed monthly sum which would not admit a larger number besides day scholars, he has at this time forty boarders mostly natives of these Provinces, but some sojourners from other parts of India. Among them I had the satisfaction of seeing on the last new year’s day, some who had come from the districts of Cashmeer, Guzarat, and one from the Carnatic. I am assured that the want of suitable accommodation alone prevents an increase of the number. For this reason I have lately made a purchase of a convenient piece of ground near the Boita Connah in a quarter of the town called Podpoker and have laid the foundation of a square building for a madrissa constructed on the plan of similar edifices in other parts of India. Thus far I have prosecuted the undertaking on my own means and with no very liberal supplies I am now constrained to recommend it to the Board, and through that channel to the Hon’ble Court of Directors for a more adequate and permanent endowment. By an estimate of the building which with a plan and elevation of it shall accompany this minute the whole cost of it will be 51,000 Arcot Rupees, to which I shall beg leave to add the price of the ground being 6,280 Sa Rupees. The amount of both is Arcot rupees 57,745·2·11. It shall be my care to prevent an excess of this sum which I request may be placed to the Company’s accounts, and a bond allowed me for the amount and that I may be enabled by the sanction of the Board to execute this work. I must likewise propose that a parcel of land may be assigned for the growing charge of this foundation. The present expense is as follows:– Sicca. Rs. The Preceptor per month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 40 Scholars from 7 to 6 per month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 A Sweeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 House rent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 TOTAL . . . . . . 625

10

HASTINGS, ‘MINUTE ON MADRASAS’

The day scholars pay nothing. In the proportion of the above expense an establishment of 109 Scholars may be estimated at 10,000 Rupees per month at the utmost. I would recommend that the rents of one or more Mousa or villages in the neighbourhood of the place be assigned for the monthly expence of the proposed Madressa and that it be referred to the Committee of Revenue to provide and make the endowment and to regulate the mode of collection and payment in such a manner as to fix and ascertain the amount and periods of both and prevent any future abuses of one or misapplication of the other. For the present an assignment of half the estimated sum will be sufficient. (Sd.) WARREN HASTINGS. FORT WILLIAM; The 17th April 1781. Agreed.

E. WHEELER.

Note 1 Printed in Bengal: Past and Present, VIII, 1914, p. 105 f.

11

Minute by Warren Hastings, 1781–contd.

2 J. DUNCAN, ‘LETTER, 1ST JANUARY 1792’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 10–11

Letter from J. Duncan, Resident, Benares, No. 17, dated 1st January 1792, to the Earl of Cornwallis, K.G., Governor-General in Council.1 Benares College, 1792.

MY LORD, HAVING in view to the surplus Revenue expected to be derived from the permanent settlement (as reported in my address of the 25th November 1789) and of the instructions thereon passed by your Lordship in Council in February last to transmit for the consideration of Government my sentiments regarding its appropriation reflected frequently on the subject; it appeared to me that a part of those funds could not be applied to more general advantage or with more local propriety than by the Institution of a Hindoo College or Academy for the preservation and cultivation of the Laws, Literature and Religion of that nation, at this centre of their faith, and the common resort of all their tribes. Two important advantages seemed derivable from such an establishment, the first to the British name and nation in its tendency towards endearing our Government to the native Hindoos; by our exceeding in our attention towards them and their systems, the care shewn even by their own native princes; for although learning has ever been cultivated at Benares, in numerous private seminaries, yet no public Institution of the kind here proposed ever appears to have existed; to which may, in a considerable degree, be attributed the great difficulty of now collecting complete treatises (although such are well known to have existed) on the Hindoo religion, laws, arts, or sciences; a defect and loss, which the permanency of a college at Benares must be peculiarly well adapted to correct, and recover by a gradual collection and correction of the books still to be met (though in a very dispersed and imperfect state) so as with care and attention and by the assistance and exertions of the possessors and students to accumulate at only a small and 12

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comparative expence to Government, a precious library of the most ancient and valuable general learning and tradition now perhaps existing on any part of the globe. The 2nd principal advantage that may be derived from this Institution will be felt in its effects more immediately by the natives, though not without being participated in by the British subjects, who are to rule over them, by preserving and disseminating a knowledge of the Hindoo Law and proving a nursery of future doctors and expounders thereof, to assist the European judges in the due, regular, and uniform administration of its genuine letter and spirit to the body of the people.

*

*

*

*

*

The Extract of my proceedings already referred to contains the few rules which have already been thought of for this Institution, and they are respectfully submitted to Government for such correction or addition as may be thought expedient. JONATHAN DUNCAN. BENARES; The 1st January 1792.

Note 1 Printed in Bengal: Past and Present, VIII, 1914, pp. 130–133; and in G. NICHOLLS’ Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Benares Patshalla or Sanskrit College. Allahabad, 1907, p. 1 f.

13

Benares College, 1792–contd.

3 ‘RULES FOR HINDOO COLLEGE, 1792’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 11–12

Proposed Rules for the Benares College 1. The Governor in Council to be Visitor, and the Resident, his Deputy. 2. The stipends to be paid by the hands of the Resident; but the Pundits to have no concern with the collection of the Revenue. 3. The nine scholars (or eighteen if so many can be supported) to be taught gratis; but no others except a certain number of such poor boys whose parents or kinsmen cannot pay for instruction. All other scholars should pay their respective teachers, as usual. 4. The teachers and students to hold their places during the pleasure of the Visitor. 5. Complaints to be first made to the Resident with a power of appealing to the Visitor for his decisions. 6. The professor of medicine must be a Vaidya and so may the teacher of grammar, but as he could not teach Panini it would be better that all except the physician should be Brahmins. 7. The Brahmin teachers to have a preference over strangers in succeeding to the headship and the students in succeeding to professorships, if they shall on examination be found qualified. 8. The scholars to be examined four times a year in the presence of the Resident in all such parts of knowledge as are not held too sacred to be discussed in the presence of any but Brahmins. 9. Each professor to compose annually a lecture for the use of his students, on his respective science; and copies of such lectures as may legally be divulged to be delivered to the Resident. 10. Examinations of the students, in the more secret branches of learning, to be made four times a year by a committee of Brahmins nominated by the Resident. 14

‘RULES FOR HINDOO COLLEGE, 1792’

11. The plan of a course of study in each Science to be prepared by the several professors. 12. The students to be sometimes employed in transcribing or correcting books for the use of the College, so as to form in time a perfect library. 13. The discipline of the College to be conformable in all respects to the Dharma Sastra in the Chapter on education. The second book of Monu contains the whole system of discipline.

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4 CHARLES GRANT, EXTRACT FROM OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY AMONG THE ASIATIC SUBJECTS OF GREAT BRITAIN (1792/1797), 148–167

The true cure of darkness, is the introduction of light. The Hindoos err, because they are ignorant; and their errors have never fairly been laid before them. The communication of our light and knowledge to them, would prove the best remedy for their disorders; and this remedy is proposed, from a full conviction, that if judiciously and patiently applied, it would have great and happy effects upon them, effects honorable and advantageous for us. There are two ways of making this communication: the one is, by the medium of the languages of those countries; the other is, by the medium of our own. In general, when foreign teachers have proposed to instruct the inhabitants of any country, they have used the vernacular tongue of that people, for a natural and necessary reason, that they could not hope to make any other mean of communication intelligible to them. This is not our case in respect of our Eastern dependencies. They are our own, we have possessed them long, many Englishmen reside among the natives, our language is not unknown there, and it is practicable to diffuse it more widely. The choice therefore of either mode, lies open to us; and we are at liberty to consider which is entitled to a preference. Upon this subject, it is not intended to pass an exclusive decision here; the points absolutely to be contended for are, that we ought to impart our superior lights, and that this is practicable, that it is practicable by two ways, can never be an argument why neither should be attempted. Indeed no good reason appears why either should be systematically interdicted, since particular cases may recommend, even that which is in general least eligible. The acquisition of a foreign language is, to men of cultivated minds, a matter of no great difficulty. English teachers could therefore be sooner qualified to offer instruction in the native languages, than the Indians would be prepared to receive it in ours. This method would hence come into operation more speedily than the other; and it would also be attended with the advantage of a more careful selection of the matter of instruction. But it would be far more confined and less effectual; 16

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it may be termed a species of deciphering. The decipherer is required to unfold, in intelligible words, what was before hidden. Upon every new occasion, he has a similar labor to perform, and the information obtained from him is limited to the single communication then made. All other writings in the same character, still remain, to those who are ignorant of it, unknown; but if they are taught the character itself, they can at once read every writing in which it is used. Thus superior, in point of ultimate advantage, does the employment of the English language appear; and upon this ground, we give a preference to that mode, proposing here, that the communication of our knowledge shall be made by the medium of our own language. This proposition will bring at once to trial, both the principle of such communication, and that mode of conveyance which can alone be questioned; for the admission of the principle must at least include in it the admission of the narrowest means suited to the end, which we conceive to be the native languages. The principle however, and the mode, are still distinct questions, and any opinion which may be entertained of the latter, cannot affect the former; but it is hoped, that what shall be offered here concerning them, will be found sufficient to justify both. We proceed then to observe, that it is perfectly in the power of this country, by degrees, to impart to the Hindoos our language; afterwards, through that medium, to make them acquainted with our easy literary compositions, upon a variety of subjects; and, let not the idea hastily excite derision, progressively with the simple elements of our arts, our philosophy and religion. These acquisitions would silently undermine, and at length subvert, the fabric of error; and all the objections that may be apprehended against such a change, are, it is confidently believed, capable of a solid answer. The first communication, and the instrument of introducing the rest, must be the English language; this is a key which will open to them a world of new ideas, and policy alone might have impelled us, long since, to put it into their hands. To introduce the language of the conquerors, seems to be an obvious mean of assimilating the conquered people to them. The Mahomedans, from the beginning of their power, employed the Persian language in the affairs of government, and in the public departments. This practice aided them in maintaining their superiority, and enabled them, instead of depending blindly on native agents, to look into the conduct and details of public business, as well as to keep intelligible registers of the income and expenditure of the state. Natives readily learnt the language of government, finding that it was necessary in every concern of revenue and of justice; they next became teachers of it; and in all the provinces over which the Mogul Empire extended, it is still understood, and taught by numbers of Hindoos. It would have been our interest to have followed their example; and had we done so on the assumption of the Dewannee, or some years afterwards, the English language would now have been spoken and studied by multitudes of Hindoos throughout our provinces. The details of the revenue would, from the beginning, have been open to our inspection; and by facility of examination on our 17

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part, and difficulty of fabrication on that of the natives, manifold impositions of a gross nature, which have been practised upon us, would have been precluded. An early channel of communication also, would always have been open between the rulers and the subjects; and numberless grievances would have been represented, redressed, or prevented, which the ignorance of the former in the country languages, and the hindrances experienced by the latter in making their approaches, have sometimes suffered to pass with impunity, to the encouragement of new abuses. We were long held in the dark, both in India and in Europe, by the use of a technical revenue language; and a man of considerable judgment, who was a member of the Bengal administration near twenty years since, publicly animadverted on the absurdity of our submitting to employ the unknown jargon of a conquered people. It is certain, that the Hindoos would easily have conformed to the use of English; and they would still be glad to possess the language of their masters, the language which always gives weight and consequence to the natives who have any acquaintance with it, and which would enable every native to make his own representations directly to the Governor-General himself, who, it may be presumed, will not commonly, henceforth, be chosen from the line of the Company’s servants, and therefore may not speak the dialects of the country. Of what importance it might be to the public interest, that a man in that station should not be obliged to depend on a medium with which he is unacquainted, may readily be conceived. It would be extremely easy for government to establish, at a moderate expence, in various parts of the provinces, places of gratuitous instruction in reading and writing English: multitudes, especially of the young, would flock to them; and the easy books used in teaching, might at the same time convey obvious truths on different subjects. The teachers should be persons of knowledge, morals, and discretion; and men of this character could impart to their pupils, much useful information in discourse: and to facilitate the attainment of that object, they might at first make some use of the Bengaleze tongue. The Hindoos would, in time, become teachers of English themselves; and the employment of our language in public business, for which every political reason remains in full force, would, in the course of another generation, make it very general throughout the country. There is nothing wanting to the success of this plan, but the hearty patronage of government. If they wish it to succeed, it can and must succeed. The introduction of English in the administration of the revenue, in judicial proceedings, and in other business of government, wherein Persian is now used, and the establishment of free-schools for instruction in this language, would ensure its diffusion over the country, for the reason already suggested, that the interest of the natives would induce them to acquire it. Neither would much confusion arise, even at first, upon such a change; for there are now a great number of Portugueze and Bengaleze clerks in the provinces, who understand both the Hindostanny and English languages. To employ them in drawing up petitions to government, or its officers, would be no additional hardship upon the poorer people, who are now assisted in that way by Persian clerks; and 18

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the opportunity afforded to others who have sufficient leisure, of learning the language of the government gratuitously, would be an advantage never enjoyed under Mahomedan rulers. With our language, much of our useful literature might, and would, in time, be communicated. The art of printing, would enable us to disseminate our writings in a way the Persians never could have done, though their compositions had been as numerous as ours. Hence the Hindoos would see the great use we make of reason on all subjects, and in all affairs; they also would learn to reason, they would become acquainted with the history of their own species, the past and present state of the world; their affections would gradually become interested by various engaging works, composed to recommend virtue, and to deter from vice; the general mass of their opinions would be rectified; and above all, they would see a better system of principles and morals. New views of duty as rational creatures would open upon them; and that mental bondage in which they have long been holden, would gradually dissolve. To this change, the true knowledge of nature would contribute; and some of our easy explanations of natural philosophy might undoubtedly, by proper means, be made intelligible to them. Except a few Brahmins, who consider the concealment of their learning a part of their religion,1 the people are totally misled as to the system and phœnomena of nature; and their errors in this branch of science, upon which divers important conclusions rest, may be more easily demonstrated to them, than the absurdity and falsehood of their mythological legends. From the demonstration of the true cause of eclipses, the story of Ragoo, and Ketoo, the dragons, who when the sun and the moon are obscured are supposed to be assaulting them, a story which has hitherto been an article of religious faith, productive of religious services among the Hindoos,2 would fall to the ground; the removal of one pillar, would weaken the fabric of falsehood; the discovery of one palpable error, would open the mind to farther conviction; and the progressive discovery of truths, hitherto unknown, would dissipate as many superstitious chimeras, the parents of false fears, and false hopes. Every branch of natural philosophy might in time be introduced and diffused among the Hindoos. Their understandings would thence be strengthened, as well as their minds informed, and error be dispelled in proportion. But perhaps no acquisition in natural philosophy would so effectually enlighten the mass of the people, as the introduction of the principles of mechanics, and their application to agriculture and the useful arts. Not that the Hindoos are wholly destitute of simple mechanical contrivances. Some manufactures, which depend upon patient attention and delicacy of hand, are carried to a considerable degree of perfection among them; but for a series of ages, perhaps for two thousand years, they do not appear to have made any considerable addition to the arts of life. Invention seems wholly torpid among them; in a few things, they have improved by their intercourse with Europeans, of whose immense superiority they are at length convinced; but this effect is partial, and not discernible in the bulk of the people. The scope for improvement, in this respect, is prodigious. 19

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What great accessions of wealth would Bengal derive from a people intelligent in the principles of agriculture, skilled to make the most of soils and seasons, to improve the existing modes of culture, of pasturage, of rearing cattle, of defence against excesses of drought, and of rain; and thus to meliorate the quality of all the produce of the country. All these arts are still in infancy. The husbandman of Bengal just turns up the soil with a diminutive plough, drawn by a couple of miserable cattle; and if drought parches, or the rain inundate the crop, he has no resource; he thinks he is destined to this suffering, and is far more likely to die from want, than to relieve himself by any new or extraordinary effort. Horticulture is also in its first stage: the various fruits and esculent herbs, with which Hindostan abounds, are nearly in a state of nature; though they are planted in inclosed gardens, little skill is employed to reclaim them. In this respect likewise, we might communicate information of material use to the comfort of life, and to the prevention of famine. In silk, indigo, sugar, and in many other articles, what vast improvements might be effected by the introduction of machinery. The skilful application of fire, of water, and of steam, improvements which would thus immediately concern the interest of the common people, would awaken them from their torpor, and give activity to their minds. At present it is wonderful to see how entirely they resign themselves to precedent: custom is the strongest law to them. Following implicitly, seems to be instinctive with them, in small things as well as great. The path which the first passenger has marked over the soft soil, is trodden so undeviatingly in all its curves, by every succeeding traveller, that when it is perfectly beaten, it has still only the width of a single tract. But undoubtedly the most important communication which the Hindoos could receive through the medium of our language, would be the knowledge of our religion, the principles of which are explained in a clear, easy way, in various tracts circulating among us, and are completely contained in the inestimable volume of scripture. Thence they would be instructed in the nature and perfections of the one true God, and in the real history of man; his creation, lapsed state, and the means of his recovery, on all which points they hold false and extravagant opinions; they would see a pure, complete, and perfect system of morals and of duty, enforced by the most awful sanctions, and recommended by the most interesting motives; they would learn the accountableness of man, the final judgment he is to undergo, and the eternal state which is to follow. Wherever this knowledge should be received, idolatry, with all the rabble of its impure deities, its monsters of wood and stone, its false principles and corrupt practices, its delusive hopes and vain fears, its ridiculous ceremonies and degrading superstitions, its lying legends and fraudulent impositions, would fall. The reasonable service of the only, and the infinitely perfect God, would be established: love to him, peace and good-will towards men, would be felt as obligatory principles. It is not asserted, that such effects would be immediate or universal; but admitting them to be progressive, and partial only, yet how great would the change be, and how happy at length for the outward prosperity, and internal peace of society among the Hindoos! Men would be restored to the use of their reason; all the advantages of happy soil, climate, and situation, would be observed and 20

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improved; the comforts and conveniences of life would be increased; the cultivation of the mind, and rational intercourse, valued; the people would rise in the scale of human beings; and as they found their character, their state, and their comforts, improved, they would prize more highly, the security and the happiness of a well ordered society. Such a change would correct those sad disorders which have been described, and for which no other remedy has been proposed, nor is in the nature of things to be found. Desirable as it must be that such animating prospects were realized, and reasonable as the grounds on which they are held out are presumed to be, it is nevertheless probable, that various objections, more or less plausible, may be started against all that has been advanced. These objections, as far as they are foreseen, shall now be distinctly met; and it is hoped, that upon examination, none of them will be found to possess that substance and validity, which we are entitled to require in arguments opposed to a scheme resting on principles the most incontrovertible, and having for its end the most diffusive good. FIRST. The plan here proposed, presenting so new an association of ideas, so strange a revolution, as the abject Bengaleze using the language and the light of Europe, may upon the very suggestion of it, be treated as in its nature idle, visionary, and absurd. But this would be the decision of prejudice, rather than the conclusion of mature reflection and reason. If the character of the Hindoos proceeded only from a physical origin, there might be some foundation for thinking it unalterable; but nothing is more plain, than that it is formed chiefly by moral causes, adequate to the effect produced: if those causes therefore can be removed, their effect will cease, and new principles and motives will produce new conduct and a different character. It is unwarrantable to infer, that because the Hindoos, or to narrow the term, the Bengaleze, are at present low in their sentiments, conduct, and aims, they must always remain so. We cannot presume from the past state of any people, with respect to improvement in arts, that they would under different circumstances, for ever continue the same. The history of many nations who have advanced from rudeness to refinement, contradicts such an hypothesis; according to which, the Britons ought still to be going naked, to be feeding on acorns, and sacrificing human victims in the Druidical groves. In fact what is now offered, is nothing more than a proposal for the further civilization of a people, who had very early made a considerable progress in improvement; but who, by deliberate and successful plans of fraud and imposition, were rendered first stationary, then retrograde. These considerations alone, forbid us to assume, that if they were released from the darkness and stupefaction of ignorance and superstition, the human mind could not among them, regain some ordinary degree of elasticity; or that if light shone upon them, they would still be incapable of seeing or judging for themselves. Let it however be again observed, that the argument maintained here supposes only a gradual change. If we bring into immediate contrast, the present state of the Hindoos, and the full, general, accomplishment of such a change, tacitly sinking in our comparison, a 21

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long series of years, and of slow progressive transitions, we shall indeed form to ourselves a picture of egregious contrarieties, but it will not be a just representation. Nothing is contended for, which cannot be supported from the nature of man, and the experience of past ages. SECOND. Nearly allied to the objection now considered, is another which some persons acquainted with the Hindoo character and habits, and possibly apologists for them, may derive from the attachment of that people to their own modes and customs. “If,” may it be said, “the Bengaleze are not to be reckoned below the reach of instruction, and incapable of new perceptions and views, still their attachment to long established opinions and usages, is so rooted, as to form an insuperable obstacle to such an innovation as is proposed; and therefore the scheme may at least be regarded as impracticable.” Is this argument however, quite philosophical? Must it be granted, without fair trial, that there is any portion of the human race, upon which reason and science can have no influence, which is doomed by nature to perpetual ignorance and prejudice? It is true that the Hindoos have a strong predilection for their system; but still it must be remembered, that in the bulk of the people, this is a predilection consequent of a privation of light, and rivetted by the errors which darkness generates, not an attachment which has resisted the light, or has ever been tried by it. Many Europeans have implicitly adopted an overstrained notion of the immutability of Hindoo opinions in matters of religion, and of the obstinacy of the people in retaining their own practices, even in civil life. But if we look to facts, we shall find that a variety of sects have prevailed, and still prevail, among them. The rise, especially of the Seeks, a new religious order, numerous and powerful, who have abjured the Brahminical faith, is sufficient to evince that the Hindoos are capable of considerable fluctuations of opinion. Hitherto indeed they have more commonly fluctuated only from one delusion to another; though it must be allowed, that the system of the Seeks, if the accounts which have been received of it are accurate, is comparatively simple and rational; and we cannot without wonder behold a set of Hindoos casting off at once, in the heart of their country, the whole load of Brahminical incumbrances, and as it should seem, renouncing polytheism and the worship of images.3 A sight far more pleasing has also been exhibited to us, in the conversion of Hindoos to the divine religion of the Gospel. These were not encouraged by an armed protection, or actuated by the prospect of conquest, which may have stimulated the followers of the Seeks; but in opposition to the allurements and terrors of the world, they yielded to conviction, and rendered homage to the truth. This important fact, which is perfectly established, it may suffice barely to state here, since there will be occasion, in speaking to a following objection, to which it more pointedly applies, to enlarge upon it. When we read of these things on the one hand, and on the other of the extremities which Hindoos have sometimes endured through the bigotry of their Mahomedan masters, or from the pressures of misfortune, rather than submit to apprehended contamination, what is the inference fairly deducible from these dissimilar views but this, 22

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that whether the dread either of dishonor in this life, or of degradation in the next transmigration; whether resentment, or the idea of acquiring distinguished merit, were the principle from which these people suffered, still what terror could not induce them, misguided as they were by false notions, to relinquish, they yielded voluntarily to reason and persuasion. If we now turn to instances of a more familiar nature, in the affairs of common life, here too actual experience will inform us, that it is not insuperably difficult to induce the Indians to depart from old established practices, and to adopt new ones. One or two cases of pre-eminent magnitude and notoriety will suffice to confirm this position. Raw-silk, as is well known, has been for many years a great article of commerce in Bengal. The natives had their own methods of winding it, and much attachment to those methods, defective as they were. The India Company attempted to introduce the Italian mode of winding this article, a mode more complex, but far more perfect; they have completely succeeded, and that mode is now practised in all parts of the country. So again with respect to the culture and manufacture of indigo, which the skill and industry of Europeans have, within these last twelve years, introduced into Bengal, and have now rendered an immense article of commerce between that country and Europe: the natives, though possessed of the indigo plant, from which their dyers extracted a very inferior substance for domestic purposes, held the culture of it rather in disesteem, and had no idea of those modes, and that scale of manufacture, of which the Europeans gave them examples; but those examples they now begin to follow on their own account, and there is reason to believe the Hindoos will come in for a share of the produce of this article in the London markets. Be it acknowledged then, that they are now incurious, and without love of learning; yet make it their interest, and they will attend to new discoveries; make it easy for them also to know the English language, and they will acquire it; shew them profitable improvements in agriculture and the arts, and they will imitate them; make it in short their interest, and why may they not become in time students, and even teachers of natural philosophy? Let not the idea be hastily treated as chimerical, if we add that the India Company possessing the revenues of a great country, might very beneficially for themselves, and that country, set the example in introducing such improvements. It would be worthy of them to turn their attention to this fruitful subject, to employ skilful artists of various kinds in ascertaining what improvements are practicable, and in carrying plans for them into execution. Were such a design to be taken up, with due zeal, by the Company, and their governments abroad, the expence and labor would assuredly be repaid in the end, probably by specific returns, but certainly by the augmentation of the agriculture and commerce of the country, and the general effects upon society. In like manner, if after the English language begun to be diffused, seminaries, with suitable apparatus, were instituted, for gratuitous instruction in natural philosophy, and premiums assigned to those who should excel, young persons, both Hindoos, and Mahomedans, would become students and candidates; and if those who were found competent, were at length to be taken as assistant teachers, with suitable salaries, such a measure would 23

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prove a new and powerful means of establishing this species of knowledge. If a kind, patient, and encouraging conduct, were observed towards the Hindoos; that contempt with which Europeans in general regard them, restrained; and their first inaptitude borne with; it cannot be irrational to expect, that in things which come home to their business and interest, which respect the truths of nature, and the improvements of art, such a conduct should be productive of success. Many of the Hindoos and Mahomedans, are brought up to the ready practice of writing and accounts; and persons of this class might be more easily carried on further. THIRD. It may be objected, with more plausibility, that the Brahmins, by their determined opposition to innovations, which would so essentially affect their interests, would prevent the introduction or success of them. It is certainly natural to suppose, that they could not look with indifference upon any attempt from which they might apprehend danger, to that system whence they “have their wealth,” their honor, and their influence. It shall be readily admitted therefore, that upon any serious alarm for the stability of these distinctions, such opposition as should be within the power of that order of men might be expected. But though it will be proper to consider the effect of that opposition, and the force of the objection grounded upon it, we must previously maintain that it can constitute no reason at all against endeavouring, by prudent and pacific means, to make the truth known; for to admit this, would be to make the resistance of those who profit by abuses, an argument for continuing to tolerate them, and upon the same principle, Christianity had never been propagated. To objections of a prudential or political kind, it is one main design of this piece to oppose answers founded on considerations of a like nature; and we venture to believe, that if the cause here pleaded for, rested on this ground alone, it could have nothing to fear. But the employment of political arguments does not oblige us to decline the use of others justly applicable to the subject; and upon the present occasion, it would be strange to omit one of decisive weight, which flows from the very nature and principles of Christianity. The divine authority of that religion, its unrivalled excellence, and incomparable fitness to promote the happiness of man, its whole tenor, and many particular injunctions and encouragements which it holds forth, impose upon those who profess subjection to it, the duty of contributing to diffuse, by all proper methods, the knowledge and influence of it in the world. No man who takes the Gospel as the standard of his reasoning, can for a moment dispute this position; to deny it, would be virtually to deny the authority of Christ, and therefore it will not be expected, that we should enter here into the proof of a position which rests upon the truth of Christianity itself. But affirming as we may with perfect right, the validity of this argument, it will apply to communities as well as individuals; the duty is incumbent upon this nation, and it is augmented two-fold by the addition of that which we owe to the misguided Pagans who are become our subjects. Having asserted the regard due to this important argument, let us proceed, in the next place, to examine how far the present objection is warranted, in ascribing so 24

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great an efficacy to the opposition of the Brahmins; or in other words, to inquire into the extent and probable amount of their counter-action, still supposing their resistance to be strongly excited; for here it will be proper to remark, that in general where they see no indication of persecution, they are not likely to feel any alarm. As the more learned and ingenious of them lead a retired life, inattentive to novelties, so the rest, chiefly men busied in worldly concerns, possess the confidence which often belongs to deluded ignorance. They know that their system, is held by numerous nations. They believe from their legends, that it always has been, and always will be so. They possess the same spirit as that Pagan votary of old, who felt himself quoting a fact of universal notoriety and authority, sufficient to appease a popular tumult, when he affirmed that the image of the great goddess Diana fell down from Jupiter. When therefore they see a few simple foreigners offering “certain strange things” to the ears of their people, they may be ready secretly, if not to use the language of the conceited Athenians, yet to say with a more ancient scoffer, “what do these feeble Jews?” Still less will the people be apprehensive about consequences. And whilst things continue in this state, it will be the business of Christian teachers to confine themselves chiefly to the positive declarations of the Gospel, giving no occasion for an imputation which indeed they should never wish justly to incur, that of being “blasphemers,” or resorting to abusive language in speaking of the Hindoo gods, or the Hindoo absurdities. They have greater themes; “temperance, righteousness, and judgment to come;”—the noble topics brought forward by St. Paul to the superstitious Athenians. “God that made the world . . . . . the Lord of Heaven and Earth, who is not worshipped with men’s hands . . . . who giveth to all, life, and breath, and all things . . . . . . in whom we live, move, and have our being . . . . . . And that forasmuch as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone graven by art and man’s device . . . . . . And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men, every where to repent; because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” If by such doctrines as these, or the fruits of them, resentment and opposition should be provoked, let us now consider what the utmost activity of opposition so stimulated could effect. Usually true religion has been combatted, and false religions have been upheld, either by fraud or force, or by both. What artifice, imposture, misrepresentation, and vicious indulgence have not been able to effect, persecution and the coercion of the secular power have been called in to accomplish. False religion shuns fair examination; before this test it cannot stand. Such is the force of truth, that on the first promulgation of Christianity, it prevailed against all the deceits, impositions, ignorance, prejudice, and prescriptive authority of the ancient superstition, aided by the utmost cruelties that tyrannic governments could inflict. Now in the present case, the Brahmins will not possess the instrument most effectual for the support of religious error and imposture, that is, the power of the sword. They may be able to strengthen 25

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indisposition to new opinions by their personal influence, by availing themselves of traditional respect and existing habits, by venting calumnies, by denouncing spiritual judgments, especially that most formidable of their punishments, loss of caste; and it shall be granted, that these expedients may be sufficient to narrow the avenues, and retard the progress of truth. Such obstructions are to be contended with only by patient perseverance, maintained on Christian principles. But with these expedients, the means of opposition end; and if all such means have not prevented many Hindoos, even of the superior orders, on the Coast of Coromandel, from embracing the doctrine preached by a few humble Europeans, without national or local consideration, why should it be thought that pious, discreet, intelligent teachers, should have no success in Bengal, where the full establishment of our authority must at least secure the national religion from open contempt or disrespect. In that country, the gross absurdities of Heathenism have never yet been clearly exposed, and their abettors would find themselves extremely at a loss to defend by argument, assumptions wholly destitute of evidence, internal and external. Indeed how is it possible to justify to the common sense and imperfect natural light of men, the monstrous actions ascribed to the deities of the Hindoos, the immoral tenets established by the Hindoo system, and the immoral practices which they are used to sanction? These things could not stand before the pure and heart-searching word of God, which recommended by the lives of those who declared it, could not fail to make a powerful impression; especially as the Hindoos, who easily suppose the authenticity of other systems of religion, (thus with Pagan latitude concluding the certainty of that which they hold, to be peculiarly assigned to them,) would not be inclined to controvert the truth of ours, and therefore would be reduced to the task of proving that their own is of divine authority. And the great difference between this kind of contest, and the religious controversies which have usually prevailed in Europe, ought to be considered. For here the dispute has commonly been, which of two contrary systems or tenets was the right one, and entitled to general acceptance. But the Hindoos do not wish for proselytes; they cannot receive any: on the other hand, Christian teachers, neither able nor desirous to resort to any kind of compulsion, would be confined to a quiet exposition of the truths of their own system, and of errors of Heathenism. From such a state of things no violent contention could easily arise. If finding excommunication insufficient to deter Hindoos from embracing Christianity, the Brahmins should attempt to follow with persecution those who had been coverted, the calm interposition of the civil government to prevent such an infraction of justice and good order, would be sufficient. And if natives acknowledging from conscience the Christian revelation, at the hazard of sacrifices which the confession of it might require, were thereby rendered more honest, more faithful, and upright, would this be any injury to society? Need we ask whether it would make them better servants and agents, make them more useful and valuable in all the relations of life? Would not such persons be a real accession to European masters; and must it not be supposed, that men professing Christianity, whose interest would be promoted by employing such 26

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converts, would not reject them, upon a principle which even Paganism could not justify, that is, because they had honestly followed their convictions? In this way the great terror of excommunication would be obviated; for it is in the loss of employment, the want of subsistence, and protection, that its great evil consists. Let it not be said, that such views might tempt natives hypocritically to assume the profession of Christianity who would afterwards disgrace it. The truth is not to be kept back, nor a credible profession of it discouraged, because it may be thus abused; and those who should act so dishonestly, would generally soon find themselves despised by all parties. Thus it is hoped a satisfactory answer has been offered to the objection now under consideration, even when admitted in its strongest form; that is, in supposing the great question respecting religion to be brought into early and direct controversy. Of such a colision of systems however, for some considerable time to come, the probability may, from the observations which have been advanced, be reasonably doubted; and if the more gradual process here assumed, a process by the concurring extension of the English language, should be followed, additional aids will, in the mean while, arise to the argument we maintain. That extension for instance, and the employment of the language in public business, cannot be disputed by the Brahmins; for how could they deny the same obedience to our government which they formerly yielded to the Mahomedan, and in a matter on which it is solely the province of government to decide? Brahmins themselves have spoken English for a century past; many of them now speak it; and no religious plea can therefore be henceforth advanced against the use of it. Improvements in manufactures and the arts, the Brahmins could not exclude; for in the adoption of some such improvements introduced by Europeans, they have also joined. The true system of natural philosophy, demonstrable as it is to the sight by machines, could be communicated to the Mahomedans, through whom it would have a wide diffusion, even if the Brahmins could prevent all Hindoos from attending to it, which is not to be imagined; nor could such an expedient occur to them until the progress of light had made an impression. That progress it is probable, would operate silently with persons who would not choose to encounter the painful feelings attendant on the dereliction of caste; and in this way, without any great external change which should excite alarm, a gradual enlargement of views and opinions, guided by that spirit of order and obedience which the Gospel eminently inculcates, and operating rather to the prevention of any vehement conflict of opinions, might take place, to the true happiness, as far as it went, of all parties. FOURTH. It may possibly occur to some of the readers of this tract, that the Portugueze of India, many of whom speak English, are nevertheless still a vicious and contemptible race.—There are among them, it must be admitted, many who cannot be cleared from this imputation. These men, descendents of the Portugueze soldiers and free-booters of a rude age, and of the lowest Bengaleze women, born in the meanest stations, dispersed under governments foreign to them, adopted by no other class of society, commonly without education, retaining only the errors 27

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of the Roman Catholic persuasion, grow up in ignorance, immorality, and superstition, like the Heathen around them; and if they know the English language, it is but imperfectly and colloquially. They cannot be referred to as specimens of the effects of Christianity, any more than some of the Indians of America, for they understand and possess hardly any thing of it beyond the name. But there is another description of persons ranking under the general denomination of Portugueze, more respectable; persons of some education, who are clerks, traders, or merchants. These are often men of decent lives and tolerable information; they are, in some degree, an improving set of people, and have clearly profited from their acquaintance and intercourse with Europeans, particularly the English. Now the proposed plan of communicating instruction to the Hindoos, through the medium of our language, does not suppose that the vilest out-casts of society are first to be selected for the purpose, or that a new name merely is to be imparted, but that men of substance and consideration, men employed in the affairs of government, connected with the revenues and with the administration of justice, will procure for their children, if not for themselves, the knowledge of a tongue which will then be necessary in transacting business; and that the instruction to be conveyed by this, or any other vehicle, shall be important and practical. FIFTH. Another objection may arise from the result of the direct attempts which have been made to enlighten the Hindoos, by the preaching of the Christian religion: It has been said by some, that the success of such attempts has been very small, and has been confined to the Pariars and others of the lowest castes.—This statement is, in the first place, very erroneous; and in the next, to infer from it the impracticability of extending, by any efforts however strenuous, by any means however prudent, and under any circumstances however favorable, the influence of Christianity in Hindostan, would be altogether illogical and fallacious. Little stress shall be laid here upon the attempts of Roman Catholics; for it must be confessed, that though they made numerous converts, they too often only changed one set of ceremonies and images for another. Yet it must also be admitted, that the Romish establishments in Europe have shewn a zeal in this matter, much superior to any of the Protestant nations; and that Xavier, who traversed a great part of the coasts and islands of India, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and appears to have been a pious indefatigable man, planted the Gospel in various places, in a way that might have led to a large extension of it, if his labors and zeal had been well seconded. The efforts of the Dutch to establish Christianity in their Indian settlements, as being made under circumstances more similar to our own, may deserve greater attention. There was, in the earlier periods of that republic, a very laudable spirit in the government at home for the promotion of this object, and the number of native Christians in their colonies abroad was very considerable. Baldæus, the author of the History of Ceylon, a person of great credit, who was one of the Dutch ministers there in the last century, and wrote from his own knowledge, has stated that in the year 1663, the Christians in the province of Jaffnapatnam,4 amounted (exclusive of slaves) to sixty-two thousand, many of whom 28

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must no doubt have been educated in the Romish churches, which the Portugueze had founded there; but it is extremely worthy of remark, that this author declares the number of children in the schools, maintained by the Dutch government, to have risen at the time of his departure from the island, to eighteen thousand. The learned John Leusden, Professor of Hebrew at Utrecht, about the end of the last century, produced several letters from his correspondents, which gave the following further accounts of the state of Christianity in the Dutch possessions in Ceylon. “Mr. Herman Specht, minister of the Gospel at Columbo, writes, that in the province of Jaffnapatnam, without including Manaar, which appertains to it, there are, according to the last computation and the list sent thence to us, one hundred and forty-one thousand four hundred and fifty-six Christians, who have five pastors to take care of them.” The same Mr. Specht, in another letter from Columbo, dated January 6th, 1688, says, “the number of converted Indians, who have embraced Christianity, is in the space of four years greatly increased; for the province of Jaffnapatnam, subject only to the Dutch East-India Company, hath two hundred and seventy-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine inhabitants; among whom there are Indians professing to be Christians, one hundred and eighty-eight thousand three hundred and sixty-four.5” Another very respectable authority of the same period informs us, that “the Dutch East-India Company maintain in the Indies, thirty or forty ministers for the conversion of poor Infidels, who are under their dominion, and are at the annual expence of £10,000 for this purpose, and have hereby converted many hundred thousands of them to the true Christian faith; and for the further propagating of it, have lately erected a college in the Island of Ceylon, in which one place only they have above eighty thousand converted Indians upon the roll, for whose use they print bibles, catechisms, and many other books.6”

Notes 1 2 3 4

Page 89. Page 126; and Bernier, Tome II. page 102. See Mr. Wilkins’s account of the Seeks, in the first Volume of the Asiatic Transactions. The inhabitants of Jaffnapatnam are Malabars, known to have come originally from the continent, and are a distinct people from the Cingaleze, who possess the rest of the island, and follow the religion of Bowde, or Bhoudda, whom the Brahmins treat as a heretic; whilst some learned Europeans are inclined with great appearance of reason to believe, that his religion, which prevails over many countries of the East, is more ancient in India than the Brahminical system. He is mentioned by Jerome, Clemens Alexandrinus, and other authors of antiquity, and is now held to be the same as the Sommonacodom of Siam, the Foe of China, and the Saca of Japan. See in the first volume of the Asiatic Transactions a curious and learned paper, which has relation to this subject, by William Chambers, Esq. A premature and lamented death has since deprived learning and society of this excellent man, who to an exquisite skill in several Oriental languages, joined a very uncommon knowledge of Asiatic history and manners. But these qualities were in him only themes of inferior praise. He exhibited, during a long residence in India, in all his relations, employments, and intercourses, a confident and distinguished example of the Christian character: and from him, inquisitive and ingenious natives, both Mahomedans

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and Indoos, with whom it was his practice often to converse, received at once just views of favorable impressions of Christianity. If the occasion had permitted, it would only have been doing justice to his name to place it in a far more conspicuous station than the present note aligns to it; and for this particular reason, among many others, that he was always a strenuous advocate for the diffusion of the Gospel of the Earth. He had himself begun, with great care a translation of the Gospels into Persian. 5 Millar’s Propagation of Christianity, Vol. II. page 318, in which is cited Mastricht’s Theologica Theo-practica.—If it were asked, whether all these converts were sincere in their profession, it might be answered, that probably some were ignorant and some hypocritical; but so would the result be upon any large survey, even in Europe. Yet to have discarded the horrid idolatry and mythology of the Hindoos, and to come under the stated instructions of a pure and divine system, would be important changes. 6 A proposal from the eminent Dean Prideaux to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Tennison) for the propagation of the Gospel in the English settlements in the East-Indies, contained in a letter to his grace, dated the 20th January 1694–5. In this letter the Dean greatly complains of the indisposition of the English East-India Company to the good work which he recommends. The Company, then under the management of Sir Josiah Child, must have much declined from its earlier zeal for the honor of religion. See the Life of Dean Prideaux.

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5 HOLT MACKENZIE, ‘NOTE ON PUBLIC EDUCATION, 17TH JULY 1823’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 57–64

Note, dated the 17th July 1823, by Mr. Holt Mackenzie.1 Government being desirous of pursuing a systematic course of proceeding in regard to public education, and having its attention especially directed to the objects specified in the act of the 53d of the late King, I beg leave to submit a few things that have occurred to me on the subject. The first step is to settle the ultimate object to be aimed at: for otherwise we may debate about the means without end. It is not then I conceive the wish of Government that the people should be merely taught what is necessary to make them expert agents of the civil administration of the country as now administered. It is not desired to keep from them any species of knowledge that can enlighten their minds or improve their moral feelings. Caution indeed must be used in admitting the light to the morbid sense. But the darkness is not the less deplored: nor its ultimate removal the less sought. The probable effects, though distant, of the more general diffusion of knowledge are not blinked. But to keep the people weak and ignorant that they may be submissive is a policy which the Government decidedly rejects. Its aim is to raise the character, to strengthen the understanding, to purify the heart; and whatever therefore can extend the knowledge of the people, whatever can give them a juster conception of the true relation of things, whatever can add to their power over the gifts of nature or better inform them of the rights and duties of their fellow men, whatever can excite invention and invigorate the judgment, whatever can enrich the imagination and sharpen the wit, whatever can rouse to steady exertion and bind to honest purposes; whatever fits man to bear and improve his lot, to render his neighbour happy, and his country prosperous; whatever in short tends to make men wiser 31

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and better and happier here and hereafter—all are desired to be given, in due season, to the people of India. Nothing therefore can be more comprehensive than the design. Its different parts must indeed be filled up gradually and with well measured steps. Its completion we must leave to our children’s children. But still if the ultimate object be as I have stated, it follows that the points to be considered in fashioning any scheme for its attainment are infinitely numerous and all very important; that a good scheme can be the result only of much and anxious thought, earnestly employed with the resources of accurate and varied knowledge. It must at once be considered what the people possess and what they want, what we can give them and what they are capable of receiving profitably, what they are and what they may become, and what their probable participation in the several steps of the great change which a general diffusion of true knowledge will doubtless produce. To embrace a field so extensive as that of which I have attempted to give a slight sketch, it will obviously be necessary that Government should, as it proposes, seek the aid of a Committee combining a variety of talent and acquirement. And if I have rightly stated the purposes of Government, it follows that the persons to be selected for the duty should be those, who are not only deeply impressed with the importance of the work, but are entirely free from any narrow views, that would lead them to withhold from the people the full measure of knowledge, which they are in the capacity to receive. It follows too, if there be truth and excellence in European science, that the introduction of it among the natives of India, must necessarily be one, and an early part of the general scheme and should authoritatively be indicated by Government as such. As to the means of instruction, they are obviously very numerous. Different individuals will approve different plans. Some would encourage schools for the elements of learning. Some prefer colleges for the higher branches. Of these, some would encourage existing, others would establish new institutions. Some would instruct teachers only, some would merely provide books, some would teach the English language, others would look to the introduction of English science through translations. Some would look to the learned classes, others to the wealthy, others to the general community. In so wide a range, I cannot pretend to anything like a full conception of the subject. Indeed whatever may be my zeal for the cause (and as a Briton and a Christian it is impossible, I should regard it with indifference) I want the knowledge that would entitle me to decide with any confidence. I shall be glad to see all the instruments, I have specified, with others that have escaped me, brought into action. But my present impression is, that Government should apply itself chiefly to the instruction of those who will themselves be teachers (including of course in the term many, who never appear as professed masters, and also translators from the European into the native languages) and to the translation, compilation and publication of useful works. These objects being provided for, the support and establishment of colleges for the instruction of what may be called the educated and influential classes seem to me to be more 32

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immediate objects of the care of Government than the support and establishment of elementary schools; though these in particular places may claim attention. To provide for the education of the great body of the people seems to be impossible, at least, in the present state of things. For the ordinary purposes of life, the means of education are not, I imagine, ill supplied, though doubtless the native seminaries are susceptible of much improvement, and this at a cheap rate, by assisting them, both with books and masters. The great body of the people are, however, too poor and too anxious for service to allow their children to remain long under tuition. Moreover the value of the Parish Schools in England, whence we derive our notions of the advantages of general education, depends greatly on the religion of the country. Take from the peasant his Bible, and (if it be possible) the knowledge and sentiments that have flowed from that sacred source, and how worthless will be his lowly literature. The education indeed of the great body of the people can never, I think, be expected to extend beyond what is necessary for the business of life; and it is only therefore through religious exercises, which form a great part of the business of life, that the labourer will turn his thoughts on things above the common drudgery, by which he earns his subsistence. Hence it is under the Christian scheme alone, that I should expect to find the labouring classes really educated: and their station in the scale of instructed and humanized beings will, I imagine, be pretty closely proportioned to their piety. We have no such instrument, with which to work beneficially on the lower orders here. Further the natural course of things in all countries seems to be that knowledge introduced from abroad should descend from the higher or educated classes and gradually spread through their example. We surely cannot here, at least expect the servant to prize a learning, which his master despises or hates. The influence of Europeans, if they use not the influential classes of the native community, must necessarily be very confined. What is taught in our schools will only be thought of there. Our scholars, if of the common people when they enter the world, will find no sympathy among their fellows, and until the lessons of the master, or professor become the subject of habitual thought and conversation, they cannot touch the heart, they will little affect the understanding. The acquirement will be an act of memory, with little more of feeling or reflection than if nonsense verses were the theme. Hence my notion is, that the limited classes, who are now instructed (with great labour certainly whatever may be the use) in the learning of the country, should be the first object of attention. This, of course, implies the association of oriental learning with European Science, and the gradual introduction of the latter, without any attempt arbitrarily to supersede the former. It implies too the support and patronage of existing institutions, so far at least as the furnishing them with Masters and supplying them with translations. And further, if our means suffice, it implies a more positive encouragement to learned Natives, and consists well with the resolution (supposing the funds for the first objects supplied), to establish new institutions for the instruction of natives in the learning of the East, and of the West together. It will probably be thought sufficient to have two Sanscrit Colleges, for the encouragement of Hindoo literature, and for the instruction of Pundits for our 33

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Courts; and, if the Madrissa be thought inadequate to the due diffusion of Mahommedan literature and law, one in the Western provinces would, I should imagine, amply supply the want. But in fact I should doubt, whether any increase in the number of Government establishments is necessary for these purposes: and the first thing therefore is, I think, to improve those that exist by the introduction of European science. I do not imagine there will be any difficulty in doing so, if a fit instructor is provided, and proper books supplied. Among the inhabitants of Calcutta at least there seems to be an eagerness for the boon. The encouragement of Government will also, I believe, readily induce natives to acquire the English language so as to qualify themselves to become translators and teachers. As to instruction in the English language, it is not easy to fix the limits, to which it should be attempted. Community of language seems to be the surest means, perhaps the only sure means, of creating community of ideas, and I confess that I am disposed to think the difficulties of the attempt are generally overrated. Persian, it should be recollected, is essentially a foreign language. It may be doubted whether what is recorded in that tongue is much better understood by the generality of the parties interested, than it would be if recorded in English. To one party at least the record in English would be an essential gain, the European officer who has to decide the case. Possibly in the Suburbs Court, a change might be expediently attempted. It would scarcely be consistent to make any effort at general instruction in English, unless the gradual introduction of it as the official language of the country were contemplated. The question, however, like every one connected with the subject of education is one full of difficulty. I do not presume to offer anything except as hints, on which my own mind is quite unsettled. The necessity of appointing a general Committee of public instruction, who may prepare some well digested scheme, embracing all the different institutions supported, or encouraged by Government, and to whom the various suggestions submitted by individuals may be referred for consideration and report, has been recognized by Government. It seems clear that in no other way can any comprehensive plan be framed, or systematically pursued: and the general price applicable to the purpose economically and efficiently appropriated. Various detached committees, ill informed of each other’s projects, must necessarily waste much labour. They will also probably waste much money from the want of combination. I have already stated generally the sentiments, with which it seems to me necessary that such a committee should undertake the duty. Government will have little difficulty in selecting individuals influenced by such sentiments and there are many, who add all other necessary qualifications. The selection should, I think, be made with reference to the individual, not (at least not solely) to the office. On the appointment of a general Committee of Education, it will probably be thought right to modify in some degree the constitution of the Committees charged 34

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with the immediate management of the several institutions. They will all of course act, under the directions of the general committee, furnishing to them particular reports of their operations, and submitting through them any suggestions they may see fit to offer for the improvement or wider diffusion of education. For the seminaries at the Presidency indeed it may be unnecessary to maintain separate committees. They will perhaps best be managed by the general committee, either collectively or by certain members specially selected by them, for the management with separate secretaries for the Musulman and Hindoo colleges to superintend the details of their internal arrangement to control and guide the masters. Without neglecting the consideration due to particular endowments, the General Committee will of course regard all the funds devoted to purposes of education as forming in a certain sense a common stock: more essentially in whatever regards the preparation or publication of useful works. In some of these even the Hindoos and Musulmans may eventually be found to have a common interest, though at first these must necessarily constitute two great divisions, requiring distinct consideration. It will naturally belong to a committee of public instruction, to ascertain from the different local authorities what funds have been assigned by pious, or philanthropic individuals, for the purpose of supporting seminaries of education: how far the objects of such endowments may have been fulfilled, what means should be taken for securing them, and what modifications in the plans originally contemplated by the founders may be legitimately adopted to meet the altered circumstances of present times. They cannot of course exercise any authority over private schools, but their advice and encouragement to individuals, Native and European, who may be engaged in the management, or support of such establishments, will be very valuable and probably very highly valued. Their direct interposition may, indeed, in some cases be sought by individuals, for the security and improvement of funds about to be devoted to purposes of public education. In framing any rational scheme of public instruction, we must necessarily consider in a general way, at least, how far our other institutions are suited to the state of things, which the diffusion of knowledge may be expected ultimately to produce, and more immediately, how the acquirements of the students at the public seminaries can best be rendered subservient to the public service, and how the constitution of public offices and the distribution of employments can be made— the means of exerting to study and rewarding merit. To those points, therefore, the attention of the committee will be particularly directed: and I should, with some confidence, anticipate from their labours, a great accession, within a moderate time, to the number of persons, who can now be looked to as good instruments of civil government, of which the details must, I apprehend, though our service were multiplied tenfold, be left to the natives of the country. The several suggestions of a general nature, embraced by the report recently received from the Madrissa Committee, will of course obtain early and particular notice. The plan of the new College which it is proposed to construct in Hastings’ 35

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Place must be framed with advertence to any charge, or addition likely soon to be made on the scheme of instruction or discipline. So also the Hindoo College, of which a plan and estimate prepared by Lieutenant Buxton is still with the Military Board (the orders in regard to it having been postponed, until the new square in the centre of the city should be cleared), must I imagine undergo some changes under the resolution of Government to introduce European science even though the general scheme of Sanscrit instruction, suggested by the Committee should still be approved: a point which may be considered open for discussion with the general Committee. The decision of Government on the proposition of the local Agents at Agra relative to the appropriation of that portion of the produce of the late Gungadhur Pundit’s lands, which has been set aside for public purposes, has hitherto been postponed under the desire of combining any arrangements that might be adopted in pursuance of them with some general systematic scheme for the promotion of public instruction. To the general Committee about to be appointed, the subject will of course be referred, and I will not anticipate their judgment by any remarks on the plan suggested by the local Agents. It remains for me to state the immediate object of this note, which I should have explained at once and very briefly, had I not been unconsciously led into detail by the anxiety I feel for the success of a cause I am little able to promote. To the efficiency of any committee such as it is proposed to establish, it appears to be very essential, that the person through whom their correspondence with Government is conducted should be one fully qualified to second their efforts; with sufficient leisure, to devote a considerable portion of time to the important and difficult subject; and with the kind of knowledge that may qualify him to supply Government with minute and accurate information on the points submitted to its judgment. I know not how the Madrissa and Hindoo Colleges got into the Revenue Department; excepting, what would justify the absorption of all other departments, that they thence drew the funds assigned for their support. Whilst however the Revenue was united to the Judicial Department, there was perhaps little to object, excepting the load of business that then fell on the secretary: for certainly nothing can be more nearly connected with the good administration of justice and the prevention of crime, than the public instruction of the people. Now, however, no such reason exists for continuing the colleges in the Territorial Department. The funds will not be the less safe, that their appropriation is controuled elsewhere. The habits, which the office necessarily induces, the constant occupation, official and demi-official, which its business gives are all adverse to those pursuits, which should belong to the Secretary, through whom the decisions of Government on questions of public education, should pass. For myself, I feel very strongly, how little I am competent to the task, unless it were confined to the mere mechanical act of giving expression to specific directions. But independently of general qualification, I must plead the want of leisure 36

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from other work. The Record Committee, the Mint Committee, the Bank, the College Council, and the Sinking Fund Committee; all together occupy a considerable portion of my time. It is too in the nature of a department which corresponds with four distinct Boards, to say nothing of Committees, and which touches so nearly the property of Individuals (Merchants, Public Creditors, and Landholders) to have many references, that are never formally brought for decision, and, on the whole, I can safely say I have very few hours of day-light to myself. Nay what with the Loan, and other things, the absence of my Assistant or his entire employment in Police duties, I am obliged to seek indulgence for not having kept pace with my works. Similar considerations will probably prevail as objections to the transfer of the whole correspondence regarding public Education, to the Judicial or General Departments: although as I have already observed, the matter is one most intimately connected with the administration of Justice and Police. On the other hand, the Persian Secretary to Government has comparatively much leisure. He necessarily possesses and cultivates the kind of knowledge that best fits him to judge correctly on plans, which have for their object the instruction of the natives and, what is not less important, he is immediately in the way of learning what their sentiments are on the measures, that may be suggested or adopted. It is indeed a natural part of his duty to mark the origin and growth of every Note.—If not thought neces- thing, that can affect their character and sentisary to have a separate record, ments. On every ground, therefore, it seems to be the papers could of course advan- expedient to transfer to the Persian Department tageously be brought on the Judi- the correspondence respecting the education of the cial Proceedings. people of India. I need scarcely add that, soliciting the present relief purely from motives of public duty, I shall rejoice to afford my humble aid in any way, that it can be useful in promoting the important objects contemplated by Government. I pray only that my interference may not be such as to impede their attainment. It is in this spirit that I now submit the above remarks, though conscious how rude and meagre they may appear. I shall further observe, that though they are confined to the Musulman and Hindoo portion of our subjects; yet the object of educating properly the Christian youth of this city seems to me to be one, not less deserving the attention of Government. HOLT MACKENZIE.

Note 1 Territorial Department, Revenue Consultations, dated 17th July, 1823, No. 1.

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6 ‘LETTER FROM THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, 18TH AUGUST 1824’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 93–98 1

Letter, dated 18th August 1824, from the General Committee of Public Instruction to the Governor-General. To The Right Hon’ble WILLIAM PITT, LORD AMHERST, Governor-General in Council, Fort William. General Committee, 18-8-1824.

MY LORD, WE have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a letter from the Persian Secretary to Government, dated the 16th ultimo, forwarding extracts of a despatch from the Hon’ble the Court of Directors, under date the 18th February 1821,2 on the subject of the Education of the Natives of British India. 2. We are happy to find that the sentiments expressed in the letter from the Hon’ble Court are, upon the whole, in unison with those principles by which the Committee of Education have hitherto regulated their proceedings. The introduction of useful knowledge is the great object which they have proposed as the end of the measures adopted, or recommended by them; at the same time they have kept in view that, “in the institutions which exist on a particular footing, alterations should not be introduced more rapidly than a regard to existing interests and feeling will dictate”; and they are aware of the necessity of “employing Mohammadan and Hindu media, and of consulting the prejudices of the Mohammadans and Hindus,” in any attempts to introduce improved methods or objects of study which are calculated to be attended with success. 3. Whilst the Hon’ble Court have thus recognised the principles under which the existing institutions should be carried on, they have been pleased to express it as their opinion, that the plans of the Hindu College at Benares and Mohammadan 38

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College at Calcutta, were “originally and fundamentally erroneous,” and that in establishing Seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindu or Mohammadan Literature, “the Government bound themselves to teach a great deal of what was frivolous, not a little of what was purely mischievous, and a small remainder indeed in which utility was in any way concerned.” 4. The remarks made on former institutions of the Government may not be thought to require any comment from us particularly, as it is admitted that it is necessary to proceed with caution in introducing any modification of their system. As applicable however, generally, and as connected with the Hon’ble Court’s injunctions to respect native prejudices and feelings, we beg leave to offer some observations on the circumstances which have hitherto influenced, and which we are of opinion, must continue for some time to regulate the constitution and conduct for Seminaries for the purpose of native education. 5. In the first place, without denying that the object of introducing European literature and science may have been somewhat too long overlooked, it may be questioned whether the Government could originally have founded any other seminaries, than those which it actually established; viz., the Madrassa, to teach Mohammadan literature and law, and the Benares College, to teach Sanscrit literature and Hindu law. Those colleges were founded for Mohammadans and Hindus respectively, and would have been of little value to either, if they had proposed to teach what neither were disposed to learn. It may be added, what else had the Government to offer, on any extensive scale? What means existed to communicating anything but Mohammadan and Hindu literature either by teachers or books? It was therefore a case of necessity, and almost all that the Government in instituting a seminary for the higher classes could give, or the people would accept through such a channel, was oriental literature, Mohammadan or Hindu. Instruction in the English language and literature could have been attempted only on the most limited scale, and as they could not, we apprehend, have been at all introduced into seminaries designed for the general instruction of the educated and influential classes of the natives the success of the attempt may well be doubted. 6. We have no doubt that these points will be evident to the Honourable Court on further consideration, and we need not further dwell upon them, at least with reference to the past. The Honourable Court, however seem to think that the same circumstances no longer impede the introduction of useful knowledge, and that in establishing a college in Calcutta, it should not have been restricted to the objects of Hindu learning; on this point, we beg to observe, that the new Sanscrit College in Calcutta was substituted for two colleges proposed to be endowed at Tirhut and Nuddiya, the original object of which was declaredly the preservation and encouragement of Hindu learning. So far therefore, the Government may be considered pledged to the character of the institution, though the pledge does not of course extend to bar the cautious and gradual introduction of European science in combination with the learning which the people love. It is however of more importance to consider, that the Government had in this as well as in former instances, little or no choice, and that if they wished to confer an acceptable boon upon the most enlightened, or at least most 39

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influential class of the Hindu population (the learned and Brahmanical caste), they could do so only by placing the cultivation of Sanscrit within their reach; any other offer would have been useless; tuition, in European science, being neither amongst the sensible wants of the people, nor in the power of Government to bestow. 7. In proposing the improvement of men’s mind, it is first necessary to secure their conviction, that such improvement is desirable. Now, however satisfied we may feel that the native subjects of this Government stand in need of improved instruction, yet every one in the habit of communicating with both the learned and unlearned classes, must be well aware, that generally speaking, they continue to hold European literature and science in very slight estimation. A knowledge of English, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, is, to a certain extent, a popular attainment, and a few of the natives employed by Europeans, accustomed to an intimate intercourse with their masters, may perceive that their countrymen have something in the way of practical science to learn. These impressions, however, are still very partial, and the Maulavi and Pundit, satisfied with their own learning, are little inquisitive as to any thing beyond it, and are not disposed to regard the literature and science of the West as worth the labour of attainment. As long as this is the case, and we cannot anticipate the very near extinction of such prejudice, any attempt to enforce an acknowledgment of the superiority of intellectual produce amongst the Natives of the West could only create dissatisfaction, and would deter those whose improvement it is most important to promote as the best means of securing a more general amelioration, the members of the literary classes, from availing themselves of the beneficence of the Government, by placing themselves within the reach of instruction. 8. The actual state of public feeling is therefore, we conceive, still an impediment to any general introduction of western literature or science, and although we believe the prejudices of the natives against European interference with their education in any shape, are considerably abated, yet they are by no means annihilated, and might very easily be roused by any abrupt and injudicious attempts at innovation, to the destruction of the present growing confidence from which, in the course of time, the most beneficial consequences may be expected. It is much, in our estimation, to have placed all the institutions maintained by Government under direct European superintendence, and from the continuance of that superintendence exercised with temper and discretion, we anticipate the means of winning the confidence of the officers and pupils of the several seminaries, to an extent that will pave the way for the unopposed introduction of such improvement as we may hereafter have the means of effecting. 9. But supposing that the disposition of the native mind was even as favourable as could be desired, we know not by what means we could at once introduce the improvements that we presume are meditated. The Honourable Court admit the necessity of employing Hindu and Mohammadan media, but where are such to be obtained for the introduction of foreign learning? We must teach the teachers and provide the books, and by whom are the business of tuition and task of translation to be accomplished? Until the means are provided, it would be premature to talk of their application, and we must be content to avail ourselves of the few and partial opportunities, that may occur for giving encouragement to the extension of 40

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a knowledge of the English language amongst those classes, whence future preceptors and translators may be reared. To do this with any good effect, however, we must qualify the same individuals highly in their own system as well as ours, in order that they may be as competent to refute errors as to impart truth, if we would wish them to exercise any influence upon the minds of their countrymen. 10. Under the present circumstances, therefore, the still vigorous prejudices of both Mohammadans and Hindus, and the want of available instruments for any beneficial purpose of greater extent, we conceive that it is undoubtedly necessary to make it the business of Government institutions intended for those classes respectively, to teach (we hope not long exclusively) Mohammadan and Hindu literature and science. 11. Without wishing to enhance the value of Oriental studies beyond a fair and just standard, we must beg further permission to state that, in our judgment the Honourable Court has been let to form an estimate of their extent and merits not strictly accurate. The Honourable Court are pleased to observe that “it is worse than a waste of time” to employ persons either to teach or learn the sciences in the state in which they are found in Oriental books. This position is of so comprehensive a nature, that it obviously requires a considerable modification, and the different branches of science intended to be included in it must be particularised before a correct appreciation can be formed of their absolute and comparative value. The metaphysical sciences, as found in Sanscrit and Arabic writings, are, we believe, fully as worthy of being studied in those languages as in any other. The arithmetic and algebra of the Hindus lead to the same principles as those of Europe and in the Madressa, the elements of mathematical science, which are taught, are those of Euclid; law, a principal object of study in all the institutions, is one of vital importance to the good Government of the country, and language is the ground work upon which all future improvements must materially depend. To diffuse a knowledge of these things, language and law especially, cannot, therefore, be considered a waste of time, and with unfeigned deference to the Honourable Court, we most respectfully bring to their more deliberate attention that, in the stated estimate of the value of the Oriental sciences, several important branches appear to have escaped their consideration. 12. With respect to general literature also, we should submit that some points can scarcely have been sufficiently present to the minds of the Hon’ble Court when the orders in question were issued. The Honourable Court observe, that any historical documents which may be found in the original languages should be translated by competent Europeans. But without dwelling on the magnitude of the task, if Mohammadan history is to be comprehended, or questioning the utility of employing Europeans in this branch of literature, we beg leave to remark that there appears to be no good reason why the Natives of India should be debarred from cultivating a knowledge of their own historical records, or why the translations of the countries in which they have a natural interest, should not be deserving of their perusal. 13. Besides science and historical documents, the Honourable Court observe, “what remains in Oriental literature is poetry, but that it never has been thought necessary to establish colleges for the cultivation of poetry.” We are not aware that 41

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any colleges in India have been established with this view, although we believe few colleges exist in any country in which poetical works are not taught to a great extent, and it would be taking a very narrow view of the objects of education to exclude them. We do not know, indeed, how any language and literature can be successfully studied if its poetical compositions are not cultivated with considerable attention; as a part, therefore, and a very important part of Sanscrit and Arabic literature, as the source of national imagery, the expression of national feeling, and the depository of the most approved phraseology and style, the poetical writings of the Hindus and Mohammadans appear to be legitimately comprehended amongst the objects of literary seminaries, founded for Mohammadans and Hindus. 14. Under these considerations, and upon a deliberate view of the real circumstances of the case, we flatter ourselves that the Honourable Court will feel disposed to approve of the arrangements that have been adopted or are in progress with the sanction of your Lordship in Council, for the improved education of the natives of this country. We must for the present go with the tide of popular prejudice, and we have the less regret in doing so, as we trust we have said sufficient to show that the course is by no means unprofitable. At the same time we are fully aware of the value of those accessions which may be made from European science and literature, to the sum total of Asiatic knowledge, and shall endeavour, in pursuance of the sentiments and intentions of Government, to avail ourselves of every favourable opportunity for introducing them when it can be done without offending the feelings and forfeiting the confidence of those for whose advantage their introduction is designed. We have, etc., (Signed) J. H. HARINGTON. ” J. P. LARKINS. ” W. W. MARTIN. ” J. C. C. SUTHERLAND. ” H. SHAKESPEAR. ” HOLT MACKENZIE. ” H. H. WILSON. ” A. STIRLING. ” W. B. BAYLEY. CALCUTTA; The 18th August 1824.

Notes 1 Printed in the Sixth Report from the Select Committee on Indian Territories, 1853, Minutes of Evidence, p. 18f. 2 This is the date given in the published letter, but clearly it should be 18th February 1824 (document 24). Fisher states [255/436] that that document was communicated to the Committee and quotes from their reply, viz., the present document (No. 25).

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7 H. T. PRINSEP, ‘NOTE ON VERNACULAR EDUCATION, 15TH FEBRUARY 1835’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 117–129

Note, dated the 15th February 1835, by H. T. Prinsep (with marginal notes by Macaulay). It seems to me that there are some points touched upon in the Minute of the Hon’ble Mr. Macaulay that require to be set right by an explanation of the facts or by more clearly stating the views and principles against which the arguments of the minute are directed where these appear to have been misunderstood. For as the question before the Government is of the first importance and the propositions to which it leads such as if any step be taken hastily and without a thorough comprehension of the subject in its different bearings the Government may be committed irretrievably to measures hateful and injurious to the mass of the people under its sway such as it might repent afterwards when too late—it behoves every one that can contribute anything towards clearing it of fallacies or further elucidating any of the material points to bring forward what he may have to say before rather than after the Government’s determination is taken. My note will be short for I propose merely to point out where in the minute before Government the opposite view has not been fully stated or where the information built upon is incomplete or incorrect. It is not my purpose to make a laboured advocacy of the cause of oriental literature; for neither my pursuits, inclinations nor acquaintance with the subject qualify me for such a task. First in respect to the legal question. It is submitted that the Act 53 Geo. III must be construed with special reference to the intention of the Legislature of that day. So construed there cannot be 43

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a doubt in the mind of any person that by “the revival and promotion of literature and the encouragement of learned natives” the legislature1 did not mean to refer to any other literature than native literature nor to any other learned natives than such as were eminent by their proficiency in that literature. These were the persons then intended to be produced and encouraged and it is surely forcing the words out of their natural construction when it is argued that the revival of native literature can best be effected by abolishing all institutions for teaching the literature that then existed and that had existed for ages before and by communicating instruction only in English. With respect to the analogy to the position of the Pasha of Egypt there can be no doubt that if he were to talk of reviving and promoting literature in that country his meaning would be the literature and language last existing in Egypt, viz., that borrowed from Arabia and accordingly we do see him cultivating and reviving that and teaching medicine and other sciences in that. The example is worthy of imitation. There is no talk there of reviving the mummy literature of Osiris nor in India of going beyond what we found prevailing throughout but languishing for want of encouragement. With respect to rescinding any provisions of the Charter act of 1813 by a legislative Act of the Indian Government I have before argued that question and it cannot be necessary to revert to it. The next point is that the Institutions established for communicating instruction in Arabic and Sanskrit are endowments to which funds have been permanently and irrevocably appropriated. Against this it is argued that Government cannot have pledged itself to perpetuate what may be proved noxious, that there is no right of property vesting in any body and that requires to be respected as such2—therefore that to take these funds from these purposes and objects and direct them to other that may be thought by the rulers of the day to be more beneficial is no spoliation or violation of any vested interest but on the contrary that the annual Lakh of Rupees set apart by the act of Parliament may annually be applied to such purposes as may each year be thought most conducive to the great end—the revival and encouragement of literature and the promotion and cultivation of Science. Upon this it is to be observed first that the argument as to the inviolability of endowments was never applied to any Institution paid out of the Parliamentary grant of a Lakh of Rupees. It was adduced only in behalf of the Mudrisa which was specifically an endowment made by Warren Hastings more than fifty years ago and for the support of which certain Funds, viz., the land revenue of the Mudrisa Muhal part of which is included in the Barrackpoor park were specifically assigned. At first the Institution was left to the uncontrolled management of the Moola placed by Mr. Hastings at its head. The Muhal however was under the Khas management of the Board of Revenue and the varying amount realized from it was placed at the Moolavee’s disposal. Subsequently the Muhal was made over at a fixed Jama to the Raja of Nudeea when he was restored to his estates of which 44

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this formed a part. Except therefore that the direct management of the lands was not in the hands of the Principal and Professors and Fellows of the College this was assuredly as complete an Endowment as any of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge or as the Blue coat school in London can boast of. The purpose was declared to be the education of Moolavees and Kazees and the cultivation of Arabic learning, and from the day of the Institution’s first establishment to this present time degrees and certificates have been granted entitling persons to assume the style and to exercise the functions of Moolavee and Kazee in like manner as degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor are conferred in Europe. The Government exercised towards this institution the functions of Waqif or Endower which are distinct and well defined in law and by the practise of the country resembling those of directing visitor but more extensive than any enjoyed by visitors in Europe. In the exercise of these powers the Government had reformed the Institution and placed it on a footing efficient for the purpose intended by the founder before the Parliamentary grant of 1813 was made. It was transferred to the Committee appointed to carry that act into execution not as an Institution established under it and paid from the funds appropriated therein to Education but because the Committee was deemed the fittest organ for the execution of the functions of visitor. The Mudrusa had before a separate Committee which merged into the General Education Committee and therein the connexion of this latter with it. The argument therefore that the Government is free to deal with its lakh as it pleases does not touch this particular Institution—the Government proceedings and determination in respect to which must be guided by specific reference to the conditions of its establishment and to its present position. If there be any thing positively noxious in the existence of a seminary of this kind that of course may be an argument for correcting what is bad or if the mischief be past correction for abolishing root and branch the irredeemable evil. But surely Government is not yet prepared to put forth a declaration that such is the light in which it regards the instruction of all its subjects of the Mooslim faith—of this however more presently. With respect to the argument that the Government cannot be pledged to perpetuate any course of instruction for that it has created no property and there is no one that can pretend to possess a vested interest. This, in so far as it denies to collegiate institutions a right which I believe in Europe they have always stoutly asserted and hitherto maintained, is a question that may be left to be battled by the Universities in England. Nothing on earth can hope to be perpetual and property of every kind is of itself the most mutable of things. By the hand of time, by the act of God, by foreign violence or internal convulsion everything most prized and most valued may be swept away in an instant. To all these sources of ruin to vested interests must be added the changeful opinions of mankind and the caprices of those who rule. The Government doubtless may set up and abolish Institutions with the same facile rapidity with which it creates and abolishes offices and passes acts and Regulations. The question is one of wisdom and expediency. Is it wise and beneficial for a Government so to act as to destroy the hope that what is, and 45

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has been, will be lasting? Does not every Government on the contrary derive strength and influence from encouraging its subjects to look upon certain classes of its actions as permanent and binding upon itself and its successors? The establishment of such an Institution as the Mudrusa is most assuredly an act of this description and class—and in every part of the world when the ruling Power has made an appropriation of funds or through other means established a Seminary of the kind for Education whether it be to teach Latin and Greek or to teach English to the Catholic uneducated Irish or for any purpose of supposed utility the appropriation has been respected and held sacred by those who have followed. It is only in this country that it would be proposed not to improve and make perfect and correct errors in the Institutions already established by the liberality of those who have gone before, but upon a vague impression that the object is not beneficial wholly to abolish and dissolve them. In behalf of the Mudrusa more claim to permanency has not been asserted than is allowed elsewhere to similar Institutions and Seminaries. Let it be dealt with as a charity school or college of England liable to fall to corruption and to need the hand of the governing power to correct its abuses and reform its practise, nay even to suit it to the advancing opinions of the day. The proposition for its abolition goes a great deal further. The minute assuming apparently the Mudrusa to be one of the Institutions supported out of the Lakh of rupees appropriated by Parliament proceeds to the question what is the most useful mode of employing that fund. It is laid down that the vernacular dialects are not fit to be made the vehicle of instruction in science or literature, that the choice is therefore between English on one hand and Sanscrit and Arabic on the other—the latter are dismissed on the ground that their literature is worthless and the superiority of that of England is set forth in an animated description of the treasures of science and of intelligence it contains and of the stores of intellectual enjoyment it opens. There is no body acquainted with both literatures that will not subscribe to all that is said in the minute of the superiority of that of England but the question is not rightly stated when it is asserted to be this “whether, when it is in our power to teach this language”3— that is English—we shall teach those which contain no books of value. The whole question is—have we it in our power to teach everywhere this English and this European science? It is in doubting nay in denying this that those who take the opposite view maintain the expediency of letting the natives pursue their present course of instruction and of endeavouring to engraft European Science thereon. An analogy is drawn between the present state of India and that of Europe at the time of the revival of letters. The cultivation of English is likened to the study of Latin and Greek in those days and the grand results that have followed are held out as an example to be imitated hereby inculcating English in order that a Bengalee and Hindee literature may grow up as perfect as that we now have in England. This however is not the true analogy—Latin and Greek were to the nations of Europe

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what Arabic and Persian are to the Mooslims and Sanscrit to the Hindoos of the present population of Hindoostan and if a native literature is to be created it must be through the improvements of which these are capable. To the great body of the People of India English is as strange as Arabic was to the knights of the dark ages.4 It is not the language of the erudite of the clergy and of men of letters as Latin always was in Europe and as Arabic and Persian are extensively in Asia. The analogy of Russia is less convincing.5 It is through communication with foreigners through imitation and translations that the Russians are building up a native literature. This is the method that is specifically advocated by those who despair of making English the language of general adoption or the vehicle for imparting a knowledge of the sciences to the millions who compose the population of India. The argument would only have weight if, in the schools and colleges of Russia, German were now or had ever been the exclusive organ through which the youth of that country derived instruction which it assuredly is not and never was. But to proceed to the real arguments of the minute. It is said that in teaching Arabic and Sanscrit we are not consulting the intellectual taste of the natives but are “forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate.”6 If there were the slightest ground for believing that the great body of the Mooslims did not venerate to enthusiasm their Arabic and Persian literature7 or to believe that the Hindoos as a body were not partial to their Sanscrit then of course would the whole case or those who advocate the prosecution of those studies require to be thrown up. This however is a matter of fact and of opinion that cannot be conceded to either party upon mere assertion. It is necessary to examine the grounds upon which so startling a a proposition as that above stated is advanced and maintained. The minute proceeds “This is proved by the fact that we are forced to pay our Arabic and Sanscrit students while those who learn English pay us . . . . . . . . We cannot find in all our vast empire a single student who will let us teach him those dialects unless we will pay him.”8 These assertions are supported by adducing from the report upon the Mudrusa of Calcutta the circumstance that there were in December 1833 seventy seven Arabic Students on that foundation receiving in the aggregate above Rs. 500 per mensem while in three months Rs. 103 were collected by the English master from out-students who paid for his instruction in that language. The contrast is dwelt upon as conclusive but a very little explanation will suffice to show that the argument is quite groundless. There are ordinarily taught in the Mudrusa between two and three hundred youths. The Government scholarships are eighty and if the President of the Education Committee would attend the next examination of candidates for these scholarships he would see in the keenness of the competition and in the proficiency of the candidates abundant evidence that the salaried scholars are not the only persons in our Indian Empire who learn the rudiments of Persian9 and Arabic

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literature. I am no Sanscrit scholar and never attended the examinations of that college in Calcutta nor do I pretend to much acquaintance with its constitution or with the rules under which its scholarships are given away but only the other day the Education Committee received a report of the examinations of the Sanscrit College at Benares and it cannot have escaped the president of that Committee to have observed that, although the jageers or scholarships were only 130, upwards of three hundred students pressed forward for examination. In truth the jageers or monthly allowances given at the Mudrusa and in the Sanscrit Colleges and elsewhere are in all respects similar to the Scholarships of the Universities or to the foundation Scholars of the Public Schools of England. They are given not as inducements to study the language but as the rewards of successful study and in order to keep at the institution for the prosecution of further studies those who by their progress evince a love of science and the qualification to become learned men, Moolavees or Pundits. Most of those who enjoy these jageers are themselves the teachers of many pupils, teachers in the college to those who attend there for instruction and teachers at home in families of the better order to those who prefer that their sons shall be so instructed. Whether it is expedient or not to give these stipendiary provisions as rewards for ardent study and to keep students longer at their education by means of them is a question that has heretofore been argued in the Committee of Public Instruction. Something is to be said on both sides and although the Committee heretofore decided in favour of the practise it does not follow that they may not have decided wrong. But however this may be the fact that there are paid scholars on the establishment or foundation of any seminary affords no ground for assuming that none would learn if they were not paid, yet this is the argument of the minute. As well might it be assumed from the fact that there are foundation scholars at Eton and scholarships in all the Colleges of both Universities in England that no body would learn Latin and Greek if it were not for these stipendiary advantages. Be it Latin and Greek or Mathematics or Law or Arabic and Sanscrit literature or be it English the principle is the same. Scholarships are given and it is thought right to give them to reward and encourage the poor scholar and to lead as well through the excitement of competition as by lengthening the course of study to the attainment of higher proficiency. In the Mudrusa itself separate scholarships have been established for proficients in English in order to encourage the study of that language. If this be a conclusive argument that the study of English is nauseated because it requires to be paid for, then may it be applied to Arabic and Sanscrit and to Mathematics and to all other studies. All must participate in the reproach or it will evidently apply to none. But the fact remains to be explained that a sum of Rs. 103 was collected in three months from out students of English whereas nothing is shown by the accounts of the Mudrusa to have been collected from out students of Persian and Arabic. Everybody knows that with Moolavees and Pundits, for both profess the same principle in this respect, it is meritorious to give instruction gratis and sinful to 48

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take hire or wages from the pupil who receives it. The teacher’s remuneration is always in the way of a present and perfectly voluntary.10 The English Master on the other hand who is a Christian and who has been appointed by the Committee to the Mudrusa acts on quite different principles and not only deems it no sin to take payment for the lessons he gives but makes a special demand of it from all who appear to him to have the means of paying. The wonder is rather, considering that the teacher in this instance is a first rate instructor and that he gives instruction to Hindoos as well as Mooslims, that more was not realized. The fact that a sum of about Rs. 30 a month was realized when upwards of three hundred per mensem is paid from the Committee’s funds to the Schoolmaster is surely no proof of the violent desire for instruction in English which is inferred from it. If again the desire of this instruction were so great how comes it to have been proposed to make the learning of English compulsory in the Mudrusa and how does it happen that of all the students now in the Mudrusa there are but two who have made progress beyond the spelling book. Undoubtedly there is a very widely spread anxiety at this time for the attainment of a certain proficiency in English. The sentiment is to be encouraged by all means as the source and forerunner of great moral improvement to those who feel its influence but there is no single member of the Education Committee who will venture to assert that this disposition has yet shown itself extensively amongst the Moosulmans.11 It is the Hindoos of Calcutta, the Sirkars and their connexions and the descendants and relations of the Sirkars of former days, those who have risen through their connexion with the English and with public offices, men who hold or who seek employments in which a knowledge of English is a necessary qualification. These are the classes of persons to whom the study of English is as yet confined and certainly we have no reason yet to believe that the Moosulmans in any part of India can be reconciled to the cultivation of it much less give it a preference to the polite literature of their race or to what they look upon as such. The minute proceeds to cite a petition from certain students of the Sanscrit College complaining that their studies did not secure them an assured and easy livelihood as affording another conclusive argument against extending encouragement to such studies. But surely the disappointment of the too sanguine hopes of any class of persons as to their future provision in life affords no evidence that the knowledge they have acquired is useless. Much research and patient investigation would be indispensible before any determination could be come to on the important question to native youth at this moment how best to secure respect in after life and by what course of education to provide themselves the best chance of a comfortable livelihood. In all times and amongst all people this is an important question for youth but more especially to the youth of India at present when society with all its institutions is so evidently in the transition state. This argument again even were it sound as respects the study of Sanscrit has evidently no application to the Mudrusa and to those who study Arabic and Persian. These at least have never complained that through proficiency in their studies their means 49

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of obtaining a livelihood have not been improved nor will it be maintained that the study of both is not at this moment highly useful for this great purpose of life. But the great argument remains to be noticed and that is that by encouraging the study of native literature we create the very opposition which is adduced as the chief obstacle to the introduction of the study of English and of true science. This is a most important question but seems to involve the previous one—does or does not the prejudice exist? It is declared by those who take the opposite view to Mr. Macaulay that it does exist and that the prejudice is so general especially amongst the Moosulmans that there is no hope of our being able by the mere offer of instruction in English and English science to secure that it shall be received for its own sake. These persons say that the best chance of procuring that true knowledge shall ultimately prevail is to engraft it upon the course of education now most esteemed and to take every means of leading the youth to the improved condition in which it is desired to place them by giving them first all they respect and admire in their fathers and then besides the further instruction we have to impart. The argument on the other side is that unless we violently assail and displace the false literature that we see held up as erudition and learning we shall by continuing instruction in it create opposition to the reception of the new. Now this argument on the very face of it seems to assume that the possessors of the old literature are necessarily opposed to the new, it seems to build upon the impossibility of reconciling the two and yet in the same breath we are told that all the world is anxiously seeking the new and attaches no value to the old. On the other hand it is maintained that, if at this time the desire for European science and literature is extensively felt and is still on the increase, the cause of it is to be found in the manner in which the Government interfere with the work of education which was commenced and has hitherto been carried on, and in particular to the strict observance of the principle of encouraging every course of education that is followed by any extensive class of the population and doing violence to no existing feelings whether of prejudice or prepossession. It is maintained that by following this course we bind and perpetuate no enmities but on the contrary mitigate and reconcile opinions and doctrines that seem adverse and when we recollect that out of the philosophy of the schools the same philosophy that is the highest point of knowledge in Arabic and Sanscrit grew the very philosophy we wish to inculcate, viz., that of Bacon and Locke and Newton,12 why should we despair of engrafting on the similar stock of Arabia and India a similar fruit? With respect to the expenditure upon printing and translating in regard to which it is argued that the fact that the books of the Committee do not sell is proof conclusive that the money is thrown away and that there is no taste for the literature it was meant to encourage, I fear it must be admitted that very considerable sums have been thrown away upon works which have yielded no fruit. The translations have been the most expensive and the least profitable of these works, for they have been executed at very enormous rates of charge and in a style for the most part 50

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not popular and taking. I quite agree that the funds appropriated to revive literature ought not to be lavished on works that will not pay and that for the printing of those that will pay, there can be no need of aid from Government. But I do not admit that because we have failed to make our printing and translating a profitable speculation that therefore there is no taste for the literature. Our prices have been exorbitant and our works13 childish or ill got up. This alone accounts for their not being taken off our hands and as for the fact that private Printing establishments find a profit in printing English School Books they have had the extensive patronage of the Committee and of Mofusil institutions and more especially of Missionary schools and a growing Christian population to provide. Besides which the relative expense of printing in the native languages as compared with that of printing in English will of itself account for the difference. Our books be it observed have been mostly printed at the same press which is referred to as having thrived by its printing business and it has thrived mainly at our expense. However there is not I believe in the Committee of public instruction a single advocate for a continuance of the printing and translating business on the footing on which it has hitherto been conducted.14 It has been ruinously expensive and has yielded no return but we see establishments for printing Persian and Arabic books as thriving as the English Presses and numberless books and little treatises are issued from them of which we hear nothing. The text book of the Moolavees who recently rose in insurrection is an instance in point. Although printed in Calcutta it was not heard of by Europeans until the sect broke out into rebellion. If our translations and the books of our selection have not hit the taste of the reading classes or have been too dear for them to purchase it is a reason for discontinuing the provision of such but no proof that there is no taste for anything that might be provided. There are applications in abundance for our books as presents and we know not when one is issued how many copies are made from it at less cost even than that we ask to compensate the charge of publication. The price too paid by the Committee for native publications is the first subscription price and the Committee is always undersold by the presses which supply them books for they sell the reserved copies at a reduced price. The minute proceeds to say that it cannot be necessary to keep up instruction in Arabic and Sanscrit because of the connection of these languages with the religion of the Hindoos and Mooslims. I have never heard this reason assigned15 as an argument for a Christian Government’s continuing to give the instruction. The circumstance has been referred to as both proving and accounting for the confirmed veneration these classes have for their respective literatures and because it has sometimes been denied that the natives have any respect for their own literature which is quite inconsistent with the idea that all their religion is wrapped up in it. It is on account of the connection of these languages with existing laws that the necessity of continuing instruction in them has been maintained. This argument is met in the minute by reference to what the Law Commission are expected 51

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to do and what the Legislature intends should be done.16 Herein however is an admission that for so long as this intention is unfulfilled the motive for continuing instruction in that which is the law, exists in full force. The nature of the instruction in English that will have to be imparted is the next point. Those opposed to the discontinuance of instruction in Sanscrit, Arabic and Persian maintain that in place of them the Committee would have to commence everywhere teaching the English alphabet. It cannot surely be denied that this must be the beginning. The minute dwells on the capability of the natives to attain high proficiency. This may be admitted as a result to be expected hereafter but if the teaching of English be substituted everywhere for the perfecting of youths in their present courses of education does it not follow as a necessary consequence that we shall have to substitute the teaching of the alphabet and spelling book for instruction in advanced literature? The candidates for admission into our Arabic and Sanscrit Colleges know already much of those languages and are prepared to be taught science. The students we should get for English would require to be taught to read.17 To the recapitulation at the close of the Minute I have nothing new to object. It is admitted that we must endeavour to carry the people with us in all we seek to do for their improvement. The party whose sentiments I am endeavouring to express argue to the question what are the best, indeed to their minds the only means of doing this. Their opponents, looking to grand results to follow when all the desired improvements have been effected, pass over altogether the necessary consideration of means. Ofter volo jubeo is their policy on this great question. The abolition of the Mudrusa and Sanscrit College at Calcutta and the alteration of the character of all other Institutions supported or assisted from the Public funds is their proposition but it is submitted that there are many considerations which should protect the Mudrusa at least from any present demolition. It is the only link through which the Government has at present any connection whatsoever with the instruction of the Mooslim youth of Bengal, it is not one of the passing institutions of recent establishment for the support of which funds are assigned from the Parliamentary lack of Rupees but is an old established college endowed separately and efficiently performing the purposes of the endowment. If this be doubted let the fact be made the subject of enquiry the more searching the better will the advocates of this institution be satisfied. Even though the Committee of General Instruction should come to a resolution or should be desired by Government to change altogether the principles by which it has hitherto been guided in the application of the Parliamentary grant, it would by no means follow that the Mudrusa should be placed on a different footing. The Moosulman subjects of the Government are much more jealous of innovation upon their habits and their religion than the Hindoos ever were. When it was first proposed to teach them English they consulted their oracle of the day Uzeezooddeen of Dehlee as to whether it was sinful to yield to the innovation. He gave them a most sensible answer and since then not only has English and English science been extensively taught but much 52

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progress has been made in instilling correct moral principles and reconciling the sect to further improvements. Such a measure at this time as the abolition of the Mudrusa would produce alienation in this wide class of the population. . . .18 instead of aiding would impede if it did not prevent any further improvement. To the principle of conciliation it is decidedly opposed and will universally be looked upon as touching close upon intolerance. I have written much more than I had intended or thought would be necessary and yet feel that I have not half stated all that I have myself to urge on this important question. The cause has many advocates who also deserve to be heard before Government shall come to a final determination. There is a minute by Mr. Macnaghten about to be sent up by the Education Committee which seems entitled to much attention and I am sure that not only that gentleman but every member of the Committee would wish to be heard upon any resolution passed for abolishing the Mudrusa. In the height of the discussion as to the proper course to be followed by the Committee for promoting the improvement of the education of the country such a proposition was never brought forward by any one of those most opposed to the continuance of instruction in Arabic and Sanscrit. It is now submitted separately and it is my hope that I have shown sufficient ground to induce the Members of Government to suspend their judgment at least. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 of investigation. H. T. PRINSEP. Sunday, 15th February 1835.

Notes 1 On the legal question I have had the opinion of Sir E. Ryan. He pronounces that there is not the shadow of a reason for Mr. Prinsep’s construction. [T. B. M.] I do not feel overwhelmed by this authority. [H. T. P.] 2 I leave my minute to defend itself on this head. [T. B. M.] 3 Page 110. 4 It cannot be more strange than Greek was to the subjects of Henry the Eighth. [T. B. M.] 5 Not the fact. The Russian educated class has acquired all that it knows by means of English, French, German, etc. From the English, French and German it is now beginning to imitate and to translate. This is exactly the course which I hope and trust that the educated class of our native subjects will follow. [T. B. M.] 6 Page 112. 7 Men may have a great veneration for a language and not wish to learn it. I have seen Rhadacant Deb since the last council. He tells me that no body in India studies Sanscrit profoundly without being paid to do so. Men of fortune learn a little superficially. But he assures me that to the best of his belief there is not, even at Benares, a single student of the higher Sanscrit learning who is not paid. [T. B. M.] 8 Page 112. 9 I said nothing of Persian. I am assured that nothing deserving the name of a learned Arabic education is received at the Mudrusa by any unpaid student. I acknowledge my own ignorance on the subject. [T. B. M.] 10 The sum, if the accounts are rightly drawn up, is paid to the College—not directly to the master, so that the explanation is defective. [T. B. M.]

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11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19

No, the money was levied by the Master and paid over to the College Funds. This is all I meant to state. [H. T. P.] There is no good English school for the Mussulmans; and one of our first duties is to establish one. [T. B. M.] Monstrous assertion! J. E. D. B[ETHUNE]. They are, I believe, among the most celebrated works in the Sanscrit language. [T. B. M.] I rejoice to hear it. For within the last few weeks several minutes have been recorded which would have led me to form a very different opinion. [T. B. M.] If we print anything we ought to print the Surya Sidhant and the books that have been proposed but I am perfectly ready to give up all printing. [H. T. P.] It has been distinctly assigned. [?] Surely it would be most unreasonable to educate a boy of fifteen with a view to fitting him for a state of things which we fully purpose to alter by the time that he is five and twenty. [T. B. M.] Of course every body must begin a language at the beginning. The only question is whether we may reasonably expect in a few years to make an intelligent native youth a thoroughly good English scholar. And I do not now find that this is disputed. [T. B. M.] Original torn. Original torn.

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8 T. B. MACAULAY, ‘MINUTE ON ENGLISH EDUCATION, 2ND FEBRUARY 1835’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 107–117

Minute by the Hon’ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd February 1835.1 As it seems to be the opinion of some of the gentlemen2 who compose the Committee of Public Instruction that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British Parliament in 18133 and as, if that opinion be correct, a legislative act will be necessary to warrant a change, I have thought it right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adverse statements which are now before us, and to reserve what I had to say on the subject till it should come before me as a Member of the Council of India. It does not appear to me that the Act of Parliament can by any art of construction be made to bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about the particular languages or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is set apart “for the revival and promotion of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories.” It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the Parliament can have meant only Arabic and Sanscrit literature; that they never would have given the honourable appellation of “a learned native” to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all the uses of cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into the Deity. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take a parallel case: Suppose that the Pacha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below them, were to appropriate a sum for 55

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the purpose “of reviving and promoting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt,” would any body infer that he meant the youth of his Pachalik to give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and onions were anciently adored? Would he be justly charged with inconsistency if, instead of employing his young subjects in decyphering obelisks, he were to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all the sciences to which those languages are the chief keys? The words on which the supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other side. This lakh of rupees is set apart not only for “reviving literature in India,” the phrase on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also “for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories”— words which are alone sufficient to authorise all the changes for which I contend. If the Council agree in my construction no legislative act will be necessary. If they differ from me, I will propose a short act rescinding that clause of the Charter of 1813 from which the difficulty arises. The argument which I have been considering affects only the form of proceeding. But the admirers of the oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit would be downright spoliation. It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differ in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanitarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanitarium there if the result should not answer our expectations? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance—nay, if the Government has excited in any person’s mind a reasonable expectation—that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect that person’s pecuniary interests. I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There is not a single word in any public instrument from which it can be inferred that the Indian Government ever 56

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intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered the destination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, had it been otherwise, I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a Government had in the last century enacted in the most solemn manner that all its subjects should, to the end of time, be inoculated for the smallpox, would that Government be bound to persist in the practice after Jenner’s discovery? These promises of which nobody claims the performance, and from which nobody can grant a release, these vested rights which vest in nobody, this property without proprietors, this robbery which makes nobody poorer, may be comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine. I consider this plea merely as a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up. I hold this lakh of rupees to be quite at the disposal of the Governor-General in Council for the purpose of promoting learning in India in any way which may be thought most advisable. I hold his Lordship to be quite as free to direct that it shall no longer be employed in encouraging Arabic and Sanscrit, as he is to direct that the reward for killing tigers in Mysore shall be diminished, or that no more public money shall be expended on the chaunting at the cathedral. We now come to the gist of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it? All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them. What then shall that language be? One-half of the committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be—which language is the best worth knowing? I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education. It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pass from works of 57

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imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasureable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same. How then stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us,—with models of every species of eloquence,—with historical compositions which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled,—with just and lively representations of human life and human nature,—with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade,—with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australasia,—communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects. The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those of Europe differ for the worse, and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of treacle and seas of butter. We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes several analogous cases, and they all teach the same lesson. There are, in modern times, to go no 58

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further, two memorable instances of a great impulse given to the mind of a whole society, of prejudices overthrown, of knowledge diffused, of taste purified, of arts and sciences planted in countries which had recently been ignorant and barbarous. The first instance to which I refer is the great revival of letters among the Western nations at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time almost everything that was worth reading was contained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto acted,—had they neglected the language of Thucydides and Plato, and the language of Cicero and Tacitus, had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island, had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but chronicles in Anglo-Saxon and romances in Norman French,—would England ever have been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanscrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors. In some departments—in history for example— I am certain that it is much less so. Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilised communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class abounding with persons fit to serve the State in the highest functions, and in nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire which, in the time of our grand-fathers, was probably behind the Punjab, may in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old women’s stories which his rude fathers had believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world was or not created on the 13th of September: not by calling him “a learned native” when he had mastered all these points of knowledge; but by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages of western Europe civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar. And what are the arguments against that course which seems to be alike recommended by theory and by experience? It is said that we ought to secure the cooperation of the native public, and that we can do this only by teaching Sanscrit and Arabic. I can by no means admit that, when a nation of high intellectual attainments undertakes to superintend the education of a nation comparatively ignorant, the learners are absolutely to prescribe the course which is to be taken by the teachers. 59

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It is not necessary however to say anything on this subject. For it is proved by unanswerable evidence, that we are not at present securing the co-operation of the natives. It would be bad enough to consult their intellectual taste at the expense of their intellectual health. But we are consulting neither. We are withholding from them the learning which is palatable to them. We are forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate. This is proved by the fact that we are forced to pay our Arabic and Sanscrit students while those who learn English are willing to pay us. All the declamations in the world about the love and reverence of the natives for their sacred dialects will never, in the mind of any impartial person, outweigh this undisputed fact, that we cannot find in all our vast empire a single student who will let us teach him those dialects, unless we will pay him. I have now before me the accounts of the Mudrassa for one month, the month of December, 1833.4 The Arabic students appear to have been seventy-seven in number. All receive stipends from the public. The whole amount paid to them is above 500 rupees a month. On the other side of the account stands the following item: Deduct amount realized from the out-students of English for the months of May, June, and July last—103 rupees. I have been told that it is merely from want of local experience that I am surprised at these phœnomena, and that it is not the fashion for students in India to study at their own charges. This only confirms me in my opinions. Nothing is more certain than that it never can in any part of the world be necessary to pay men for doing what they think pleasant or profitable. India is no exception to this rule. The people of India do not require to be paid for eating rice when they are hungry, or for wearing woollen cloth in the cold season. To come nearer to the case before us:—The children who learn their letters and a little elementary arithmetic from the village schoolmaster are not paid by him. He is paid for teaching them. Why then is it necessary to pay people to learn Sanscrit and Arabic? Evidently because it is universally felt that the Sanscrit and Arabic are languages the knowledge of which does not compensate for the trouble of acquiring them. On all such subjects the state of the market is the decisive test. Other evidence is not wanting, if other evidence were required. A petition was presented last year to the committee by several ex-students of the Sanscrit College. The petitioners stated that they had studied in the college ten or twelve years, that they had made themselves acquainted with Hindoo literature and science, that they had received certificates of proficiency. And what is the fruit of all this? “Notwithstanding such testimonials,” they say, “we have but little prospect of bettering our condition without the kind assistance of your honourable committee, the indifference with which we are generally looked upon by our countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement and assistance from them.” They therefore beg that they may be recommended to the Governor-General for places under the Government—not places of high dignity or emolument, but such as may just enable them to exist. “We want means,” they say, “for a decent living, and for our 60

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progressive improvement, which, however, we cannot obtain without the assistance of Government, by whom we have been educated and maintained from childhood.” They conclude by representing very pathetically that they are sure that it was never the intention of Government, after behaving so liberally to them during their education, to abandon them to destitution and neglect. I have been used to see petitions to Government for compensation. All those petitions, even the most unreasonable of them, proceeded on the supposition that some loss had been sustained, that some wrong had been inflicted. These are surely the first petitioners who ever demanded compensation for having been educated gratis, for having been supported by the public during twelve years, and then sent forth into the world well furnished with literature and science. They represent their education as an injury which gives them a claim on the Government for redress, as an injury for which the stipends paid to them during the infliction were a very inadequate compensation. And I doubt not that they are in the right. They have wasted the best years of life in learning what procures for them neither bread nor respect. Surely we might with advantage have saved the cost of making these persons useless and miserable. Surely, men may be brought up to be burdens to the public and objects of contempt to their neighbours at a somewhat smaller charge to the State. But such is our policy. We do not even stand neuter in the contest between truth and falsehood. We are not content to leave the natives to the influence of their own hereditary prejudices. To the natural difficulties which obstruct the progress of sound science in the East, we add great difficulties of our own making. Bounties and premiums, such as ought not to be given even for the propagation of truth, we lavish on false texts and false philosophy. By acting thus we create the very evil which we fear. We are making that opposition which we do not find. What we spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit Colleges is not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth. It is bounty-money paid to raise up champions of error. It goes to form a nest not merely of helpless place-hunters but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education. If there should be any opposition among the natives to the change which I recommend, that opposition will be the effect of our own system. It will be headed by persons supported by our stipends and trained in our colleges. The longer we persevere in our present course, the more formidable will that opposition be. It will be every year reinforced by recruits whom we are paying. From the native society, left to itself, we have no difficulties to apprehend. All the murmuring will come from that oriental interest which we have, by artificial means, called into being and nursed into strength. There is yet another fact which is alone sufficient to prove that the feeling of the native public, when left to itself, is not such as the supporters of the old system represent it to be. The committee have thought fit to lay out above a lakh of rupees in printing Arabic and Sanscrit books. Those books find no purchasers. It is very rarely that a single copy is disposed of. Twenty-three thousand volumes, most of them folios and quartos, fill the libraries or rather the lumber-rooms of this body. The committee contrive to get rid of some portion of their vast stock of oriental 61

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literature by giving books away. But they cannot give so fast as they print. About twenty thousand rupees a year are spent in adding fresh masses of waste paper to a hoard which, one should think, is already sufficiently ample. During the last three years about sixty thousand rupees have been expended in this manner. The sale of Arabic and Sanscrit books during those three years has not yielded quite one thousand rupees. In the meantime, the School Book Society is selling seven or eight thousand English volumes every year, and not only pays the expenses of printing but realizes a profit of twenty per cent. on its outlay. The fact that the Hindoo law is to be learned chiefly from Sanscrit books, and the Mahometan law from Arabic books, has been much insisted on, but seems not to bear at all on the question. We are commanded by Parliament to ascertain and digest the laws of India. The assistance of a Law Commission has been given to us for that purpose. As soon as the Code is promulgated the Shasters and the Hedaya will be useless to a moonsiff or a Sudder Ameen. I hope and trust that, before the boys who are now entering at the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College have completed their studies, this great work will be finished. It would be manifestly absurd to educate the rising generation with a view to a state of things which we mean to alter before they reach manhood. But there is yet another argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit and the Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are on that account entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature inculcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly preserved. It is confessed that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion. We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those who are engaged in the work of converting the natives to Christianity. And while we act thus, can we reasonably or decently bribe men, out of the revenues of the State, to waste their youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ass or what texts of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat? It is taken for granted by the advocates of oriental learning that no native of this country can possibly attain more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt to prove this. But they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which their opponents recommend as a mere spelling-book education. They assume it as undeniable that the question is between a profound knowledge of Hindoo and Arabian literature and science on the one side, and superficial knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely an assumption, but an assumption contrary to all reason and experience. We know that foreigners 62

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of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains sufficiently to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. There are in this very town natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific questions with fluency and precision in the English language. I have heard the very question on which I am now writing discussed by native gentlemen with a liberality and an intelligence which would do credit to any member of the Committee of Public Instruction. Indeed it is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the Continent, any foreigner who can express himself in English with so much facility and correctness as we find in many Hindoos. Nobody, I suppose, will contend that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as Greek to an Englishman. Yet an intelligent English youth, in a much smaller number of years than our unfortunate pupils pass at the Sanscrit College, becomes able to read, to enjoy, and even to imitate not unhappily the compositions of the best Greek authors. Less than half the time which enables an English youth to read Herodotus and Sophocles ought to enable a Hindoo to read Hume and Milton.5 To sum up what I have said. I think it clear that we are not fettered by the Act of Parliament of 1813, that we are not fettered by any pledge expressed or implied, that we are free to employ our funds as we choose, that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing, that English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit or Arabic, that the natives are desirous to be taught English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic, that neither as the languages of law nor as the languages of religion have the Sanscrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our encouragement, that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed. In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. I would strictly respect all existing interests. I would deal even generously with all individuals who have had fair reason to expect a pecuniary provision. But I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books. I would abolish the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahminical learning; Delhi of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit College at Benares and the Mahometan College at Delhi we do enough and much more than enough in my opinion, for the Eastern languages. If the Benares and Delhi Colleges should be retained, I would at least recommend that no stipends shall be given to any students who may hereafter repair thither, but that the people shall 63

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be left to make their own choice between the rival systems of education without being bribed by us to learn what they have no desire to know. The funds which would thus be placed at our disposal would enable us to give larger encouragement to the Hindoo College at Calcutta, and establish in the principal cities throughout the Presidencies of Fort William and Agra schools in which the English language might be well and thoroughly taught. If the decision of His Lordship in Council should be such as I anticipate, I shall enter on the performance of my duties with the greatest zeal and alacrity. If, on the other hand, it be the opinion of the Government that the present system ought to remain unchanged, I beg that I may be permitted to retire from the chair of the Committee. I feel that I could not be of the smallest use there. I feel also that I should be lending my countenance to what I firmly believe to be a mere delusion. I believe that the present system tends not to accelerate the progress of truth but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for wasting the public money, for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank—for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology—for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an incumbrance and blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that, when they have received it, they must either starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturally desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a body which, unless it alters its whole mode of proceedings, I must consider, not merely as useless, but as positively noxious. T. B. MACAULAY. 2nd February 1835. I give my entire concurrence to the sentiments expressed in this Minute. W. C. BENTINCK.

Notes 1 2 3 4

For reference to previous publications see pp. 205–206. See document No. 29, p. 105. See document No. 7, p. 22. See document No. 12, p. 36, which gives the accounts for 1823. There were then 75 students receiving Rs. 773 a month. 5 In 1836 Mr. M ACAULAY himself examined the students of the Hindu College. See J. KERR. A Review of Public Instruction in the Bengal Presidency from 1835 to 1851, II, p. 29. ED.

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9 WILLIAM BENTINCK, ‘RESOLUTION, 7TH MARCH 1835’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 130–131

(Lord Bentinck’s) Resolution of the 7th March 1835. On the 7th of March 1835 the following Resolution1 was issued: “The Governor-General of India in Council has attentively considered the two letters from the Secretary to the Committee of Public Instruction, dated the 21st and 22nd January last, and the papers referred to in them.2 First. – His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India; and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone. d. – But it is not the intention of His Lordship in Council to abolish any College or School of native learning, while the native population shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the advantages which it affords, and His Lordship in Council directs that all the existing professors and students at all the institutions under the superintendence of the Committee shall continue to receive their stipends. But his Lordship in Council decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto prevailed of supporting the students during the period of their education. He conceives that the only effect of such a system can be to give artificial encouragement to branches of learning which, in the natural course of things, would be superseded by more useful studies; and he directs that no stipend shall be given to any student that may hereafter enter at any of these institutions; and that when any professor 65

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of Oriental learning shall vacate his situation, the Committee shall report to the Government the number and state of the class in order that the Government may be able to decide upon the expediency of appointing a successor. Third. – It has come to the knowledge of the Governor-General in Council that a large sum has been expended by the Committee on the printing of Oriental works; his Lordship in Council directs that no portion of the funds shall hereafter be so employed. Fourth. – His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds which these reforms will leave at the disposal of the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the antive population a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of the English language; and His Lordship in Council requests the Committee to submit to Government, with all expedition, a plan for the accomplishment of this purpose.

Notes 1 Printed in (1) COMERONS Address to Parliament, pp. 81–82; (2) Madras Selections, II, 1855, pp. lxxxiii–lxxxiv. 2 Documents Nos. 28 and 29.

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10 H. T. PRINSEP, ‘MINUTE ON VERNACULAR EDUCATION, 20TH MAY 1835’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 134–139

Minute by H. T. Prinsep, dated the 20th May 1835. At the meeting of the Council when the letter of the Secretary to the committee of Public Instruction forwarding the Minute of Mr. W. H. Macnaghten was laid before us it was resolved by the majority not to reconsider the resolutions passed by the late Governor-General in Council on the 7th March last but to allow them to stand as the rules for the guidance of the Committee in their future proceedings. My voice and vote were with the minority on this occasion, and, as I think the question of the first importance, concerning deeply the character and credit of the Government, and look upon the decision that has been passed as calculated to alienate the affections of all the influential classes of the population and to do infinite injury in other respects I am not content to give a silent vote. It is laid down in the resolution above referred to that “the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science” and “that all funds appropriated to purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone.” Leaving, however, all existing professors and students in seminaries of oriental literature now supported by Government in possession of their stipends, it is ordered that no scholarships or stipends shall hereafter be given to students; and, upon a vacancy occurring in any oriental professorship, a special report is to be made to Government upon the number and condition of the class, (so) that the Government may decide whether it shall be continued. No funds are to be expended hereafter in printing oriental works, and all the funds left at the disposal of the Committee by the discontinuance of oriental professorships, scholarships, and printing are to be devoted to the teaching of English literature and science, through the medium of the English language. 67

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This resolution is looked upon by Mr. Macnaghten and by those who think with him in the Committee as containing a hostile declaration against the literature of the country inconsistent with past and with recent professions of the Government, as proclaiming a principle unfair and illiberal in itself and calculated to set against us those without whose co-operation we can do nothing to promote science and literature, and as ordering an entire change in the course of proceedings pursued hitherto by the Committee with eminent success; such a change too has rendered it impossible that the same men, whose influence and exertions in the Committee and weight of character in the country have mainly contributed to that success, should continue to act as members, thus depriving the cause of public instruction of all the aid derived from their talents and information and marking in the face of the world that a course is about to be pursued which they cannot reconcile with their ideas of fairness and propriety. This however is not all; Mr. Macnaghten refers to the Act of Parliament which made the assignment of funds the appropriation of which has been trusted to this Committee. He there finds that “the revival and promotion of literature” amongst the natives of India and “the encouragement of learned men” are specifically indicated as the objects first to be provided for from the funds assigned. He doubts not, and neither can any one that reads the provision and refers to the proceedings that occurred when it passed, doubt that the literature meant to be so revived and encouraged was the literature of the two great classes of the population, the Moosulmans and the Hindoos. Of course this was not to be to the exclusion of other useful knowledge, the improvement of the country in science and civilization being not less an object with the framers of the act than the revival of its literature, accordingly words follow those above cited which declare the funds assigned to be also applicable to “the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences.” But the whole scope and tenor as well as the literal meaning of the provision shows that the two objects were intended to be combined and prosecuted in concert. They have been so hitherto and the funds have accordingly assumed a distribution providing for all that is thus indicated. The revival of literature has been promoted by the assistance given to seminaries of education previously existing, and by the establishment of fresh, and likewise through the printing and publishing of classical works hitherto only to be procured in manuscript. To these objects a certain proportion of the funds assigned has been made applicable. The encouragement of learned men, the next thing indicated, has been effected as well through the support afforded them in institutions of education and in the superintendence and preparation of works for publication as by other advantages incident to the system pursued, amongst which not the least effectual is the provision for securing prolonged study by stipends to promising students. All this has been done for the natives and their literature, while the establishment of English classes in all existing seminaries and of fresh seminaries specifically for the teaching of English and English science and the attempts made by translation to make that science accessible to those ignorant of English have all had for their object the fulfilment of the other purposes indicated in the Act of 53rd Geo. III, viz. “the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of 68

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the sciences,” assuming this to mean the sciences of Europe. Thus, while through the old established seminaries and by their reform upon principles approved by the influential classes connected with them, and through the printing and publishing of their classics the first purpose indicated in the words of the Act has been sought to be accomplished, there has yet remained applicable to the cultivation of European science and English literature by far the larger proportion of the new fund set apart in 1813 by the legislature. If a comparison were to be made of the sums spent in printing native works and in providing new machinery for teaching the languages of the east or new stipends for successful scholars of its literature with the amounts lavished on English masters and on teachers of the rudiments of European science and on professors of law and metaphysics and natural philosophy, etc., etc., it will be found that the former bear but a small proportion to the aggregate of the latter thus showing that in the appropriation of the lakh of rupees even on the principles of the Orientalists, the desire to teach our own language and literature and science has always prevailed over the revival of the old literature and that we have given to what is last stated in the enactment as a purpose of assignment, perhaps even an undue preference. It has always, however, been a matter of discussion and difference amongst the members of the Committee where the line ought to be drawn—some desiring to give more to one branch, some to the other, but never yet has there been any one member of the Committee who has gone the length of the Government resolution and expressed the opinion that all the funds set apart by the Act of Parliament for the different objects therein declared ought to be employed on English education alone, to the exclusion of even the vernacular dialects of the country.

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The fourth member of the Legislative Council of India had then recently been appointed President of the Committee of Public Instruction but in this reference and the discussion of which it was the issue he had taken no part. After the two letters of the Committee submitting the reference had been sent in, Mr. Macaulay laid before the Governor-General the minute of his views on the subject which is recorded in the proceedings of the Executive Council and is the basis of the resolution of the 7th March.

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This minute was evidently a partizan paper advocating in a controversial and not very moderate tone the cause of one section of the Committee. It proceeded further than the warmest advocates of that side had yet ventured. Its assertions and arguments therefore demanded some investigation before they should be adopted as the basis of any grave proceedings of the Government. Without instituting, however, any such enquiry and, as far as is known to me without consulting any one of those in whom he was in the habit of placing confidence, the late 69

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Governor-General immediately upon the perusal of the minute in question, before any of the papers had been laid before the Council or discussed, added to it the declaration of his entire concurrence and so forwarded it to the Secretary of the Department for circulation. I circulated it and in a few days the box was returned to me with a brief minute by Mr. Ross, stating his own opinion to be opposed to the grant of scholarships and his wish that all should be left free to follow the course of instruction they preferred but without notice of the statements of doubtful accuracy contained in the minute of Mr. Macaulay. I was not then aware of Colonel Morrison’s intention to record his opinion on the subject. His minute reached me some days afterwards. In the interval, however, of the circulation of Mr. Macaulay’s minute it got wind I know not from what quarter that it was the intention of Government to abolish the Mudrusa and Sanscrit colleges. I was waited upon twice by the head preceptor of the former and utterly denied that there was any such intention. But the report was too widely circulated, and too well vouched to be so checked and the whole town of Calcutta was soon in a ferment. In the course of two days a petition respectful in language but strong in the points to which it adverted was signed by upwards of eight thousand educated Mohommedans, and a similar petition in behalf of the Sanscrit College was under preparation by the Hindoos. Seeing this ferment and sensible of the mischief that must follow the adoption to the full of the recommendations contained in the minute of Mr. Macaulay which seemed to me to be assented to by the GovernorGeneral, I took upon myself, in my capacity of Secretary, to submit to the Head of the Government a note explaining many of the circumstances on which Mr. Macaulay had, in my opinion, built erroneous conclusions or had written from imperfect information. I forwarded my note to the Governor-General and was at first asked through Mr. Pakenham, the Private Secretary, to withdraw it under a verbal assurance that the minute of Mr. Macaulay would be sent down to the Committee of Education of which he was President, and myself a member, in order that the matter might there be fully argued and discussed. I was of course satisfied that the mischief should be so stopped and circulated the note no further. In the meantime Colonel Morrison also appeared alive to the importance of the question and recorded his minute in behalf of native literature in which he deprecated any hasty innovations hostile to it and concluded with recommending a reference of the question to England. The matter was brought forward at the very next meeting of Council when this recommendation as well as the promise held out to me, were both disregarded and the resolution of the 7th March was passed, stopping short indeed of the threatened abolition of the Sanscrit and Arabic colleges but directed towards the insidiously undermining of both, and for the first time avowing the principle that oriental literature and instruction were thenceforward to receive no further aid from Government, not being considered objects deserving of its encouragement. The resolution is evidently founded on the minute of Mr. Macaulay above adverted to, and not upon the references from the Committee at large to the points submitted in which it nowhere adverts. It is thus based upon a minute advocating with all the warmth of controversy one particular side of a 70

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debated question without the opportunity having been given to those opposed to this view to offer any explanations or reply. Nay the late Governor-General would not allow the answer prepared to it to appear on record, for upon finding that Mr. Macaulay’s paper was not to be referred to the Committee of Public Instruction for further discussion, as I have been led to expect would be done, I submitted to His Lordship whether my note also should not be recorded for the correction of some of the statements of the minute which were erroneous or founded on imperfect information. I was met by a rebuke for having taken upon myself so much, accompanied by the declaration that Secretaries are the organs and not advisers of the Government and that their submitting notes at all was under sufferance and an irregularity.

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I think, therefore, I am fully warranted by what fell under my view in the course of the whole transaction in calling the resolution of the 7th March a rash Act.

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I have gone into great length in stating the impressions left on my mind by the measure I have above discussed, and yet I feel that there is an infinity more to say. I have not thought it necessary to make on this occasion any detailed reply to the minute of Mr. Macaulay in which the measure originated, because although my previous note discussing its propositions has not been recorded the substance of it is well known to the members of Government and it would be reviving a discussion already set to rest were I again to go over the same grounds. I fear I cannot expect that the question will now be reopened. I record this minute, therefore, as a protest against the continuance of measures founded on the principles of the resolution of the 7th March and as a declaration of the extremely mischievous and injurious tendency which I believe to be inherent in them. The true principle in my opinion is that of leaving the natives to choose their own courses of education and to encourage all equally on the part of Government making it our business to give to them the direction to true science and good taste in literature which the superior lights of Europe ought to enable us to bestow. Any deviation from this principle of free choice and equal encouragement can only do mischief to the cause by exciting feelings of distrust and perhaps irritation. I need not add in conclusion that I am decidedly adverse to printing the resolution of the 7th March in order to give it further publicity as is proposed in the last letter on the subject received from the Committee. H. T. PRINSEP. 20th May 1835.

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11 LETTERS AND DEBATES FROM THE CALC UTTA MONTHLY JOURNAL (NOVEMBER 1836), 271–278, 299–308

MODE OF EDUCATING THE NATIVES TO THE EDITOR OF THE CALCUTTA CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

My dear Sir,—I am somewhat surprised and concerned to observe, from the last number of your Observer received here, that there is still one man left among your correspondents so far blinded as to uphold the Roman character as the best means by which the people of India are to be educated. My own opinion may be of little value, and I should not have deemed it worth registering, were it not supported by that of almost all the most intelligent well wishers of India, in this and other parts of the country, with whom I have the honor of being acquainted. It is that the Roman character can never become general or popular: that the attempt to introduce it will only tend to add to the variety of characters in actual use, and proving futile, will still increase the already too great confusion. With ten thousand teachers of the Roman character and a crore of rupees to boot, I still feel assured that the attempt to uproot the now universally used characters would utterly fail. How can we ever expect that the brahmans, the astronomers and astrologers, ràjàs, diwans, saukàrs, patels, patwàrís, and zamìndàrs will abandon what they have been used to from childhood and found sufficient for every purpose, or what they revere and believe to have come from heaven, for characters that cannot express with the same precision the required sounds, and are therefore, in their estimation, inferior to their own? Shall we contemn the policy of the Emperor Nicholas, and still follow his example? I fully admit the goodness of the motive, and also the value of the object aimed at: but we cannot hold ourselves excused, in making an attempt with our eyes open to eradicate the Hindí and other characters from a nation, whose bigotry and superstitious reverence for all ancient things we have hourly occasions of noticing, and for which wise and prudent men should make every allowance. Some progress has been made in teaching this character—but I ask to whom? In some places, to the half-starved children of Bundelcund emigrants, rescued from famine by public charity; in other places to the children of our sepoys at the stations, and of our other dependents: but these are not the nation, or a fair specimen of the nation, and will never be included in the literary class of the people. 72

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I have fancied that BETA has begun to see the false step made by himself and his friends: that they are sensible of their error in not having taken the sense of the native public upon the question, and consulted its wishes: and that they now allow that a scheme not suited to the taste and reasonable wishes and prejudices of the people, and not commanding their concurrence and support, cannot prosper, or be productive of any permament good. If I am right in my suspicion, I hope we may soon see them candidly acknowledging their error and retracing their steps; such a course cannot but redound to their credit. It will, moreover, have the further advantage of restoring greater union amongst the friends of India, and in no work is this more required than in the important object of regenerating India. The idle scheme has been peculiarly grateful to men wholly ignorant of the native languages and of the native character and prejudices: but these are not the men that will ever effect much, or triumphantly establish in native estimation the vast superiority of European science and European literature. With regard to the adoption of the English language as a means of educating the people of India, I cannot but regard this as an equally irrational and impracticable scheme; as betraying a want of good philosophy, and of a sound knowledge of mankind and of the human mind, wholly unworthy of the high body whence it emanated. I strongly advocate the study of English for all who have time, talent, and fortune really to acquire it and to use it. But for the education of the body of the people, nothing—nothing but the vernaculars can over be generally useful. Both the people and their spiritual teachers must have abandoned their faith, before they will consent to abandon those books and the languages in which they conceive the road to salvation lies, and by which it must be recollected, they gain their bread. By confining our saukars to the study of English, we should only be calling upon them to abandon their intercourse with all their commercial correspondents in the cities of foreign states. No, no, my dear Mr. Editor; neither the Hindí in the Roman character, nor the English language, will ever enable their advocates, though they were one hundred-fold more numerous, and had one hundred-fold greater resources than they now have at command, to educate the people. That work can be effected only through the aid of the languages and characters in actual use among the people. Some men have inveighed in fine speeches, and with all the fervor, and also with all the thoughtless inexperience of youth against the waste of time and money in printing correct editions of the Persian, Arabic and Sanscrit classics. But though I admit that the labours of Dr. Wilson, Dr. Tytler and other linguists, were by no means directed to sufficiently popular objects, still I must avow my opinion that it is the super-eminent accomplishment of these gentlemen, and of their predecessors and compeers, and their highly popular and admired labours, which have raised up for us a character for liberality and toleration, that is now shielding us from the odium and other ill effects of the violent and oppressive and unpopular course recently adopted by the ruling faction in the Education Committee. With what genuine delight do the ministers and chiefs and wakíls of this part of India 73

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dwell on the thorough acquaintance shewn by the author of the works on Hindu and Muhammadan Law (who accompanied the late Governor General in his tour) with their language, laws and religion! With what admiration do the maulavis and pandits who have served under or otherwise become acquainted with Dr. Wilson, and whom I have met here and elsewhere, dwell upon the varied accomplishments and distinguished labours of that gentleman! Still, as I have above observed, that gentleman’s public labours, highly as I value them, do not meet my entire approbation. They might have been made much more useful to a much greater number. He had the talent and other means at command by which he might have given all that was valuable in the learned languages of India, in a popular form, with the addition of such improvements and such new truths in morals and the abstract sciences, as had been established in the West within the last few centuries. To illustrate the vast superiority of the vernacular languages as a means of conveying knowledge to the people, and the wisdom of availing ourselves of what is good and useful in their own systems, in order to recommend and support what further improvements and discoveries we have to give, I must inform you, and through you your many readers, as to the result of the experiment made here. A work written by Unkar Bhat in Hindí, and in the Hindí character, entitled “An Elementary Treatise on Geography and Astronomy, in question and answer, being a comparison of the Pauranic and Siddhantic systems of the world with that to Copernicus,” was recently received here. The author after much patient inquiry and much deliberation and discussion, had given up first the Pautánic system for that of the Siddhánts, and then that of the Siddhánts for that of Copernicus. In writing his scientific dialogues, he gives all the doubts which had presented themselves to himself. He answers them by such arguments and by quoting such authorities as had carried conviction to his own mind. Well acquainted with this subject and with all the notions and false impressions to be removed, he addresses himself to his task in a mode which no European gentleman could do. He puts forth a work idiomatically written with all the scientific terms in use amongst the joshis of India, and in every respect exactly adapted to the tastes and state of knowledge among the people. Mark the result. As I had many more copies than were required for the school, I authorized the sale of 100 of them. In less than five days they were, every one, sold, and the demand for more reported to be still urgent! Brahmans, joshis, banyas, patwaris, mutasaddis and thakurs, all shewed themselves equally anxious to possess themselves of the learned Bhatjee Maharaja’s work. Though full of typographical errors, which equally disappointed the author and the purchasers, still nothing can exceed the popularity of his little book. The teachers of the school and the scholars all wanted copies of this work to send to their friends; whilst other works on the same subject, had few or no recommendations for them. They said that the Bhatjee’s work was the only one that their ignorant friends would be able to understand. It contained arguments, proofs and quotations, they said, that no joshi or even brahman could gainsay. 74

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A similar but a much superior and a much more learned work by Soobajee Bappoo on the same subject, was lately printed at Bombay. He brings all the weight of his great learning to the support of the many valuable truths, and the exposure of all the vulgar errors connected with his subject. He derides the folly of astrological predictions, of belief in lucky and unlucky days: he advocates the advantages of travel: he points out the advantages of commerce in linking men of all countries in the firm bonds of an interested connexion and friendship. The work is written in Marhatta, but with a liberal use of all the Sanskrit writers, moral as well as astronomical, who have advocated any truth under discussion. Here the work has not had an extensive sale—it was not expected, the families of Marhattas here being but few. But it has arrested in a most signal manner the attention of the learned Marhatta Pandits and Shastris of Oujain, Sagar, Bhilsa and elsewhere. Krishna Rao, the superintendent of the schools at Sagar, was quite delighted, but no less surprised than delighted, at finding that a system which his English studies and predilections had disposed him to regard as true, could be so well and so admirably supported by their own learned authors. The joshis of the place highly approved of the work: a learned shastri was not convinced. One of the best linguists in Bombay, well acquainted with the people, their literature and wishes, in a letter recently received from him, observes—‘Your book has caused much interest here—I mean that of Soobajee Bappoo: it has been sent to all the jagirdars, and the diwan of Angria speaks highly of it: the quotations are much admired. One of the shastris of the Hindu College (at Poona) is, I am told, going to publish a reply to it, making out that the Earth is flat, and shewing that the authorities have been perverted.” Here you have proof of what may be effected by addressing your doctrines in a language, style and form adapted to native taste. These works are gradually finding their way, and will soon find their way into the hands of all who can read, of all the learned in Malwa and the Deckan. They are understood as they are read. They will carry conviction, or raise a spirit of discussion and inquiry that will tend to elicit the truth. Now, I ask of you, when will an equal effect ever be produced by means of any English books? how can the same number of new facts and new ideas ever be conveyed in the English language or the Roman character to a whole people, at so small a cost—nay, at no expense at all? Let the friends of English Education not be deceived by the interested reports of those men now hired to teach our language, who, afraid of losing their bread, will vaunt the success of their anti-national and suspected labours. Let them take a common-sense view of the case, take the opinion of the native public, of the Reformer, of JUNIUS, of the Friend of India (who seems to me to represent the public feeling most truly on this subject,) and, acknowledging their error, join with those learned and wise friends of the people in giving to them all the knowledge of Europe in a popular shape, and further recommended to their adoption by all the arguments, proofs and authorities afforded by the best native classical writers. The present system—(how strange that it should have originated with one whose love for the people ever led him in every other question to uphold what was 75

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popular and national!)—is neither popular nor national. It not only does not command the votes and support of the people, but in its operation is working a vast deal of collateral mischief. The very zeal and talent and assiduity and cost, with which the study of English is forced on the people, have only magnified our future difficulties in imparting it. An ulterior object is suspected, and the real leaders of the people hold aloof. The zeal of those natives and students who support the new system, is certainly well sustained by the promise of service and the like; but it will not do. The time has not yet come. If you want proof of what I say, let me call your attention to the Muhammadan petition, which, I observe, is supported by the almost unparalleled number of 18,171 signatures. If the Romanizers and the Education Committee, can observe in this no sign of the times, no manifestation of the real wishes of the people, then God only knows how it will ever be made manifest to them. Let them shut their eyes and stop their ears. But the Right Honorable the Governor-General in Council to whom the petition is addressed will, I fervently pray, manifest neither equal blindness nor equal deafness. May wisdom guide his steps! is the prayer, Mr. Editor, of your well-wisher, Multan, August, 1836. L. W. The questions discussed in the preceding paper are both of great importance and demand the best attention of our readers. They are particularly deserving of full examination, now that national education, as we hope, is about to be seriously prosecuted by the Supreme Government. Our pages are now, as they have ever been, fully open to papers on both sides of the question.—ED.] Christian Observer, for October. TO THE EDITOR OF THE BENGAL HURKARU AND CHRONICLE.

Sir,—I have read L. W.’s lively attack upon what I think, we may now call the prevailing system of native education, and upon the use of the Roman letters as applied to the Eastern languages. The question regarding the Roman character is contained within a very small compass. The facility with which this character may be written quickly, yet legibly; the distinctness of the printed character; its capability of compression; its admitting of the freest use of italics, stops, marks of interrogation and admiration, and other guides to the reader; its superior cheapness, arising from the compactness of the type and the consequent diminished expenditure of paper and of the other materials of printing, are advantages which need not be dwelt on, because they are now seldom denied. Neither can any body fail to observe the national benefit which must arise, in the present incipient state of native literature, from all the languages of India being expressed by one common character, and that character the same which is used to express the literature of the most enlightened nations in other parts of the world. “If all the Indian dialects were presented in the same English character, it would be seen and felt that the natives are not divided into so many sections of foreigners to each other, that they have all fundamentally, 76

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the same language, and that without much difficulty, a community of interest and a beneficial reciprocation of thought, might be effected to an extent at present unknown, and, from the repulsive aspect of so many written characters, deemed utterly impracticable?” The question is, therefore, merely one of experiment. The advantages are obvious, but are they attainable in practice? This is the point at issue, and it is one which can only be decided by actual trial. If, in making the trial, the advocates of the plan used any unfair means, L. W. might in that case justly complain. But what is the fact? The Education Committee has never yet interfered in the matter. The School Book Society has only lately printed one interlinear translation in the Roman character, after its popularity had been proved by the rapid sale of a previous edition. The way in which the experiment has been tried, has been this. Private individuals began to print books from motives of benevolence, and others followed their example as a matter of speculation. They print, and the people purchase or receive the books in gifts. I ask, what ground of complaint L. W. has either with one or the other? If the public think these books cheaper and better than others, why should they not be allowed to have them? No degree of clamour will deter those who have commenced the work, from carrying it to the end. They look only to the decision of the public. Three presses are now employed in preparing Dictionaries, Grammars and reading books. The prospect is more favourable than ever. The vernacular language has been adopted in all the Revenue offices in the Upper Provinces, and exactly the same causes which led to the Persian letters being applied to that language, may now be expected to introduce the general use of the Roman letters. Persian was the language of education, and the vernacular language, therefore, naturally came to be expressed in the Persian character. Now English has taken the place of Persian as the language of education, and there seems to be no reason to doubt that it will produce corresponding effects on the popular language. Boys who have become familiarised to the use of the English letters, will not willingly have recourse either to the Nágari or Persian, to say nothing of the intrinsic inferiority of those characters, and to the loss of time which must ensue from the use of three separate alphabets, while one is sufficient. Viewed with reference to a whole nation in all its generations, such a waste of time and labour becomes worth consideration. I heartily concur in the sentiments of respect which L. W. expresses for the oriental attainments of the gentlemen named by him, as well as in his regret that they have not been applied to more popular objects. I highly approve of correct editions of the Sanskrit and Arabic classics being published. What I object to, is that they should be published by the Committee of Public Instruction, and be made the staple of native education. L. W. next inveighs against the English language as a medium of Indian education, and recommends in preference some elementary controversial treatises in the native languages which have been lately published. It is needless now to prove what has been already fully demonstrated both by argument and experience. A vernacular literature can be created only by slow degrees, but a nation 77

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may immediately avail itself of the existing literature of other countries which are in a more advanced state of improvement; and in this way their knowledge is increased, their taste improved, and the materials are collected for the formation of a national literature. This is the process which has been gone through in every instance in which any very decided change for the better has taken place from without. The Romans read the Grecian letters, and adopted Grecian models of taste. The Roman provincials cultivated the Roman literature, and became equal to their masters. The modern nations of Europe did the same, until they had raised on this foundation a literature for themselves. Two hundred years ago even ladies studied Latin, because they had then no books worth reading in their own languages; but in the present advanced state of our literature, the study of the dead languages is confined to those who have leisure and inclination to add a knowledge of them to their other acquirements. The Russian empire is at the present day a striking example of the process of national regeneration of which I am speaking. French, English and German are extensively taught there, and the educated communicate to their own countrymen, in their own language, the superior knowledge which they themselves acquire through these foreign media. What the Russians are doing in the north, we are doing in the south of Asia. India is gradually becoming leavened by the introduction of European knowledge, and the lower classes are taught in their own, what the higher have learned in the English language. The English and the vernacular literatures are connected together as a river is with its fountain, as a tree is with its fruit. The one will be the result of the other. Those who discourage the study of English in order to encourage the vernacular literature, are manifestly labouring to defeat their own object. I most highly approve of the elementary treatises in the vernacular language to which L. W. refers—so highly, that I have myself aided in the publication of some of them. I am also willing to admit, that in the distant province which is the scene of his labours, he could not at present adopt any more effectual mode of promoting a spirit of inquiry and raising European learning in general estimation. All I object to, is his quarrelling with us for adopting more effectual means of instruction than such treatises as these afford, in parts of the country where the preparatory process has been already gone through, and the people are actually greedy for European learning. L. W. is so enamoured of his own plan, that he cannot imagine that it is not equally applicable to every part of India. If he reflects, however, he must perceive, that nobody can be expected to follow a round-about path any longer than while the direct road is not open to him. Where would be the wisdom of entering into controversial discussions to disprove the Pauranic system of astronomy, with persons who are ready to admit the truth of the Copernican system, and are anxiously seeking to be instructed in it? How can we confine our youth to such meagre information as treatises in the native languages contain, while they are ready to pursue the study of the sciences to the full extent to which they are developed in English books? I lately saw a crowd of students waiting for admission into the Hooghly College, many of whom had already some acquaintance with English. How surprised and disappointed they would have been, if, 78

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instead of being enabled to enter on a course of English reading, they had been told that they must content themselves with such crumbs of science as have fallen upon the native languages, and must begin by hearing lectures on the inconsistencies which exist between the Purans and the Siddants neither of which they have ever studied or cared the least about!! Our business is to teach, and not to dispute; and as the youth of our own provinces are willing to learn all we choose to communicate to them, it is open to us to take the most effectual available means of teaching them. The vernacular language may become sufficient for the purposes of liberal education a century hence, but it certainly is not so now. At least the two next generations of the upper and middle classes must be educated by means of foreign languages, and it is to be hoped that from among them numerous authors will arise, to enrich their national language with works in every department of literature and science. L. W.’s plan of treating the study of English as an object of very secondary importance, would put back the progress of improvement many years. It would be equivalent to driving our youth away from the fountain, and telling them to content themselves with what they can collect from a scanty streamlet. I, for one, will always lift up my voice against this course. My desire is, that they should not only study to the full our medicine, our mathematics and our natural philosophy, but that they should also imbibe the spirit of our works of taste, imagination, history and morals, until they have a Shakespear, a Hume, a Milton of their own. L. W. recommends us not to be deceived by the interested reports of the English masters. If he intends this advice for the Education Committee, it is sufficient to explain that the reports of the masters are always commented on by the Local Committees, which include all the principal European officers, and in many cases, some of the leading native gentlemen at each station. He also advises us to be guided by the Reformer, the Friend of India, and JUNIUS. I have a sincere respect for all these authorities, and am happy to be able to say that I entirely agree with the Friend of India and the Reformer. They both advocate the teaching of English conjointly with the vernacular languages;—the English to those who have leisure to cultivate it to good purpose, and the vernacular languages to all high and low, rich and poor: and so do. They also advocate the encouragement of every welldirected effort towards the construction of a vernacular literature; and so do I. With JUNIUS, however, I only half agree. I agree with him as far as he recommends the encouragement of the vernacular literature, but I cannot agree with him in discouraging English literature. It appears to me that those who receive a liberal education through the medium of English, should also be taught to compose with ease and correctness in their own language, while every possible exertion should be made to prepare good books in the vernacular languages for the use of the body of the people, to whom, of course, English is not accessible. L. W. next urges that the prevailing system of education is “neither popular nor national,” that it “does not command the votes and support of the people,” although “well sustained by the promise of service and the like;” and he recommends that we should “take the opinion of the native public” on the subject. In 79

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replying to this, the first thing to be determined is, what is meant by the terms “popular and national.” There was a time when Sanskrit itself was introduced by a race of conquerors, as is proved by the incongruity of that language with the languages of the south of India and of many hilly tracts in other quarters; yet Sanskrit is now incorporated in a greater or less degree with every Indian language. In much later times Arabic and Persian were extremely unpopular and anti-national, and they were introduced in a way which we should be sorry to see imitated: yet they also are studied by great numbers in every part of India, and have become to a great degree transfused into the vernacular dialects. In the same way English learning and English literature, which have hitherto been neither popular nor national, are daily becoming so in proportion as they are adopted by the people. To say that nothing ought to be admitted which is not national, that is, which does not already form part of the national stock, is the same thing as to say that there shall be no new acquisition, that there shall be no improvement. Nations, like individuals, can only enlarge their knowledge by adding to that which they possess, and the additions which are made from time to time, although at first unnational, become national by being generally adopted. L. W. would stare at any body who should say to him, on his taking up a new book, “Put down that book: you do not know it; therefore, you must not read it.” Yet this is precisely what he is himself doing, when he is writing declamations to discourage the teaching of English, because it is not national. The course which L. W. describes himself as pursuing towards the natives of his part of the country, is just as unnational as that which is followed by the Education Committee. What, indeed, can be more contrary to national prejudices and habits of thinking, than books which are written for the express purpose of controverting the authority of the shastras!! Yet the natives seem to be no more offended with his attacks upon the shastras, than they are with the English instruction which the Education Committee give without any reference to those sacred books. It is clear, therefore, that notwithstanding L. W.’s love for nationality, he is acting, like ourselves, in some degree on a different rule. If we did not, we might as well throw up the pursuit at once. By confining ourselves to teaching what is strictly national, we should have to teach many egregious errors, and should be debarred from all reference to the vast acquisitions which have been made since the Europeans passed the Hindus and Muhammadans in the race of knowledge. But if we lay it down as our rule only to teach what the natives are willing to make national, viz., what they will freely learn, we shall be able by degrees to teach them all we know ourselves, without any risk of offending their prejudices. This is the course which we have always pursued. We have “taken the opinion of the native public on the subject.” We find that our plan does “command the votes and support of the people,” without any “promise of service;” and that English learning, as taught by the system which we recommend, is popular, and is quickly becoming national. The School-Book Society’s operations furnish perhaps the best existing test of the real state of public feeling, in regard to the different systems, of learning which are now simultaneously cultivated in India. Their books are sold to any 80

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body who chooses to purchase them, and the proportions, in which they are disposed of, show the relative demand which exists for the different kinds of learning. The statement of the sales which have been made during the last two years, extracted from the Society’s recently published Report, is as follows: English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31,649 books. Anglo-Asiatic, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,525 ” Bengáli, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,754 ” Hindui, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,171 ” Hindustání, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,384 ” Uriya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834 ” Persian, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,454 ” Arabic, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 ” Sanskrit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 ” This statement speaks for itself, and when we add to the above, the numerous English books said by the Editors of the Friend of India to be sold by their establishment and others, and contrast with this the very limited demand of which they complain for works in the Native languages, we see distinctly the direction of native feeling as it regards the purchase of books. To this we may add, that for some time past upwards of 3,000 youths have been receiving an English education in Calcutta alone, and that the taste for learning English there is daily on the increase. L. W. will probably reply, that Calcutta is not India, and that although one city may have become denationalized, the rest of India retains its primitive character. But Calcutta is the capital, and the capital must sooner or later make its influence felt through the whole country. One set after another of well educated youths, turned out from the Calcutta schools, must gradually leaven the adjoining provinces; to say nothing of the effect which must be produced upon casual visitors, and even upon those who only hear of it from report, by the example of what is going on. What has lately taken place at Hooghly is an instance in point. On the College there being opened, English students flocked to it in such numbers as to render the organisation of them into classes a matter of difficulty. There are now about 1,400 boys learning English only, about 200 learning Arabic and Persian only, and upwards of a hundred who are learning both English and Arabic or Persian. Notwithstanding this unprecedented concourse, the applications for English instruction are still extremely numerous; and there seems to be no limit to the number of scholars, except the number of masters whom the Education Committee is able to provide. In the same way, at Dacca there are 150 students, and it is stated that this number would be doubled if there were masters enough; and lately at Agra, when additional means of English instruction were provided, the number rose immediately to upwards of 200. These are mentioned merely as instances. In the numerous seminaries under the Education Committee, there is no want of scholars. The difficulty is to provide masters enough to teach the numbers who are anxious to receive instruction. If this is not sufficient proof that the popular taste 81

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is favorable to English studies, I do not know what can be considered as such. It is preposterous to suppose that such multitudes can have been induced to flock to our schools by promises of service. Of the 1,400 youths, who presented themselves for admission at the opening of the Hoogly College, perhaps not one in a hundred was known to European gentlemen who had patronage at their disposal; not one was known to those whom L. W. considers the principal advocates of this system of education. No doubt, the boys who learn English regard their education as an important means of forwarding their future prospects; but so do those who learn Arabic, and Sanskrit, and Latin, and Greek, and every other language. I believe, however, that at the present period in India, those who learn English have a more reasonable ground for their expectation of success in life than those who learn any other language. In the Revenue offices in the Upper Provinces, the monopoly of Persian has been abolished, and the vernacular language has actually been adopted as the language of business. The same must soon take place in every other department of Government in every part of the British territories, and then how will the case stand? Every body who applies for employment will probably be able to read and write his own language nearly equally well, and the choice will be determined by the degree of general cultivation which the candidates possess. By so much, therefore, as the English language affords the means of obtaining a better education than any other language does, which is at present studied in India, in that degree will the young men who have received a good English education have an advantage over all others. The last topic to which L. W. refers is the Muhammadan petition. The prayer of that petition is, that the stipends which used to be given at the Persian and Arabic Colleges, but which were prospectively abolished by the decision of Lord W. Bentinck, confirmed by that of Sir C. Metcalfe, should be restored. This is a separate question, which will, no doubt, be decided after a full consideration of all the reasons which can be urged on both sides. The objections to stipends are, that to pay students as well as teachers, will be the same thing as diminishing the scanty fund which has been assigned to education by about one half! Not only are multitudes anxious to learn without fee or reward, but many are willing to contribute something themselves towards the expense.1 The great demand is for masters. If we have only masters enough, we can have any number of students. There is, therefore, no necessity whatever for paying students to learn, while to do so would cripple our resources in the most essential point. But independent of the cost, the principle of the stipendiary system is radically bad. The business of an Education Committee is to have those taught who are anxious to learn; not to crowd their lecture rooms with nominal students, but real paupers, who may come eager to obtain food, not for the mind, but for the body. So long as we offer instruction only, we may be sure that we shall have none but willing students; but if we offer money in addition to instruction, it becomes impossible to say for the sake of which they attend. Even boys who come with a desire to acquit themselves well, fall in with the general tone. These bounties on learning are the worst of bounties. They have this evil in common with bounties on 82

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trade, that they draw to a particular line a greater quantity of exertion than that line would, without artificial encouragement, attract, or than the state of society requires. They have also, when given in the form in which they are given both in the English Universities and in the Indian Colleges, this additional evil—that they paralyse exertion. A person who does not want to learn a particular language or science, is tempted to commence the study by the stipend. As soon as he has got the stipend, he has no motive for zealously prosecuting the study. Sluggishness, mediocrity, absence of spirited exertion, resistance to all improvement, are the natural growth of this system. It is also of great importance in a country like this, that the Government should have a real test of the wishes of its subjects in regard to the kind of education given. As long as stipends were allowed, students would, of course, have been forthcoming; but now the people may decide for themselves. Every facility is given, but no bribes, not even any “offers of service;” and if a larger number avail themselves of one kind of instruction than of another, we may be assured that it can be only owing to such being the bent of the public mind. If it were not for this, inferior modes might be persevered in from generation to generation, which, with an appearance of popularity, would really be only the result of the factitious support afforded them by the Government. However, we by no means pretend to dogmatise on this question, and if a plan can be devised which will preserve any good there may be in stipends, without their attendant evils, we shall be happy to see it adopted. A liberal distribution of pecuniary rewards would perhaps answer the purpose. Calcutta, October 4, 1836. C. E. T. TO THE EDITOR OF THE BENGAL HURKARU AND CHRONICLE.

Sir,—In regard to the question whether we should endeavour to instruct the natives through the English language or their own, it seems to me that the subject is frequently perplexed by an erroneous assumption that the native language and native literature must necessarily be arrayed on one and the same side of the question. On the question referred to, I beg to offer my humble opinion, that the native languages should be the medium of instruction; but I am at the same time very averse to the encouragement of native literature beyond what will serve for the transference of European knowledge and ideas, and it seems to me that such transference would be best promoted by the adaptation2 and translation into common language of some well selected books, and that three thousand rupees expended in the preparation and circulation of such books, would more promote right knowledge and ideas, than all that is expended in Persian, Arabic and Sanscrit literature, and in promoting what must at best be a spiritless and blundering knowledge of the English language. In interposing English, we interpose a formidable barrier to the diffusion of knowledge; for many years must be lost in acquiring what is called a fair knowledge of the language: and even after a whole life of study, not one native in a 83

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thousand acquires a full apprehension of the language: imperfect scholars in the language would frequently be false conductors of acquirement; while the narrow and circuitous stream of knowledge, would become still more narrow from the loss of their contributions who were discouraged by phraseological and other difficulties of the language, and who would study the language in the spirit of pedantry, and who thus would neither learn nor impart the knowledge which the language includes. Much would thus be corrupted and intercepted in its way through the English medium; whereas by the circulation of books in the native language, a full and pure stream might at once be supplied. To illustrate the inaptitude of natives as disseminators of knowledge through the English language, I may mention that the well paid College of Moonshees at Madras have not, in nearly thirty years, produced a single translation or other work evincing the required aptitude; and I venture to add, that it has not produced one individual who could translate any thing more than mere narrative or naked statement with tolerable accuracy—not one who could translate a page of Adam Smith with less than four essential errors. The idea of naturalizing the English language in India has, I believe, now been universally abandoned—that of naturalizing the English written character does not seem quite so unfeasible; but the most feasible measure of this kind which suggests itself to me, is that of establishing our own arithmetical symbols throughout India: this might be done by a simple order from Government; and much trouble and error, and also much necessity for keeping Brahminy accountants, and much risk of embezzlement, would be obviated by the measure. It altogether seems to me, that we are beginning at the wrong end in our attempts to diffuse knowledge: that we are (as it were) bestowing trouble and money on the higher and more ornamental architecture of the temple of knowledge, which would be better employed in fixing and extending its foundations, by establishing primary education over the land, which would ensure a more general reception of such knowledge as we may circulate by means of books translated and adapted in the manner I have suggested; and, indeed, I doubt that any exotic knowledge will take deep and general root till the soil shall have been thus prepared: whereas, if the lowest classes were instructed to read and write, the mere love of distinction would stimulate those above them to higher knowledge, and I would also remark that a little goes much further in promoting primary education than in advancing the former, we indirectly, by the love of distinction, promote the latter, while the converse of this does not take place. Furthermore, I think, we should consider the immense practical and immediate benefit involved in a generally diffused ability to read and write; for much oppression, fraud and litigation at present arise from so many signing what they cannot read, and from the facility of forging or successfully denying a mark when it stands for a regular signature. But it is not so much means as motives that are required for the extension of primary education; for under a system which enables one to teach five hundred, nearly as easily as he could teach one, means can scarcely be wanting; and as to 84

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the motives, these might be presented by declaring the ability to read and write a condition of serving the Government even in the lowest capacities, and by granting certain penal immunities, such as exemption from stripes and the stocks, to those who can read and write; and if the municipal institutions of the provinces are ever to be popularized instead of continuing on the present hereditary irresponsible and stationary system, a powerful motive might be held out by making the ability to read and write a condition of voting regarding the appointment of the local functionaries. Yours, A CIVIL SERVANT. Our attention has been called to a see-saw article in the Englishman of the 12th Oct. on the subject of public education in India, in which there is a curious attempt made to prove, that between those who advocate the employment of English as the chief medium of instruction and those who advocate the employment of the vernacular tongues for the same purpose, there is hardly any difference at all. However, the advocates of these two systems know very well where the difference lies between them, and that it is one utterly irreconcileable by any compromise. In order to clear up a point which it is the constant labour of many in this country to darken and confound, if they possibly can, it is worth while to recall to the memory of the public that what each party professes to consider as the END sought, what each professes to define as the INSTRUCTION meant to be conveyed, is instruction in European science and literature. There are none, or at least very few, who openly maintain, that in addition to the Koran, Mahomedan students should be expressly taught, through the medium of Arabic and Persian, such fragments of the astronomical, geographical and medical systems of the Greeks, as have got through the medium of translations into the literature of those Eastern nations:—there are fewer still who openly maintain, that through the medium of Sanskrit the worse puerilities that disgrace the early literature and poetry of the Hindoos, and the rubbish that now disfigures their systems of science, should be at the public expense, expressly and carefully inculcated. No, the advocates of the employment of the vernacular tongues as a medium say, we also seek the same END as you do, namely, the diffusion of European knowledge; but our means are the easiest to the learners, the cheapest to the State. We flatly deny both assumptions as far as the, present period is concerned; let us examine them. What may be the precise number of dialects in our Indian possessions strictly entitled to be called vernacular, we profess ourselves wholly unable with probable accuracy to guess at: but, we should suppose, that taking into account the Straits and Ceylon, it would be a very moderate guess that should state them at ONE HUNDRED. What is called, or miscalled, oriental literature, is not contained it will be borne in mind, in any of the vernacular dialects of India; but, setting aside the Chinese and Thibetan, and the literature of the cognate races and tongues, nearly all this oriental literature is contained in three languages, the Arabic, the Persian, and the Sanskrit, all as difficult to teach to the proposed learners, or very nearly 85

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so, as English, and which, if taught, would not only not advance the pupil in the least degree towards the END proposed, but quite the contrary; for the acquisition of this literature would fill him with the conceit of learning, (unless of a very rare order of mind) and only prove a stumbling block in the learner’s path, if he were willingly or unwillingly to try to acquire a knowledge of European science and literature in addition to his other attainments. But to resume the consideration of the MEANS; we will suppose the acquisition of oriental literature by State aid out of the question, and that each of one hundred bodies of pupils is bent on attaining the END, namely, the acquisition of European knowledge through the medium of its own vernacular dialect. THERE IS IN SUCH CASE NO LANGUAGE TO BE TAUGHT THE LEARNER IT IS TRUE, BUT EACH LANGUAGE HAS TO BE TAUGHT THE LEARNING. We are content to place the whole result on a candid answer to the question—which is easiest? At the first plunge, if we are to translate English extensively, we have a hundred erudite translators at work, translators not only of rudimental books, but history, ethical and natural philosophy, oratory, poetry! or else portions of each. And this, forsooth, would be comparatively CHEAP and EASY! We are plain speakers, and if we can find it, like to go at once to the “root of the matter,” and that in this question, “lieth within a small compass,” as it seems to us. It is very good to encourage the learned labour of gentlemen who devote themselves to the useful and ennobling cultivation of oriental literature, even with the public money, but NOT OUT OF THE FUND FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION. A man who has learned much may often be able to teach very little, and that is especially the case if the mind is employed exclusively on abstruse or out of-the-way subjects. To employ gentlemen of high literary attainments on translations into the vernacular languages, (even when willing to injure their health for the sake of the public) at the rate of a gold-mohur or two a sheet, is to make even rare learning rather too costly and ordinary philanthrophy quite unpurchaseably dear. Now we pray attention to this remark,—we must either employ exclusively gentlemen of high attainments, or give up the scheme: between the good and the bad among translators for such a purpose, there is no medium; the middling are good for nothing, and surely it would be easier to find a hundred-handed translator than a hundred-headed and tongued one. If the good were alone taken, we might divide the number one hundred by tens, and twenties, aye, and fifties too, let gentlemen of Polyglott reputations say what they may. The only way in our opinion, in which translators can hereafter be procured at a sufficiently cheap rate to admit of an extensive system of translation into all the dialects of India, will be by first giving a good education through the medium of English to a large proportion of the upper and middle classes of the inhabitants of the districts in which those dialects prevail. The native translators so raised up will be volunteers, and thus not only the cheapest but the best. The most idiomatical translators are notoriously those who translate into their own language. What blundering work would be made of a system of translation into English if it were to be conducted by French and Italians. We have a political aversion to this translation scheme. We can conceive no engine more insidiously adapted to serve to the prejudice of higher, the mere 86

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personal, interests of those who now labour so meritoriously in the work of converting the natives to Christianity: none more likely gradually to divert the whole plan of Indian national public education into an English sectarian scheme for propagating a particular mode of our own religious faith. And for this plain reason, there are few persons of the requisite talents and industry now to be found in India, or likely to be furnished exclusively for that purpose from England, who could engage in the task of translation and education so cheaply as Missionaries, and though the Missionaries of the English and Scotch established Churches and those sects who differ so little from the English Church as easily to coalesce with it, would not perhaps work quite so cheaply as some others, yet with certain other advantages which the English State affords the English Church, they would quite underwork and overlay all laymen. Although there are only ten thousand pounds a year appropriated to the purpose of public education in India at present, that sum may possibly at no remote period be much increased, and then we shall see a different feeling excited, and more energy displayed. “Where the slaughter is, there will the eagles be gathered together,” and we do not think we have been mistaken in supposing that the foremost ranks of candidates will start forth from the bosom of the respectable communities we have indicated. We trust we run no risk of being misconstrued or misunderstood in the remarks we have made on this subject. Every true Christian, of whatever mode of faith or discipline, must rejoice in the anticipation that at some happy, even if very remote period, our Indian fellow-subjects shall, by force of their own universal conviction and no other means, be reclaimed from, and renounce the errors they now follow as the truth: yet, none but zealots, who too often lose all sight of justice, and are prepared to act on the principle that the end sanctifies the means, can possibly maintain that national education in India, ought to have the least bias towards proselytism. If masters of the clerical profession were extensively employed in this work, such a bias must creep in, and it is our firm conviction, that if the vernacular languages are to be relied on as the chief medium of instruction, that plan would almost unavoidably give a large preponderance to the clerical influence in the choice of candidates; and that, from their body, more than a due proportion of teachers would be selected. We trust also that we cannot be supposed to mean that the literary labours of Christian Missionaries, whether employed in the task of translation or original research, should not have their full share of encouragement and aid from Government; all that we do mean is, that the vernacular plan is open to the objection that it must give a preponderance, if not a monopoly, to a particular class; and the political inconvenience of employing it would not be counterbalanced (we think) by the economical advantage. We hope, too, that we have guarded ourselves from the imputation that we undervalue high attainments in oriental literature,—we wish that such exertions should have their full reward, but not, as we said before, out of the fund for the public education of the people, already much too scanty. Such labours, indeed, always have their full reward; they earn for the oriental scholar a reputation in proportion to the rarity of the acquirement and rather out of proportion to its 87

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usefulness: the mind, too, that has persevered and succeeded in such barren and ungrateful studies, generally enjoys, (as is natural) in a full measure the satisfaction of self-esteem. Whatever light the labours of the Sangskrit scholar may throw on the origin and affinity of languages, and the early connexion of the different tribes of the human race (and in that track some considerable results may be arrived at,) it is not reasonable at this time of day to hope that, in ethics or natural philosophy, in authentic or rational history, or in poetry, we shall meet either with facts or models worthy of esteem or memory. This is the unavoidable drawback to such reputations, and the reason against state encouragement of such pursuits. The labours of an eastern scholar are but too often on a par in point of currency and usefulness with those of the mere antiquarian, and remind us of the epigram addressed to Thomas Hearne. “Quoth Time one day to Thomas Hearne Whatever I forget, you learn; D—n it quoth Hearne, in furious fret,  Whate’er I learn you soon forget.” It will have been observed, that we have been speaking throughout of the application of funds appropriated by the State to the end of public instruction, and with such funds we unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly advocate the employment of the English language as the chief means, if by instruction be intended, as we presume it is, instruction in European science and literature, a very large body of which is contained in the English language. As to the appropriation of funds left by private donors towards the foundation of schools and colleges—in the application of such funds due regard must be had to the intentions of the donor if possible, and in such cases many very difficult and delicate questions may arise, which the most subtle casuist could hardly resolve so as quite to satisfy all tender consciences. The scheme of the Hoogly College is in our mind at the time of writing, and we cannot but confess, that we have our doubts, whether in that case, considering from whom the funds came and the terms of the bequest, rather too English a character has not been given to the institution; however, it is a difficult and an invidious question to discuss, and one which we shall at present avoid, with some intention, however, of recurring to it, and taking the opportunity presented by the establishment of that College, to discuss the general principles that ought to govern in like cases the creation of such institutions. In the meantime it must not hastily be taken for granted, that we intend censure of the Government plan, which has questionless been well considered: but, as far as at present informed, we think the principle open to some doubt. We republish recent articles from the Reformer and the Friend of India on the latter portion of C. E. T.’s letter which relates to the English and native languages. The Reformer, it will be observed, shakes hands with C. E. T. and acknowledges him as a peacemaker. The Friend of India, on the contrary, still carries on the 88

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war, but in so wounded and disabled a condition, that if he had not felt himself bound in honor to continue his protection to a whole brood of little vernacularists whom he has for some time past been sheltering under his wing, we think that he would have followed the sensible example of his brother Editor. How lame he has become, will be seen at once from the precarious nature of the props on which he is obliged to lean. C. E. T. asserted that although the vernacular languages may be sufficient for the purposes of a liberal education a hundred years hence, they certainly are not so now. How does the Friend of India meet this? Not by denying it, which he could not do, but by arguing that something less than the period mentioned will suffice to make them fit. This is mere special pleading. The question at issue was not, whether exactly 100 years, or 20 years mere or less, is the period within which a vernacular literature will be formed sufficient to give the Indian student a liberal education in the European sense of the term, but whether such a literature does or does not exist at present. The Friend of India acknowledges that it does not, from which it follows that we must teach English till such a vernacular literature is created, whenever that may be. The Friend of India says that less than 100 years will suffice to create such a literature, and what are his reasons? The native languages, he says, want pliancy, and they want a larger vocabularly of scientific terms to adapt them to the present state of European knowledge. Plianow will be obtained by use, and as two-thirds of the English scientific terms have been engrafted on that language within the last fifty years, there is no reason to suppose that a longer period will be required to accomplish the same object in India. We have nothing to say against this; but the Friend of India has overlooked a far more essential want than either of those which he has mentioned—the want of books.3 The Bengalee is a language without a literature. It cannot boast of a single standard work. There are a few school books, and there is the Bible, but with these exceptions, the entire body of European learning, all our works of science, all our works of imagination, have to be reproduced in this as well as in the other Indian languages. How long it will be before this takes place, we do not pretend to say, but we are sure that until it does take place, English must be had recourse to for the instruction of all who aspire to a liberal education. We are also sure that a knowledge of English science must precede the transfer of that science into the native languages, and the sooner we lay the foundation, the faster the superstructure is likely to be erected. The philanthropy of the Friend of India is startled at the idea of 100 years being necessary to put India on the same footing as England in regard to that great ultimate medium of national instruction, a vernacular literature. He seems to forget that we are talking of nations not of individuals. We shall probably be dead 20 years hence, but the nation will be alive, and, we hope, will be in a more flourishing state than ever, at the end of this, as well as of the following century. Without including Chaucer and other writers whose works are in too antiquated a style to be of much use at present, the existing standard of English literature is the growth of the last three hundred years; but do we enjoy it, or profit by it less, 89

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because it has been so long in making? The generations which will exist in India 100 years hence and afterwards, will not thank the Friend of India for having left them out of account. There is a narrow, and there is an enlarged philanthropy, and we think that if the Friend of India would stretch his vision into the future, he would see things which are not dreamt of in his present philosophy. In literature as in politics, we do not agree with those who confine their attention to providing for the wants of the passing time. The Friend of India asks whether the great body of the people are to be left in a state of ignorance, while a vernacular literature, capable of becoming the medium of a liberal education, is being formed? We answer this question by another. Will the great body of the people ever be able to receive a liberal education? A life devoted to manual labour from an early age, does not admit of much mental cultivation. Even in England, the most civilized country in the world, the utmost that is aimed at in regard to the working classes, who compose the great body of the people, is to teach them to read, write and cast accounts. Nay, many sincere philanthropists have been content that they should merely be taught to read their Bible. We are anxious that the working classes should have all the mental cultivation which their leisure will admit, and it will not be difficult to provide for this object, at the same time that the process of English instruction, and the transfer of English knowledge into the vernacular languages is going on among the higher orders. There is one class of the community which devotes itself to intellectual, and another which devotes itself to manual labour. For the former, the extensive use of the English language will be indispensable for a long time to come. With regard to the latter, the books which already exist in the native languages are rather above than below the standard of what the same class of people generally peruse in England. But we would by all means have better and better books in the vernacular languages prepared for the labouring class, and knowledge made of more and more easy attainment by them during their short intervals of leisure. The Friend of India next acquaints us that an “acquaintance with a foreign language which confers wealth and distinction, is more likely to narrow the mind with selfishness than to expand it with benevolence,”—that it will “inspire the English scholars with anything but a desire to diminish their own importance by the elevation of the class below them,” and he attributes the little attention which is paid by the natives to the vernacular language entirely to their love for English. All this we deny. English literature is based upon totally opposite principles from the Sanskrit and Arabic literatures. It is true that they teach arrogance and exclusiveness, but English literature, perhaps because it is imbued with the spirit of a religion, the great characteristic of which is its tendency to elevate the mass of the people, teaches moderation and diffusive benevolence. The native inhabitants of Calcutta who are most distinguished for their support of every benevolent design, are those who have drunk deepest of our English literature. So far, also, from having shown any desire to keep their superior knowledge to themselves, they are the only class who have made any efforts in the cause of popular education. The Hindu College was founded by them. The late Rammohun Roy, 90

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Kaleenath Chowdry, and other individuals from among this class have established schools at their own expense. Even the poor students of the Hindu College, who have no money to spare, devote a portion of their time to the instruction of their countrymen, and in this way several free schools have been established, two at least of which we know to be still in existence. There are also several schools, one of which, that of Gour Mohun Eddy, is a very large one, which are supported by natives as a mode of gaining their livelihood. These facts prove that there never was a more unfounded imputation than that the tendency of English knowledge, acquired through the English language, is “to narrow the mind with selfishness,” and “to inspire the English scholars with anything but a desire to diminish their own importance by the elevation of the class below them.” The fact has been exactly the reverse of this. If it were necessary to do so, we could mention numerous other instances in support of our assertion. Out of forty-one ex-students of the Delhi College who have procured employment, a list of whom is given in the appendix to the Report of the Education Committee, no less than sixteen are engaged in the business of instruction, and we know that several others, although officially employed in other duties, devote no inconsiderable proportion of their leisure to the instruction of others. Wherever the youth educated in this manner go, the same effect is seen. They seem to consider the establishment and support of schools, the convincing others of the superiority of European knowledge, and the communication of that knowledge to them as their pleasure as well as their duty. It is a matter of course with them. Their letters are full of it. They have evidently fixed their pride, not in keeping their knowledge to themselves, but in converting others to it. It is true that most of the school instruction now given by them is in the English language, because that language affords at present the only effectual means of giving a good education, and because there is a great demand for well educated young men. It is difficult to get qualified native teachers to go to places even in the neighbourhood of Calcutta for less than one hundred rupees a month. English must become a much more common acquirement than it is at present, before much attention will be paid to the vernacular languages. So long as the demand for good English scholars is so much out of proportion to the supply, the rising generation will continue to devote their principal attention to English; but bye-and-bye there will be less to be got by English; the demand for books in the vernacular languages will be greater, owing to the more general diffusion of intelligence and curiosity, and then it will be worth the while of the educated youth to become authors of books in the vernacular languages, and teachers of schools in those languages. Even now, they never show any aversion to communicate knowledge through a vernacular medium, when that happens to be the most suitable for their object. They, of course, answer the enquiries of their countrymen and converse with them on the subject of their studies, which they are always sufficiently ready to do, in the vernacular language. The other assertion, that the small degree of attention which is at present paid to the vernacular languages, is owing to the superior degree of attention which is paid to English, is equally unfounded. Were the vernacular languages cultivated 91

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more than they are at present before English came into fashion? We think not. They were not cultivated at all till lately, and although English makes much more rapid strides at present, yet there is every sign of the vernacular languages also making steady progress. The sales of books in the vernacular languages effected by the School Book Society, which is the best index to which we could have recourse, have considerably increased during the two last years, although English instruction has been carried on during the same period to a greater height than it ever was before. The following contrasted statement is taken from the two last biennial reports of the School Book Society: 1832 and 1833. Bengalee, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,896 Hindustanee, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,077 Hinduce, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,514 Uriya, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 815

1834 and 1835. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,754 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,384 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,171 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .834

There is a great demand at present for English, but it does not follow that if this did not exist, there would be an equal or nearly equal demand for Bengalee. The cause of the demand for English does not apply to Bengalee. English possesses a noble literature, a most effectual instrument for bestowing the best education which is to be had in the world. Bengalee has no literature worth speaking of, and it can at present be made the medium of imparting only the meanest education. The demand for English will, however, in the course of a few years assuredly produce a far more extensive demand for the vernacular languages. A general craving for education will be excited among classes who cannot afford an English education. A demand for books in the vernacular languages will consequently arise, and when this once takes place, there will be no want of authors in those languages. English literature took its great start, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at a period when the learned languages were cultivated to a greater extent than they had ever been before. The truth is that they had been cultivated so effectually, that intelligence had become very generally diffused, and a class of people had arisen who, without knowing Latin, wanted some mental aliment, and hence arose a demand for a vernacular literature. Last of all, the Friend of India utters a lament over the fact, that while the School Book Society sold during the last two years 31,649 English, they only disposed of 5,754 Bengalee books, the blame of which he imputes entirely to us Europeans, and calls for the adoption of immediate steps to remove the opprobrium. We ourselves entertain no such concern. We have already shown that this excess of demand for foreign, over native literature, is merely an indication of a nation in the first stage of improvement from without. English is at present the most direct and effectual means of acquiring European knowledge. It is therefore in great demand among those classes who can afford to study it. The desire for education will descend lower and lower. At last it will reach those classes who cannot afford to study English, and then a demand for books in the vernacular 92

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language will spring up. We have nothing to blame ourselves for. This is precisely the process by which we have ourselves arrived at our present high state of civilization, and if we let it go on, it will inevitably produce the same result in this country. The Friend of India calls for the application of an instant remedy for the evil which he has conjured up. What would he have? Would he have more books printed in the vernacular languages? There are as many now as there is any effectual demand for. Only 5,754 were sold during the last two years by the School Book Society. Would he, therefore, have them print 50,000 more, in addition to their existing stock, for the next two years? Would he wish more books to be printed in the vernacular languages in proportion as they are not wanted?! Any attempt to anticipate the demand for books in those languages would be a job from the very first; just as much so as the gold-mohur-a-page Arabic Translations. There would be this difference between the two plans, that while one was obviously intended only for the learned, the other would have an appearance of being popular, but there would be no more real demand for the one than for the other. After the books were translated and printed, they would lie rotting on the shelves, and the paid translator (for he must be paid according to this system of anticipating the real demand) would be the only person who would profit by the transaction. Besides, we contend that it is neither by bare translations, nor by European authors, that India will be enlightened. The part we have to perform at present, is to saturate the country with European knowledge through the direct English medium, and in due time the native literati, out of their fulness, will produce original works suited to the taste of their countrymen. What would have been thought of a scheme for enlightening England in the time of Henry VIII, by unidiomatical translations of French and Italian books made, not by Englishmen, but by French and Italians? We are satisfied that nothing but evil would result from the Government interfering to anticipate the period when a demand for books in the vernacular languages will take place in the natural course of things. It would put the whole process of national improvement out of joint. English is at present the most advantageous thing which those classes which possess literary leisure can study, and whatever discourages them from studying it, and prematurely induces them to turn their principal attention to the vernacular languages, must do harm. It would be exactly analogous to the folly of which the United States of America have been guilty, who, impatient to have manufactures before they came in the natural course of events, have turned a portion of their capital from the more profitable employment of agriculture to the less profitable one of manufactures. There is, however, one way in which the Government may with the greatest possible advantage to the country, not create an artificial demand for the vernacular languages, but remove artificial obstacles which prevent the natural demand from having free scope. We refer to the exclusion of Persian from the Courts and the adoption of the vernacular languages in them. This change, which is urgently required on judicial grounds, would also be of infinite benefit to the literature of the country. It would do more 93

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towards the creation of a vernacular literature than if Government were to spend a crore of rupees in the translating and printing of books. This would be going to the root of the matter. It would give scope to the natural demand, and a supply would soon follow. We consider this to be the point upon which the intellectual and moral improvement of the country now mainly depends. The educated classes are at present bound down to the study of a literature as barren and unimproving as it is possible to conceive any of equal extent to be. By the disuse of Persian in the Courts, the mind of the country will be disenthralled. Those who have leisure, will learn English, and those who have not, will cultivate the vernacular language; while not the least advantageous result will be, that the English rulers will always be obliged to make themselves acquainted with the vernacular language, which we fear is not at present the case in Bengal. We apologise to our readers for the length of this article, but when our brother Editors write essays in the shape of leading articles, we must write essays in reply. Having now fully stated our sentiments on the subject, we shall not willingly recur to it.

ON THE MEANS OF EDUCATING THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. (From the Reformer.) The end and object of education is to impart knowledge. But knowledge from the very commencement of the world, with but occasional interruptions, has been progressing to that state in which we now find it among the enlightened portion of mankind; it is still in a progressive state, and will continue so to the end of time. The duty of those who are engaged in the great work of education is to impart to the people knowledge in the most perfect form available. It is therefore evident that in selecting means for the attainment of this object, the chief point for consideration is the adoption of that language which may furnish the most convenient vehicle for the conveyance of knowledge. But then the circumstances of the learner with reference to that language is also a point of serious consideration, and one which may often render the choice of the language best suited to the purpose altogether nugatory. The two languages which present themselves as eligible vehicles for the communication of knowledge to the Natives of India are the English and the vernacular. The former, because it is highly refined and contains in it one of the most perfect treasures of knowledge which the present time can afford; and the latter, because it is the language of the people, it is the language in which every man among the natives of India can be addressed without any previous train [Illegible Text] in regard to them it is therefore the readiest [Illegible Text] for the communication of knowledge. Much can be said in favor of the adoption of either of these languages to the purposes of our national education; many men of great information, talent, and judgement have therefore advocated either the one or the 94

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other side of the question; a circumstance which is much to be deplored, for it tends to create a division among the friends and supporters of the cause, by leading their energies, in different, and often, contrary directions. We therefore think it highly necessary for the well being and advancement of this nation that a mutual understanding take place between the advocates of these two systems of native education. Circumstances have lately occurred which afford us sanguine hope, that this desideratum will soon be supplied, that the advocates of the English and the vernacular languages will unite their energies in the common cause, and by that union give an impetus to the work of the enlightenment of the people of this country, which it has not hitherto received. Some of the advocates of the English language, considering the question with reference to the means at present available for the translation of the stock of knowledge contained in that language to the vernacular language of the country, have hastily come to the conclusion, that there is no other way of imparting a full measure of knowledge to the people of India, but teaching them the English language, and thus at once placing the whole treasure of knowledge contained in that language within their teach. On the other hand, some of the advocates of the vernacular language maintaining, and not without reason, that it will not be possible to teach English to the mass of the people, have come to the conclusion, that English ought not to be taught, and that translations of the most useful English works should be made for the communication of knowledge to the natives in their vernacular language. This is precisely the state of the question between the two parties, who are both equally desirous of educating the people of India, and promoting their enlightenment. Among other signs which lead us to expect that a reconciliation of the difference on this subject will soon take place between the contending parties, is the letter of C. E. T. in the Hurkaru of the 6th instant. We regret it is not in our power to reprint this article, for it contains many valuable observations on the subject of Native education, and coming as it does vouched by initials of no insignificant authority, it affords us sincere gratification C. E. T. has been one of the chief advocates of English education. His views, however, as developed in the paper before us, do not on this point differ from ours, who have generally advocated education in the vernacular language. The following extract from his letter, furnishes the outlines of his view in regard to the use of the English and the vernacular as applicable to the people of India. We do not advocate the exclusive use of the vernacular; the study of the English we have always maintained to be necessary for a portion of our countrymen; particularly at the present moment; for as C. E. T. very justly observes, “the vernacular language may become sufficient for the purposes of liberal education a century hence; but it certainly is not so now.” The following extract will more fully develope our view of the question. “At least the two next generations of the upper and middle classes must be educated by means of foreign languages, and it is to be hoped that from among them numerous authors will arise, to enrich their national language with works in every department of literature and science. My desire is, that they should not only study to the full our medicine, our

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mathematics and our natural philosophy, but that they should also imbibe the spirit of our works of taste, imagination, history and morals, until they have a Shakespeare, a Hume, a Milton of their own.”

Our desire is the same: we wish our youth to learn English that they may become thoroughly acquainted with the arts and sciences, and having possessed themselves of the treasure of knowledge found in that language, impart it in their own vernacular to the mass of their countrymen, who cannot for obvious reasons be made to learn a foreign language so differently from their own, as the English is. This then is the only way of reconciling the difference of opinion which has hitherto divided the efforts of the friends of native education. Some uniform plan, based on the lucid and judicious principles laid down by C. E. T., and concurred in by us, should be adopted for the guidance of all those who come to labor in this vineyard. It is then that we will see the full display of the talents and energies of the rising generation, and have some sure hope of ultimate success. It is an admitted fact that at the present day the whole treasure of modern arts and sciences is to be found in the English language. In it, therefore, the Natives of India have the readiest means for the improvement of the mind: they have not to make discoveries, but to receive the discoveries already made by the collective exertions of the civilized world for ages past. Another equally admitted fact is, that the mass of the people of India cannot be efficiently instructed in any other but their vernacular language the colloquial idiom of which no European can acquire in perfection. It is therefore indisputable, that a portion of the natives must first acquire a knowledge of the English language. This measure is in fact a necessary preparatory step towards the establishment of a system of permanent national education in the vernacular language. The high reputation which English at present enjoys among those who are totally ignorant of it, arises not so much from its intrinsic superiority over any language that is used in India, as from its being the language of our rulers and of the commercial class of the metropolis. These circumstances are sufficient to account for the desire which the inhabitants of Calcutta and its neighbourhood display to acquire a proficiency in it. The taste therefore which the facts noted in the above extract prove as existing among the natives, is more local than one is apt to imagine at the first glance. They do not shew, that if knowledge could be brought to the doors of the people in the interior, and offered to them in the native garb they would not prefer it to the study of the English as a means of acquiring that knowledge. The acquisition of scientific and historical knowledge has a peculiar charm which the dry study of a language has not; and this charm is in none more potent than in those who are acquainted with no other language but their mother tongue. The natural curiosity which Providence has implanted in the bosom of the savage as well as the civilized man, finds a gratification in the contemplation of the wonders which history and the sciences open before him. As he advances in his studies, his labor is rewarded, and every remuneration adds a stimulus to further exertions. Thus he goes on from step to step, until, without being wearied, he arrives at the summit of the hill of knowledge. But not so the 96

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man who has imposed upon himself the task of learning a new language totally different from his mother tongue in idiom, in style, and in pronunciation. The acquirement of these present before him so dreary a desert that he dreads to venture upon it. Should he, however, urged on by some collateral impulse, advance a few steps, instead of gratification, further difficulties arise before him. The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! These reflections are not intended to invalidate the force of the testimony arrayed by C. E. T. but they prove, what he himself admits, that for the mass of the people, who are situated beyond those influences to which we attribute the taste for English study displayed by the natives of Calcutta and its neighbourhood, vernacular language can alone form an efficient vehicle of knowledge.

THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES. (From the Friend of India.) We were unable last week to advert to more than one of the two subjects of discussion between L. W. and C. E. T. We now proceed to make a few remarks on the second, and by far the more important branch of the controversy; the mode in which knowledge is to be communicated to India. Apparently there is no difference of opinion between them on the subject. L. W. says, “I strongly advocate the study of English for all who have time, talent, and fortune really to acquire it, and to use it. But for the education of the body of the people, nothing—nothing but the vernaculars can ever be generally useful:” and C. E. T. observes, “I entirely agree with the Friend of India and the Reformer. They both advocate the teaching of English conjointly with the vernacular languages;—the English to those who have leisure to cultivate it to good purpose, and the vernacular languages to all, high and low, rich and poor.” We assumed last week, that C. E. T. was willing to patronize the vernacular languages, with the understanding that they were to be written in the Roman character; we shall be most happy to find that the supposition was unfounded. If so, then JONIUS, L. W., C. E. T., the Reformer, and this Journal, are agreed upon the great principle, that we are to have English for the units, the Native languages for the millions. The only difference is upon a question of time; and here the difference is great, and irreconcileable. C. E. T. says, that the vernacular languages may become sufficient for the purposes of a liberal education a century hence, but they certainly are not so now: thus postponing indefinitely the adoption of the vernacular languages in Native education. That the Native languages are susceptible of improvement we readily admit. But certainly languages which are already capable of communicating to the people the sublime truths of Christian doctrine, cannot be so very unfit to become even in 97

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their present state, the channel of a liberal education. They want, it is true, that pliancy which a little use will soon impart: they want also a larger vocabulary of scientific terms to adapt them to the present state of European knowledge. But why should a century be asked for these improvements? Our own tongue affords an instance of the rapidity with which new terms may be engrafted on a language, when the spirit of improvement is abroad. Of the terms belonging to the various branches of science which are now part and parcel of the English language, have not more than two-thirds been created in the last fifteen years? And why should the Native languages of this Presidency, which are naturally copious and elegant, and which comprise words borrowed from the Sungskrit, the Arabic, the Persian, the Portuguese, the Malay, and the English, be thought incapable of receiving such an accession of scientific terms, as to fit them within a very short period for every purpose of a liberal education. It may be said that these new terms will not be understood. Certainly not, till they are explained and demonstrated; nor will they be understood by the Native student of English, when he finds them in an English work, till they are thus explained to him. Indeed they originally required to be explained to students in England itself, as much as they will require it in the Indian forms into which they must be cast. C. E. T. appears to have substituted the present for the future when he observes, “India is gradually becoming leavened through the introduction of European knowledge, and the lower classes are learning in their own, what the higher classes have learned in the English language.” If this were indeed the case, then all ground of controversy among the friends of native improvement would cease. But the fact is that they are not thus taught. C. E. T. has anticipated the state of India, on his own calculation, by a whole century. The complaint of those who advocate the vernacular cause is, that so little effort has been made, or is now intended, to impart European knowledge to the great body of the people through their own language, the only medium through which that knowledge can ever reach them. The Education Board has embraced in turn the patronage of Sungskrit, of Arabic, and now of English; but the vernacular languages have never received any attention, beyond a passing compliment to their paramount importance. The good wishes and even the promises of the Committee are not withheld from the languages of the people, but all their active efforts are directed to the dissemination of English. The ample funds at their disposal are absorbed in purchasing English books, and founding English schools. Some of their most influential members have publicly maintained the opinion, that European knowledge can be introduced into India through the medium of the English language alone: and though some of their colleagues may possibly dissent from this notion, still it is the ruling principle of action in the Committee; and a complete revolution of plan must be brought about, before the vernacular languages can receive from them that attention which is now bestowed on English. C. E. T. states, that a century hence the languages of the country may be fitted to impart a liberal education. Are the great body of the people, the tiers élât of India, then to be left during this long period to ignorance? To declare that the vernacular 98

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languages are not as yet fitted for the communication of ideas, and to make no effort for their improvement, what is it but to consign the people to the same endless, hopeless barbariam, to which they have been reduced by the predominant cultivation first of Sungskrit, and then of Persian? With the present sentiments of the majority of the Committee, when is this century of improvement which has been fixed for the languages of the country, to begin? And are we immortal, and our dominion, and consequent power to do good, eternal, that we are thus coolly to deal with centuries as if they were single years? But it is said, Give the upper and middle classes for two generations, that is, during half a century, a liberal education in a foreign tongue, and they will raise the nation; they will produce authors to enrich the national languages with works in every department of science and literature. There was a time when England presented a striking analogy to the present condition of India; when all knowledge that was valuable, existed in the copious, polished, refined language of the Romans; when the Latin language was exclusively cultivated by all who aspired to distinction in Church and State, and when the English language was poor and simple. Was it then by the exclusive cultivation of Latin that the English language was improved and enriched? When the human mind in Europe began to awake from the lethargy of ages, were not the undue estimation of ancient, and the degradation of vernacular literature the great causes of prolonging the deplorable dormancy; which at length was effectually dissipated only when the cerement of antiquity had been wholly burst asunder? It is said moreover that the Native students of English will transfer the knowledge they have acquired into their own native tlanguage; and in length of time something of the kind can scarcely fail to be realized. We fear however that the monopoly of knowledge they will enjoy through the medium of a tongue unknown to the people, will produce for a long, long period the same haughty contempt of the vulgar, and of their language which the same cause has produced in the instances of Sungskrit and Persian. An acquaintance with a foreign tongue, which confers wealth and distinction, is more likely to narrow the mind with selfishness, than to expand it with benevolence. It seldom fails to bring in its train the arrogance and inaccessibility of aristocratic feelings. It will, we fear, in the present case raise the English scholars above the common people, and inspire them with any thing but a desire to diminish their own importance by the elevation of the class below them. Indeed so completely has the Anglomania, like other follies, descended from the higher to the inferior ranks, that there is scarcely a good English scholar among the natives who can write his native tongue with tolerable accuracy. The great majority of the students of English, have even a greater contempt for the vernacular language than the Hindoo priest; and this feeling is too likely to increase with the increase of the cause; the wide disproportion of attainments between those who have learned English, and those who are acquainted only with Bengalee. The vernacular languages are not likely, we fear, to be enriched by the learned simply from motives of patriotism and benevolence. It is the gradual elevation of the people through the medium of their own tongue 99

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which can alone effectually constrain those who are so greatly raised above them by their familiarity with English literature, to come down to their level, and impart to them of their stores. Such, at least, is our humble opinion; and it appears to receive confirmation from the fact, that it was not till late years, when a spirit of enquiry had been diffused among the common people, through the encreased use of the vernacular medium, that the Hindoo priesthood ever condescended to write in their own tongue. C. E. T. gives us a test of the public feeling among the Natives regarding the cultivation of English, by citing the sale of the School Book Society’s publications. While 31.649 works in English were sold in two years, only 5754 Bengalee works found purchasers among them. It is certainly not to the credit of the British name, that eighty years after we have obtained the complete command of Bengal, the demand for books in the popular language, among thirty millions of people should fall short of six thousand in two years. There must have been some strange and inexcusable neglect in some quarter, to have led to a result, which might make it almost a matter of doubt whether the country had really been administered by the most civilized people on earth, for so long a period. The fact is one which we ought rather to conceal than to proclaim. Supposing this to be the true index of the public feeling among the Natives, where does the blame rest, but at our doors, who having invaluable knowledge in our possession, have so signally failed to diffuse it through the country, that only one book has been sold in a twelvemonth in the language of the people, among an average population of twelve thousand? What is the use we are to make of this fact? Does it not appear to furnish the strongest possible argument for taking immediate steps to remove the opprobrium; for to us, and to us alone, does the shame of this neglect belong. With the light of experience shining upon us; with the fact, demonstrated by the history of three centuries, that the elevation of Europe has been owing to the elevation of the people, and not of a privileged class,—to the cultivation of the vernacular, and not of foreign languages, we have in India pursued the same course, by which the Bramhuns and the Moosulmans had contrived to leave the great body of the people in the grossest ignorance. We have governed India on Oriental, and not on European principles. We have neglected and discouraged the language of the people, and now we perceive that the people themselves neglect and despise it. We have acted on the principle that all knowledge was to come into India, as in the days of priestcraft and kingcraft, by a foreign medium. We are telling the people from the seat of influence, that their languages require a hundred years of polish, before they can be fit for use. Even now when the British Government has at length determined that India shall participate in the great movement, which during the last fifty years has been impelling forward the family of man, this great boon of knowledge is still to be confined to the few who can master a foreign language; it is still to be the patrimony of a limited and exclusive caste, and the great bulk of the people are to be left in the gloom of ignorance for another century,—that is, as far as we are concerned, for ever.

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Notes 1 Note.—366 Students of the Hindu College pay from five to seven rupees per mensem each, for their tuition, and those who can afford it will probably soon be required to pay something at all the institutions under the General Committee. 2 This is a most essential part of the process, and should consist in striking out all passages, similes and epithets, which are not easily rendered intelligible to natives. 3 As the Friend of India disputes the accuracy of C. E. T.’s conjecture, we should like to know how long, in his opinion, it would take to create in Bengalee a literature equal, not to the English, but to the French German, Italian or any of the second-rate European national literatures which are at all fit to be the medium of a liberal education.

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12 LORD AUCKLAND, ‘MINUTE ON NATIVE EDUCATION, 24TH NOVEMBER 1839’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 147–170

Minute by the Right Hon’ble Lord Auckland, the GovernorGeneral, dated 24th November 1839.1 NATIVE EDUCATION. Minute by Lord Auckland, 24th Nov. 1839.

I have not hitherto, since I assumed charge of the Government, recorded my sentiments at any length on the important questions which regard the best means of promoting education amongst the natives of India. The subject is one of the highest interest, and especially calls for calm consideration and for combined effort. But unhappily I have found violent differences existing upon it, and it was for a time (now I trust past, or fast passing away) a watchward for violent dissension and in some measure of personal feelings. I judged it best, under these circumstances, to abstain from what might have led me into unprofitable controversy, and to allow time and experience to act, with their usual healing and enlightening influence, upon general opinion. I may earnestly hope that we are now not very far remote from arriving at some satisfactory result in respect to our educational controversies, and I will approach the topic, with the hope of contributing in some degree to this end. 2. Annexed to this paper will be found a note2 compiled by Mr. Colvin, containing a condensed view of the principal facts, and of occasional notices of some considerations suggested by them, which relate to the general progress and present condition of the plans of native instruction as pursued in different parts of India, and of the tenor of the most important directions on the subject of public instruction which have been received from the Hon’ble the Court of Directors, and with reference to those facts, as they apply particularly to the progress effected in the different 102

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Presidencies, and to the circumstances which have come under my observation, when at the seat of several of our institutions in Bengal, I will endeavour to state with all fairness the conclusions to which I have brought my mind on this subject. 3. I have first however to state my opinions on two specific references connected with the questions which are before me from the President in Council— the one relating to the appropriation of Funds heretofore assigned to particular Institutions, and the other to Mr. Adam’s scheme for the improvement of the Indigenous Schools in the Bengal and Behar districts. 4. Before entering on the details of the first of these subjects, I may observe that it may in my opinion be clearly Rs. admitted, and I am glad from the Parliamentary grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,888 Interest on Government notes . . . . . . . . . . . 3,030 papers before me to see that this Madrissa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,666 opinion is supported by the authority Sanscrit College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,055 of Mr. Prinsep, that the insufficiency Delhi-Escheat Fund. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 of the funds assigned by the state for Benares College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,701 the purposes of public instruction Agra College – has been amongst the main causes Endowment of villages . . . . . . Rs. 1,175 of the violent disputes which have Interest of Government notes . 622 taken place upon the education ques1,797 tion, and that if the funds previously Per mensem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,387 appropriated to the cultivation of oriental literature had been spared, and other means placed at the disposal of the promoters of English Education, they might have pursued their object aided by the good wishes of all. In the Bengal Presidency, with its immense territory and a revenue of above 13 millions, the yearly expenditure of the Government on this account is little in excess of £24,000 or 2,40,000 rupees, and I need not say how in a country like India, it is to the Government that the population must mainly look for facilities in the acquisition of improved learning. There is, I well know, the strongest desire on the part of the authorities both in England and India to support every well-arranged plan for the extension of education, and the despatches of the Hon’ble Court are full of the evidence of their anxiety on the subject. I may cite in particular the declaration of a despatch of the 18th February 1824.* “In the meantime we wish you to be fully apprized of our zeal for the progress and improvement of education among the natives of India and of our willingness to make considerable sacrifices to that important end, if proper means for the attainment of it could be pointed out to us.” Such we may be assured is the feeling by which the Court is up to this time guided, and the difficulty has been not in any unwillingness to grant the money necessary to give effect to good plans, but in framing such plans, on principles admitted to be satisfactory, and in finding fit agents for the execution of them. I have alluded to the limited amount and to the existing appropriation of our present funds, not certainly with the slightest idea of casting reproach upon the previous course of administration, but merely as a fact which is of importance in its bearing upon former discussions. The sum immediately at command was 103

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limited. Parties wishing to promote the diffusion of knowledge in different forms contended eagerly, the one to retain, the other to gain, that sum for the schemes to which they were respectively favourable, and had fresh sums been at once procurable, no one might have objected to their employment for a full and fair experiment on the new ideas which began to prevail. The inference to which I would point from these facts and observations is that a principle of wise liberality, not stinting any object which can reasonably be recommended, but granting a measured and discriminating encouragement to all, is likely to command general acquiescence, and to obliterate, it may be hoped, the recollection of the acrimony which has been so prejudicial to the public weal in the course of past proceedings. The Hon’ble Court have already, as was to be expected, acted on this principle. They have made a separate grant for the publication of works of interest in the ancient literature of the country to be disbursed through the appropriate channel of the Asiatic Society, and this measure is one which has been hailed with universal satisfaction. 5. On the merits of the first of the two questions immediately referred to me, which I would consider in the spirit which I have here commended, I would at once say, on the position that the Government has given a pledge that the funds heretofore assigned to particular Institutions shall continue to be so for ever appropriated, that I cannot hesitate to express my conviction that the acts or intentions of the Government will not justly bear this very exclusive and restrictive construction. I remember the discussion of April 1836 and certainly I did not understand that the Resolution to which the Government then came was intended to have the force of a particular guarantee of the expenditure, wholly within each institution (whatever might be the nature of the instruction to which they might be devoted), of the funds which might have been assigned to it. The plain meaning of the proceedings and the professions of the Government seems to me to have been that, stipends having been everywhere discontinued, it would do nothing towards the abolition of the ancient seminaries of Oriental learning, so long as the community might desire to take advantage of them, their preservation as Oriental seminaries being alone at that time within the contemplation of either party. Had it been intended to promise that, whether Arabic, Sanscrit, or English were taught, the particular Institutions should at all events be retained, the meaning would surely have been expressed in much more distinct terms. My impression of the state of the case is briefly this—that the General Committee viewing the maintenance of the Oriental Colleges, on the footing to which I have referred, as prescribed and secured, proposed to consolidate all separate grants into one general fund, the savings of which, after the Oriental Colleges should have been thus provided for, should be held by them to be clearly applicable to their general purposes. The answer of the Government on 13th April 1836, after a discussion in which I in the first instance expressed a willingness to assent to the propositions of the Committee, was in these guarded terms—“Under existing circumstances, the Government in India thinks it will not be advisable to make the consolidation into one fund of all grants, made heretofore by Government, for purposes of education, as suggested by the Sub-Committee of Finance, nor does his Lordship in 104

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Per Annum

Amount of stipends Dec. 1834

Council imagine that the Committee will be put to much inconvenience by drawing its funds separately as heretofore and crediting them whether derived from a Government monthly grant or from the interest of stock previously accumulated, to the particular seminaries to which they have been assigned3 leaving any excess available in any institution to be appropriated as may appear most equitable with reference to the orders of Government, 7th March 1835,4 and the pledges and assurances that may have been given to particular institutions.” The alteration of the word “belong” to “have been assigned” as marked above, will shew the spirit of compromise amongst varying opinions in which the draft was agreed to. There was here no statement that the consolidation was a thing wholly out of the question. The diversion of funds from particular Institutions was admitted as a measure which might or might not be proper, and (the circumstances of all institutions not being before the Government) there is a reservation for the pledges and assurances “that may have been given” to some of them. Under such a reservation, if a specific promise in perpetuity of a particular sum to a particular institution could be shewn, such a promise would have of course to be respected, but otherwise by these orders of April 1836, things were left exactly as they stood before. Whilst, however, I am bound to declare that such is my distinct impression on the subject, and whilst for one I would reject the strict principle of absolute and irreclaimable appropriation, I am yet strongly of opinion that it will be best on every account to dispose of the question on the principle of a liberal consideration to all wants and claims. I see no advantage to be gained in this case by a close contest for strict constructions, and having taken a review of money estimates and of local wants, I am satisfied that it will be best to abstract nothing from other useful objects, while I see at the same time nothing but good to be derived from the employment of the funds which have been assigned to each Oriental Seminary, exclusively on instruction in, or in connexion with, that seminary. I would also give a decided preference, within these institutions, to the promotion in the first instance of perfect efficiency in Oriental instruction, and only after that object shall have been properly secured in proportion to the demand for it, would I assign the funds to the creation or support of English classes. At the same time, I would supply to the General Committee of Public Instruction from the revenues of the State any deficiency that this Resolution might cause in the general income at their disposal— and if they should already have partially used for other objects, the savings arisCalcutta Sanscrit College . . . 696 8,352 ing from the seminaries supported by Madrissa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654 7,848 special funds, I would, in recalling such Benares College . . . . . . . . . . 348 4,176 savings, protect the general committee Agra College . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 5,660 from loss on that account. The statement Delhi College . . . . . . . . . . . . 627 7,524 in the margin will shew the contribution TOTAL . . . . 33,560 from the Revenue which this final settleDeduct one-fourth . . . . 8,390 ment of the subject will occasion. It will 25,170 be perceived that, calculating from the TOTAL . . . . 105

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amount of stipends as they existed untouched in the end of 1834, and deducting one-fourth as required at all events for the Oriental colleges under a scheme of scholarships such as I shall hereafter state that I would approve, the additional annual disbursement from the Treasury will be about 25,000 rupees and perhaps there may be 6,000 rupees more per annum, on account of the office, which has been abolished, of Secretary to the Sanscrit college at Benares. I am well persuaded that the Hon’ble Court will approve of our having closed these controversies at this limited amount of increased expense. I would, upon this understanding, willingly join in the direction sent to the general committee in the letter of Mr. Prinsep on the 31st of July last, “to avoid making any alienation” (from the assigned funds of the Oriental Institutions) “without previously soliciting the sanction of Government.” They should, as I have said, be desired to appropriate the funds within the Oriental Colleges, first to Oriental and then to English instruction. I would not, on any account, admit the extension of the system of scholarships within these colleges beyond the general proportion (which should be on a liberal scale) allowed elsewhere, for this would be an excessive and artificial encouragement which might be justly objected to. But I would secure the most eminent Professors for the Colleges. I would encourage the preparation, within the limits of the funds, of the most useful books of instruction, such as of the Siddhants and Sanscrit version of Euclid which Mr. Wilkinson has urged upon us, and I would provide, in some form, which the general committee should be required to take into early consideration, for an improved and effective superintendence of the Oriental colleges of the North-Western Provinces, where I know that such a supervision is very obviously required. Funds that might still remain available could be doubtless to much advantage devoted to European instruction in union with those particular Institutions, and I should look with very warm interest to an efficient scheme for imparting English Education to Mahomedans at the Madrissa in Calcutta. 6. The other reference made to me is with regard to Mr. Adam’s plan for the improvement of indigenous Schools and Teachers. I would observe upon it that it is impossible to read his valuable and intelligent report, without being painfully impressed with the low state of instruction as it exists amongst the immense masses of the Indian population. Attempts to correct so lamentable an evil may well be eagerly embraced by benevolent minds. Yet I cannot but feel with the President in Council that the period has not yet arrived when the Government can join in these attempts with reasonable hope of practical good. When Mr. Adam enforces his views “for the instruction of the poor and ignorant, those who are too ignorant to understand the evils of ignorance and too poor, even if they did, to be able to remove them,”—the inference irresistibly presents itself that among these is not the field in which our efforts can at present be most successfully employed. The small stock of knowledge which can now be given in elementary schools will of itself do little for the advancement of a people. The first step must be to diffuse wider information and better sentiments amongst the upper and middle classes, for it seems, as may be gathered from the best authorities on the subject, that a scheme of general instruction can only be perfect, as it comprehends a 106

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regularly progressive provision for higher tuition. In the European States where such systems have been recently extensively matured, this principle is, I believe, universally observed. There is a complete series of Universities in great Towns, of Academies in Provincial divisions and of small local Schools, all connected in a combined plan of instruction. The extension of the plan to the Parish or Village School has been the last stage, as must naturally have been the case, in the national progress. Mr. Adam’s plan contemplated such a rise of able pupils from the village to the zillah schools, but the suggestion could not immediately have effect. Here we are yet engaged on the formation and efficient direction of our upper institutions. When, indeed, the series of vernacular class of books for our single Zillah Schools, which is still a desideratum, and to which I shall subsequently refer, shall have been published, and their utility shall have been established by practice, Mr. Adam’s recommendations may be taken up with some fairer prospect of advantage. For the present I would confine our measures in reference to his reports to injunctions on the General Committee that they bear in mind his particular suggestions and objects in determining on the series of class books referred to. I would submit the plan to the Hon’ble Court for the expression of their sentiments and wishes, and in the collection of information for an eventual decision I would make use of the experience which the Bombay measures of village instruction, alluded to in the note annexed,5 will have afforded. For this purpose I would communicate Mr. Adam’s report to the Government of Bombay, and ask how far the scheme which he describes is in accordance with that which is pursued in the provinces of that presidency, and what opinion may be formed from the result already obtained by their village schools, of the propriety of carrying out Mr. Adam’s plans in their important parts. The encouragement to existing school masters, which is the leading suggestion in Mr. Adam’s plan, will probably have been largely tried at Bombay, and the extent to which those School Masters have reaped improvement under such encouragement will be a most interesting subject of enquiry. I learn also in the course of my enquiries regarding the previous progress of education in India, that a school society existed for some time in Calcutta, the operations of which were directed with partial success to the amendment of indigenous schools. Mr. Hare will probably be able to explain the history of this society, which drew a grant of 400 or 500 rupees a month from Government, and to give also the causes of its extinction. I would ask this gentleman to favour Government with a report regarding that society,—and I would conclude upon this subject by recording my opinion that when such a scheme as that proposed by Mr. Adam comes to be tried, the arrangements for introducing it should be on a liberal and effective scale, and that it ought not to be undertaken at all, until the Government is satisfied that it has at command a thoroughly zealous and qualified superintendence. 7. Having said thus much in answer to the references made to me by the President in Council, I would proceed to record my observations upon the topics which seem to me most important in regard to our plans of education—I strongly feel that, in all that we can do, we must be prepared for much disappointment in our early efforts to satisfy the demands made upon us on this subject. By some 107

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it will be lamented that we do not at once perfect enlarged schemes for general education, by others it will be regretted that what we do for the best pupils of our few seminaries seems to produce so partial an effect. Feelings of this nature will attend us in whatever attempts we may engage for the improvement of any branch of our Indian Government. Our governing and instructed class belongs to a highly civilized community. It is in active and increasing intercourse with the European world, where, in our advanced state of society, skill and enterprise are daily gaining new triumphs. It is naturally impatient for the introduction in India of every plan which has, though probably after repeated trials and failures, been adopted with success in European countries—and the spirit of free discussion excites benevolent minds to bring forward the most extensive projects. On the other hand, we are dealing with a poor people, to the vast majority of whom the means of livelihood is a much more pressing object than facilities for any better description or wider range of study. Our hold over this people is very imperfect, and our power of offering motives to stimulate their zeal is but of confined extent. The agency which we can employ for reform is extremely narrow and liable to constant derangement. Of those who are willing to devote their energies to the business of giving or superintending instruction, Oriental Scholars are apt to be unduly prepossessed in favour of acquirements obtained by much labour and to which they are indebted for reputation; while mere European Scholars are liable to be ignorant of and neglect national feeling, are at all events incompetent to make a proper use of native means for the execution of their plans. Where even the mind of our able pupil has been very greatly informed and enlightened, the knowledge gained by him may seem to produce no adequately corresponding result in after life. The student may stand alone in the family or society of which he forms a part. These can very generally have few feelings in common with him, and he may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position, or he may yield to the influences by which he is surrounded and accommodate himself to the sentiments and practices which his reason has taught him to disapprove. Add to this, that if he finds that his knowledge opens to him the prospect of advancement, he will, under a restricted competition, be over-confident in his own powers and unreasonable in his expectations, while at the same time he will be tempted to relax in the exertions necessary to maintain, or carry forward, the standard of proficiency at which he had arrived. These are circumstances of the operation of which we must all I think in a greater or less degree have had practical experience. I can only say upon them that we must neither entertain sanguine or premature hopes of general success, nor yet allow ourselves to be seriously discouraged. We must be content to lay even the first rude foundations of good systems, and trust for the rest to time, to the increasing demand of the public and of individuals for the services of educated men, to the extension which must every year take place of the Agency for instruction at the command of Government, and to the certain effects of the spread, however slow, of knowledge, and of the gradual growth of wealth and intelligence in the community. 108

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8. I would in now offering my opinions and suggestions on the present practical directions of our plans, desire to consider the question of our educational policy as one of interest to every portion of the Empire, without minute reference to merely local and temporary discussions. I am aware that we are yet in expectation of the orders of the home authorities6 on the subject of the changes in the scheme of education in Bengal, which were adopted by the Government in 1835. But I would not, on this account, longer withhold the explanation of my own sentiments on the course which should be adopted, and I do not anticipate that in what I shall propose, I shall be found to have deviated in any material degree from the wishes of the Honorable Court. 9. I would first observe that I most cordially agree with the Court in their opinion, which is quoted in para. 45 of Mr. Colvin’s note,7 that, with a view to the moral and intellectual improvement of the people, the great primary object is the extension, among those who have leisure for advanced study, of the most complete education in our power. There cannot, I think, be a doubt of the justice of their statement that “by raising the standard of instruction among these classes, we would eventually produce a much greater and more beneficial change in the ideas and feelings of the community than we can hope to produce by acting directly on the more numerous class.” It is not to be implied from this that in my view elementary education for the mass of the people is a thing necessarily to be neglected, or postponed for an indefinite period, but it will have been seen that the hope of acting immediately and powerfully on the mass of the poor peasantry of India is certainly far from being strong with me. And the practical question, therefore, to which I would before all others give my attention is to the mode in which we may endeavour to communicate a higher education with the greatest prospect of success. 10. One mode which has been ably contended for is that of engrafting European knowledge on the studies of the existing learned classes, of the Moulvees and Pundits of India. I confess that from such means I anticipate only very partial and imperfect results. I would, in the strictest good faith, and to the fullest extent, make good the promise of upholding, while the people resort to them, our established Institutions of Oriental learnings. I would make those Institutions equal sharers with others in any general advantages or encouragements which we are satisfied ought to be afforded with a view to the promotion of due efficiency in study. I would, from the funds which have been before allowed to them, assist in them, as I have already said, any judicious plans for ameliorating the course of study, as by aiding the publication of works which may seem likely to be decidedly useful to the students. Nor am I at all disposed to undervalue the amount of sound education and morality which is to be acquired at these Seminaries even without calling in the resources of European Science and Literature. I will not profess deep respect for the mere laborious study of a difficult language, or of the refinements and subtleties of scholastic learning. But sensible, as assuredly I am, of the radical errors and deficiencies of the oriental system, I am yet aware that the effect of all advanced education, and I will add especially of a Mahomedan 109

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education, is in cherishing habits of reflection, of diligence, and of honourable emulation, that it tends also to elevate the tone of moral character, though its practical effect is unfortunately too frequently marred by the domestic and social habits of Oriental life. Judging, however, from the common principles of human nature, and from such experience as is referred to8 in the case of Mr. Wilkinson of Bhopal, it is not to the students of our Oriental Colleges, trained, as it will be admitted that they are in a faulty system to which they are yet naturally and ardently attached, that I would look for my chief instruments in the propagation of a new knowledge and more enlarged ideas. It was not through the professors of our ancient schools, but by the efforts of original thought and independent minds, that the course of philosophical and scientific investigation and of scholastic discipline was for the most part reformed in Europe. The process of translation, it is to be added, into the learned languages must unavoidably be so slow that, on that account alone, the arguments in favour of a more direct method of proceeding appear to me conclusively convincing. 11. Another class of recommendations is that all the leading facts and principles of our literature and science be transferred by translations into the vernacular tongues. Mr. Hodgson in his book on Education, says,9 “As a practical measure for the immediate adoption of Government, I have no hesitation in saying that to found a college for the rearing of a competent body of translators and of schoolmasters—in other words, for the systematic supply of good vernacular books and good vernacular teachers (leaving the public to employ both, in case the Government fund be adequate to no more than the maintenance of such college) would be an infinitely better disposal of the Parliamentary grant than the present application of it to the training of a promiscuous crowd of English smatterers, whose average period of schooling cannot, by possibility, fit them to be the regenerators of their country, yet for whose further and efficient prosecution of studies, so difficult and so alien to ordinary uses, there is no provision nor inducement whatever.” 12. But those who support this course overlook in the first place the extreme practical difficulty of preparing any very extensive course of translated or adapted works. We are speaking now of the means of an advanced and thorough education, and not of a limited series of works for the purposes of common instruction, to the compilation of which, as I shall have immediate occasion to remark, I am entirely favourable. The difficulties of translation have been illustrated by our knowledge of what has been effected at Bombay, where the object has been prosecuted with much zeal, and I have annexed to this minute, a list10 of the works which have been prepared in Arabic by the European officers attached to the service of the Pasha of Egypt, and it will be seen how very confined the number is, excepting in works of Military, Medical, or other Science. The clear truth seems to be that works of science may, at least to some considerable extent (their range being necessarily contracted), be rendered into other languages within a comparatively moderate period, but the translation, within any time the extent of which we could reasonably calculate, of anything like a sufficient library of works of general 110

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literature, history and philosophy is an impossible task. I have only, therefore, to conclude on this point by stating my entire concurrence in the opinion which has been quoted in the note from a despatch of the Hon’ble Court to the effect “that the higher tone and better spirit of European Literature can produce their full effect only on those who become familiar with them in the original languages.” 13. I would then make it my principal aim to communicate through the means of the English language, a complete education in European Literature, Philosophy and Science to the greatest number of students who may be found ready to accept it at our hands, and for whose instructions our funds will admit of our providing. All our experience proves that, by such a method, a real and powerful stimulus is given to the Native mind. We have seen that, in Bombay, as at Calcutta, from the time at which effective arrangements have been made for the higher branches of instruction in English, the understandings of the students have been thoroughly interested and roused, and that the consequences have wonderfully, to use the words of the Calcutta Committee of Public Instruction in 1831, “surpassed expectation.” The difficulty which attends this course is the very important one, not of principle, but of practice, namely, that the wants and circumstances of our Indian population bring to our Colleges so few who desire, or are able to receive from us the complete English education, which it is our object to impart to them. Those who look with greater confidence to other methods of diffusing knowledge in this country, dwell especially upon this difficulty. Mr. Hodgson argues that we have no reasonable ground to hope here for the same wide study of English Literature, and subsequent use of the information acquired in it for the purposes of vernacular composition, as occurred in the different stages of European civilization with reference to the Greek and Roman models from which that civilization was chiefly derived. His words are,11 “True, the difficult and inapt science of Greece and Rome was in modern Europe, first mastered in itself, and eventually worked into our own speech and minds. But how? by the employment of means adequate to the end,—by the existence of circumstances most powerfully efficient to forward that end. A thousand predisposing causes led a mighty nobility to seek in this lore the appropriate ornament of their rank and station. A church which monopolised a third of the wealth of the continent, called Rome its mother and Greece its foster mother: and throughout the great part of that continent, the law, ecclesiastical and civil, was even lingually Roman. Hence the magnificent endowments and establishments and permanent inducements of all kinds by which a difficult and exotic learning was at length effectually naturalized amongst us. Hence the scholar, if he pleased, might pursue in retirement letters as a profession, assured of a comfortable provision for life; or, if he pleased, he might devote himself to the task of instructing the scions of a most influential and wealthy nobility, all of them, from peculiar association, necessitated to become his pupils, whether they profited by his lessons or not, and thereby affording him the certainty of an enduring means of livelihood; or if he pleased, he might pass from the cloister or the college into the world, and there find the greater part of its most important concerns subservient to the uses and abuses of his peculiar gifts.” 111

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14. Mr. Wilkinson has also on different occasions remarked that it seems to him that Education in English should be confined for the present to the Presidencies and to some of the principal provincial stations, as being the only places at which there is yet an actual demand for it. 15. Mr. Adam says12 of the condition of our English scholars, “Extraordinary efforts have been made to extend a knowledge of the English language to the Natives, but those who have more or less profited by the opportunities presented to them do not find much scope for their attainments which on the other hand little fit them for the ordinary pursuits of native society. They have not received a good Native education, and the English education they have received finds little, if any, use. There is thus a want of sympathy between them and their countrymen, although they constitute a class from which their countrymen might derive much benefit. There is also little sympathy between them and the foreign rulers of the country because they feel that they have been raised out of one class of society without having a recognized place in any other class.” 16. But I believe that in all these opinions, the practical value of superior English acquirements is very greatly under-rated. A familiarity with the general principles of legislation and government, and the power of offering information or opinion upon public affairs in English reports (which is the form in which the higher correspondence regarding the British administration in India, will, of course, always be conducted), must be qualifications so directly useful, as (not to speak of the recommendations of an improved moral character), to ensure to the possessors of them a preference for the most lucrative public employments, after they shall have acquired that knowledge of life and of business, and that good opinion among those who have had opportunities of witnessing their conduct, which mere book-learning never can bestow. There are as yet, no doubt, circumstances of temporary operation, which will keep for a period our best English scholars from reaping from their studies all the worldly profit which will ultimately accrue to them. Our course of instruction has not hitherto been so matured as to include any efficient and general arrangement for giving that knowledge13 of morals, jurisprudence, law and fiscal economy which the Hon’ble Court have so wisely and earnestly insisted on, and which will be most directly useful in the discharge of administrative duties. There are other obstacles also which for a time may impede our young scholars in their desire to obtain public office. They may overestimate their own pretensions, and decline to accept the subordinate situations which alone it may at first be thought right to entrust to them. The cure for such exaggerated expectations will come with time. When this class of candidates becomes more numerous, there will be a less hesitation with many of them in taking lower appointments. In the meanwhile, it is known that I am not disposed to adopt any special means, which could be felt as doing injustice to the rest of the community, for connecting our educated English students with the public service. The subject has been fully discussed in my Minute in the Judicial14 Department of September 4th, 1838, the completion of the measures consequent on which I am anxiously awaiting. The scheme proposed by the Hon’ble the President in 112

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Council, to which, in that respect, I assented in the Minute referred to, included, however, the appointment of a limited number of Native assistants to some of the best of our Zillah Judges, who would be instructed in the forms and practice of office. And so far there would be an immediate opening for the employment of several of our students. The general character of my recommendations in that Minute was, however, to establish a test of qualification before selection for the honourable and responsible situation of a Moonsiff, for all candidates, wheresoever and in whatever language instructed and to procure the compilation and printing of Manuals of legal instruction, in the Native tongues as well as in English which might be taught everywhere by private Masters or in public Institutions. To the principle of this plan I would steadily adhere. But in our Colleges I would carry instruction of this kind further than would be the aims of these Manuals, which would be more proper for use in our common schools. Having thus supplied suitable aids for the acquisition of the knowledge most requisite in public life, I would look with assured confidence to the recognition by the community of the advantages of an advanced English education, comprising those branches of study, a conservancy with which would place an instructed Native Gentleman on a level with our best European Officers. It is true, and no one has more heartily concurred and rejoiced in the determination than myself, that the vernacular tongues, and not English, will be the future languages of the courts and the offices in the interior of the country. But this circumstance will in no degree detract from the force of those inducements to English study, of which, as regards the vast and most important correspondence which must ever be conducted in English, I have just spoken. Nor need I dwell on the degree to which such inducements will be increased to the mere fact of English being the language of the ruling and governing class in India. This is an encouragement to the pursuit of English that will probably greatly counterbalance the want, which has been justly noticed by Mr. Hodgson, of those motives to its cultivation which would have existed in such strength had English been here, as the Classical languages were in the West, the established language of Theology and of law. 17. It will be observed that I have referred chiefly to inducements connected with employment in the public service as likely to lead Indian students to ask admission to our Colleges. This, we may be satisfied, is the principal motive which will as yet operate to bring them to any of our educational Institutions. Excepting perhaps partially in Calcutta (and possibly, though I am not informed on the point, at Bombay) the wealthy and higher classes of India do not send their sons to public Colleges and Schools. Those who come to us for instruction are in search of the means of livelihood either in places under the Government, or in situations under individuals, which in the peculiar constitution of the Indian Government and society, bring them, in a greater or less degree, in connection with the public administration. I mention this point as explanatory of the importance to be attached to the nature of the instruction communicated to our students. The remark applies with equal force to our institutions for the study of the Classical learning of the East. Putting aside the money stipends which were formerly allowed, the 113

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great object of the students in the Sanscrit and Arabic Colleges of the Government has been to rise to office as Law Pundits and Moulvees in the courts. The knowledge which gains for men, reputation and profit among the Native community, as great religious teachers, or among the Hindoos as proficients in Astrology is not to be acquired at those colleges and will best be obtained elsewhere from private Native instructors. If there be not a demand for the same number of Law Pundits and Moulvees as previously, the attendance at the Colleges may be expected to decline, though in the Arabic in a much less degree than in the Sanscrit Colleges; for Mahomedan studies fit men far more than those of Hindoo learning for all the active offices of life. 18. What has been said may suffice to prove that there are weighty and daily growing inducements to the pursuit of English education, if directed with a proper attention to the wants of Scholars and to practical results. It remains that means should be furnished, at least to the most promising of the Scholars, to continue their studies to the desired completion, as incontestible proof appears to have been given15 that their poverty would otherwise generally compel them to retire from College as soon after their leaving boyhood as an opportunity of securing a provision for their subsistence might be open to them. On this point I will immediately remark separately—but I would here again say that I am of opinion, in full concurrence with the President in Council, that whatever amount of reward and support for meritorious students may be granted to those attached to our English, should be granted also in perfectly like proportion in our Oriental Institutions. The pledge to maintain these latter institutions while resorted to by the people involved to my mind the clear obligation to maintain them with all the conditions which are judged necessary for the general efficiency of our educational schemes. 19. Assuming upon the preceding reasoning that our aim as regards those seminaries of highest learning which are not, like the learned Eastern Colleges, especially assigned to other objects, should be to communicate European knowledge through the medium of the English language, it is next to be considered what should be the character of the minor academies or schools such as may probably be eventually established at every zillah station. 20. I have not stopped to state that correctness and elegance in vernacular composition ought to be sedulously attended to in the Superior Colleges. This is a matter of course in the scheme of instruction. But a question may well be raised whether in the Zillah Schools, the subject matter of instruction ought not to be conveyed principally through the vernacular rather than the English medium. 21. I would certainly be much in favour of that course if I saw any solid reason to believe that instruction of a common order would more readily and largely be accepted from the Government in the one mode than the other. I am quite of opinion that a very valuable amount of useful knowledge may be easily conveyed, when good class books and persons competent to teach from them are provided through the means of the vernacular languages. And while I am satisfied that some not trivial amount of moral and intellectual stimulus and improvement is obtained from the Minor English Schools at present existing yet the standard of proficiency 114

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in them is probably not so great as that the mass of Scholars in them would not be merely as much gainers from merely vernacular tuition. 22. It is an argument for the use of the vernacular medium in such schools, that after the first expense of preparing school books has been incurred instruction in that manner would, it may be expected, be more economical than through English, which requires the employment of an English master on a salary at least two or three times as high as would be adequate for a native teacher who had received an English education and was at the same time perfectly conversant with his own tongue. Employment as a Schoolmaster would also be a natural and proper provision for studious young men who had gone through a complete course at the English Colleges. Such a master would of course be able to instruct a class attached to a vernacular school in the first elements of English learning, so as to lay a foundation for those who wished further to prosecute that study. 23. It is a deduction from the saving which the substitution of Native for English Masters in the Zillah Schools might produce that English superintendence over several circles of such schools would probably for a long period be indispensable and a charge on that account must be estimated for. It is also to be reckoned that the cost of compiling and translating a proper series of a vernacular class books is likely to be considerably greater than might at first be supposed. 24. I would speak with much respect of the authority of Mr. Wilkinson on this subject. But I will avow that I am by no means convinced of the applicability of his system or suggestions to the objects of a common education. It is at least not certain that he will in the end carry the body of Hindoo Astronomers along with him in his correction of prevalent errors. In any event it is not the abstruse parts of the Mathematical Science which could be of use in our Zillah Schools. In fact Mr. Wilkinson’s system is almost wholly dependent on his own eminent personal talents and exertions, his admirable zeal, his great knowledge, the weight of his excellent character, and perhaps also, it should not be concealed, the influence attaching to his position as the British Political Agent. It would not be safe to draw conclusion as to what may best be done by ordinary agents within the British Provinces from what have been accomplished in vernacular instruction by Mr. Wilkinson in Sehore. Some of his remarks too as to the failure of attempts at English education within foreign states are not good grounds for anticipating failure within our own Districts, where other circumstances and motives are in operation. 25. I do not admit into this discussion the question of promoting at the present time the formation of a body of vernacular literature. Instruction through the vernacular languages to a definite extent for ordinary purposes may possibly be, as the readiest mode to the attainment of those purposes, proper and desirable. But anything like a body of enlarged literature can, I am thoroughly convinced, be created only with time, by the unprompted exertions of private authors, when a general demand for such literature shall have arisen among the people. The Honorable Court have in a passage, which has been quoted,16 declared themselves strongly 115

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in favour of a liberal encouragement of Native private authors and translators and I would by no means dissent widely from their views, though the encouragement must be given with judgment or the Government will be constantly in hazard of aiding mediocrity or premature and ill-directed efforts. But these are considerations apart from the settlement of the plans of school instruction on which we are now engaged. 26. I have thus stated what has seemed most important on the subject of introducing the vernacular medium in our common District Schools; I mean, as to the general principle of such a change, for the measure could not be named as one for very early adoption, with no class books prepared or teachers versed in those books yet trained for their duties. And as the contrary system has been actually established, it is right that, unless urgent reasons for abandoning that system demanded attention, it should be fully tried, with the improvements of which it may fairly be susceptible. We may, indeed, be said to have two great experiments in progress, one in the Bengal, the other in the Bombay Provinces, the Provincial education being in the former conducted chiefly through the English, in the latter almost, if not quite exclusively, through the vernacular languages. It will be most interesting that both experiments should be closely watched and thoroughly developed. It is possible that in Bengal, in aiming at too much, we may have withheld some facilities for acquiring knowledge which might otherwise have advantageously been left open. And in Bombay the standard of proficiency in the Mofussil Schools may have been fixed and allowed to remain too low, with no principle in the scheme by which they are regulated which would constantly animate exertion, and maintain a spirit of progressive improvement. 27. The immediate practical question in respect to Bengal seems to be that which I have before mentioned—namely, whether it may be reasonably supposed that a vernacular would be more readily and largely accepted in our District Schools than an English education, and on this subject I am not able, after much careful reflection, to discover any reasons which could lead me to answer the proposition in the affirmative. Native youths will not come to our schools to be instructed in vernacular composition. This qualification is more quickly and easily to be attained from other sources. We can in those schools draw little, if any, aid from existing native literature. The desire for the new ideas and information which will be imparted to them must therefore be among the great inducements to attendance, and those who are candidates for such instruction will not, I think, in any important degree be deterred by having to undergo also the labour of learning the English character and language. The fact indeed is, as it is to be presumed from the evidence which has been recorded17 on the subject, that a knowledge of the English language itself with a view to the business, however humble, of life, is one main object of most of the scholars. It is fortunate that in the pursuit of such an object, they can be led on to higher studies and ends. For mere instruction of a general nature (such as our masters now give) through the vernacular medium, it may, it seems to me, well be doubted 116

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whether even the number of pupils would seek our schools, who now resort to them. 28. On the other hand, I confess that I regard it as a serious defect in our plans that we have compiled no proper series of vernacular class books. It is obviously desirable that, as we have vernacular classes, the books used in them should not only be correct and elegant in style, but should be themselves of the most useful description. I would urge also the justness and importance of the advice18 of the Honorable Court that such a series of class books should be prepared under one general scheme of control and superintendence. Much expense will thereby be saved and efficiency greatly promoted. The cost would equitably and willingly be divided among many parties. The works would either be selections from English books of instruction already published, or original compilations adapted for Native pupils. In either case the charge of the first selection or compilation in English would be borne in past by the Education funds of Bengal, and in part by those of the other Presidencies, especially by those of Bombay where such works must be urgently required for the vernacular Schools in the Interior. The new Patsala of Calcutta, the projectors of which have proposed a good series of works, would also of course contribute, and aid might be expected from benevolent individuals or associations in different parts of India. The present opportunity is favourable to entering on the undertaking. When the books shall have been prepared in English they will afterwards, as the Honorable Court have observed, be translated at each Presidency into the Vernacular languages current in it, but the first step for all the Presidencies must be the primary compilation. I would then place the body, which at present represents the Government in the direction of Native education, in communication with the Committee of Public Instruction at Calcutta and make it my first injunction to the latter Committee in concert with the managers of the Hindoo College, Patsala, or others, to draw a definite scheme of the several sets of books wanted for instruction through the vernacular languages in Seminaries of ordinary Education—then to consider and report by what means and at what estimated cost, to be distributed among what parties, these books can be drawn up, and with what further cost the printing of them would be attended. With this information before them, the Government can determine on the completion of the plan and on the amount of funds which can properly, independent of the usual income of the Committee, be assigned to it. 29. I need scarcely repeat that I look with particular favour on the suggestions of the managers of the Patsala for including in the list of works Treatises on the elements of Law, general and local, of Political Economy and of Morals. 30. When the series of class books shall have been printed, and especially when these further Manuals of the precedents, rules and practice of our Courts to which my Minute in the Judicial Department of September 4th, 1838,19 referred, shall have been added to them and made a part of instruction, it is more probable than at present that students will attend the vernacular classes of our zillah schools for the sake of the general and practical knowledge to be acquired at them. In that stage of progress it would be my second direction to the Calcutta Education 117

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Committee to relax20 their rule for the discontinuance of separate vernacular instruction, and to allow students to attend the full course of English or vernacular tuition as they might themselves prefer. 31. The day however when all this can be accomplished, may yet be distant. It is easy to wish for and to project such compilations as will be requisite for the purpose, but the means in India for the efficient execution of them are unavoidably limited, and in this respect, as in other parts of our endeavours, we must expect delays and partial disappointments. 32. Meanwhile, we have to improve the Institutions which are established, and to make the most of them for the great end sought for. My leading recommendation on this point would be so to connect our zillah schools with the central Colleges as to give from the latter to the ablest students of the zillah schools a stimulus that will carry them beyond the ordinary range of instruction which is reached by the mass of the zillah pupils. Without such a stimulus we shall fall far short of the point which we must desire to gain in the promotion of national improvement. 33. This brings me to the question of pecuniary scholarships for meritorious students, for such a stimulus as I have spoken of is scarcely to be given excepting by attaching, in some form, scholarships of that description to the central Colleges to which the best of the zillah scholars may be eligible. On the general question regarding pecuniary support to promising students to enable them to perfect their studies, I think that I may content myself by referring to the facts and opinions which have been detailed on this point, and I will only therefore profess my decided adoption of the principle laid down by the Honorable Court in the words which I shall again quote from their Despatch of September 29th, 1830.21 “Provided,” they say, “that the privilege of scholarships is restricted to young men who have afforded proof of a peculiar capacity and industry, it appears to us to be a highly useful and proper mode of encouraging and facilitating their acquisition of high attainments.” My third present direction to the Calcutta Committee would now, therefore, be to consider and report with all expedition on the details of a scheme for assigning a certain number of Scholarships to all our higher Seminaries—those in the English and Oriental Colleges being in an equal ratio. In consequence of the very general poverty of the students I would fix the ratio on a higher scale say at one-fourth of the number of pupils, if that number “should afford proof of peculiar capacity and industry.” I do not suggest Scholarships in our ordinary Schools, as the most deserving pupils of those will best be provided for in the Colleges, and the average efficiency of such schools can well be maintained by honorary prizes or single donations of money. Of the College Scholarships it may perhaps be the most convenient in the first instance that some should be assigned, in regular rotation, to be competed for by the pupils of each zillah School. The amount ought from the commencement to be enough for the decent subsistence of a Native Student, and there might be some small increase admitted after a year or two, as an incentive to continued effort. On the other hand, the Scholarship should be forfeited, if a proper standard of attainment were not 118

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exhibited at each yearly examination. I would not grant Scholarships for a year only, liable to be then lost, if, upon the chance of an examination another competitor might stand higher on the list, for the uncertain tenure of the emolument would be very unfavourable to hearty, consistent study. But I would provide, by such safeguard as I have mentioned, against the growth of indolence or indifference in the Student. Four years is an ordinary period for holding such Scholarships at home and it may be sufficient here. The following is the scheme of the Flaherty Scholarships in the University College, London, taken from the report of the Council of that Institution for 1838. “They (the Council) have determined to apply the income of this fund towards the formation of the scholarships to be called Flaherty Scholarships, which, at the same time that they stimulate and reward the exertions of the students, might commemorate the zeal and munificence of this body. This donation, increased by the investment of the surplus dividends until the Scholarships are in full operation, together with the sum of £250 supplied by the Council out of the funds of the College, will constitute a fund producing £200 per annum which will be sufficient to create four scholarships, each amounting to £50 annually for four years. One of these Scholarships will be vacant every year, and it is to be given in alternate years to the best proficient in Classical languages and in Mathematics and in natural Phillosophy. The first is intended to be given in the present year to the best proficient in Mathematics and natural Philosophy.” 34. I would state to the Education Committee that it is the wish of Government eventually to bring the Medical22 College at Calcutta within our general scheme on this subject. But I would not press any immediate proposition to that effect. It will be enough to request now that the General Committee report specially in each of their successive yearly reports, whether they think that the time has arrived at which the assimilation could properly be introduced. 35. The Fourth point on which I would at present give instructions to the Education Committee, is as to the preference to be given to rendering the highest instruction efficient in a certain number of Central Colleges, rather than employing their funds in the extension of the plan of founding ordinary zillah Schools. I would have the places fixed, with reference to extent of population or convenience of locality, at which it should be the aim gradually to build up these efficient Central Colleges. I would, on a first conjecture, name for them Dacca, Patna, Benares, or Allahabad, Agra, Delhi and ultimately, though probably at a distant date, Bareilly. At these places, as well as at the Colleges of the Metropolis, the course of instruction should be carefully widened and perfected as opportunities offer. The Scholarships to be established at them will provide a class of students, prepared to avail themselves of the utmost advantages which they can afford, and real progress will thus be made, to the good effects of which we can look forward with reasonable hope. The Committee can act on this view only according to the actual state of circumstances from time to time. At Agra and Delhi, there is already a demand for higher instruction, which ought to be satisfied with the least delay possible. Elsewhere, perhaps, the condition of the Institutions may not call for, or admit of, immediate improvement. Where there 119

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is no strong occasion for the enlargement of the existing Schools into Colleges, the founding of other Schools may occasionally be the best and wisest appropriation of the educational income. But I would point it out to the Committee that the first of these objects, when practicable, is to have a declared priority of attention. I would especially invite the Committee to report how the studies connected with Jurisprudence, Government, and Morals, may be most readily introduced into our superior Colleges, and particularly whether very early arrangements cannot be made for the purpose in the Hindoo College at Calcutta. The revision of the system of scholarships in that college, so as to obviate the too general course of early withdrawal from instruction, which is now complained of, should have early consideration. Another object in these superior Colleges ought to be to instruct the pupils, or some proportion of them, for the duties of the inferior school masters,—and to this end, they should be made thoroughly masters of the class books and legal or other manuals which are designed to be used in the lower schools, and with the branches of knowledge which relate to the subject comprised in them. Lastly, in order to make the greatest use of the advantages of the Colleges, I would attentively watch the degree to which the students profit by their access to the considerable Libraries which are now attached to many of our Institutions. Important deficiencies in those Libraries should be promptly supplied. A regular register should be kept of the books read by each student, the advancement made in general knowledge by the perusal of these books should be tested by examination, and rewards should be given to the most proficient, and the subject of the employment made of the Libraries should be one for special notice in the annual reports regarding each Institution. 36. If instructions founded upon these observations, should with the concurrence of the President in Council be communicated to the Calcutta General Committee, I would be glad that it should be added to them that, if the Committee should doubt the feasibility of attaching scholarships to Central Colleges on some such general scheme as has been suggested for the improvement of the pupils of the zillah Schools, they will then submit such other recommendations as they may think most likely to promote the object contemplated by that scheme,—the advancement of the best pupils of the body of our scholars beyond the present scale of common acquirement being regarded as a point of the first importance in our educational plans. 37. I have not more to observe on the immediate guidance of the measures of the Calcutta Committee. Before leaving the subject, however, I would say that the day may come when unity and efficiency of supervision will better be secured by having a single Superintendent of our Government Seminaries with an adequate establishment than by retaining the existing large Committee of Members, acting gratuitously in the intervals of other laborious duties, and so numerous as necessarily to cause a frequent inconvenience in the dispatch of business. At present I am satisfied that the varied knowledge possessed by the Members of the Committee renders their services most valuable to the Government and I would gratefully retain their aid. But I should be happy to receive from them a report of 120

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their suggestions on the means of procuring an occasional local inspection of the Institutions under their charge. The experience of Sir Edward Ryan, their President, will have convinced him that there may be great hazard of the interests of education being seriously retarded by the want of such inspection. 38. For the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, it may be convenient to place those Governments in possession of the substance of the review which has been taken of the facts relative to the progress of education in all parts of India, and to communicate to them also the Resolution which may finally be adopted by the Government, explanatory of its general views on the suggestions which I have offered, and of the orders that may be issued for the guidance of the Committee in Calcutta. These Governments should be especially invited to co-operate, through the bodies charged with the control of Public Instruction under their superintendence, in the common object of aiding the preparation of an useful and comprehensive set of class books, to be afterwards rendered into the vernacular tongues of the several Provinces. In this, as in other parts of the Government, it is a matter of high importance that there should be a thorough understanding among the different Presidencies of the principles observed and plans followed out in each, that the experience of one should be made known for the benefit of all, and that all should work together in the pursuit of the desired result. The Bombay Government I would particularly request to consider the measures which I have contemplated for raising, and adapting to Native wants, the instruction conveyed in the most advanced of our English Colleges. I would ask also for a distinct and detailed report on the condition of its Mofussil vernacular Schools, the precise nature and range of the education given in them whether at Sudder Stations or in the interior towns and villages, the manner in which the teachers at either class of schools are selected and remunerated—whether (as has been before alluded to) by superintending and rewarding the teachers of the village schools who have not been trained in any of our own Seminaries, sensible good has been effected, whether, where there is no regular European Superintendence; these interior schools are kept in a state of real efficiency, whether induceNote.—On this point attenments in the grant of Scholarships are, and if they tion may be drawn to the quotaare not, whether they may not well be, held out to tion in para. 4 of my Secretary’s note on the backward state of the best scholars of the zillah schools to prosecute four boys selected from the their studies further, and to acquire an improving interior schools for the West knowledge of European literature, what are the scholarships. [A.] general inducements which bring pupils to the schools, and whether good conduct in them ordinarily leads, as appear to have been approved by the Honorable Court, to employment in the public service. It may be explained that under this Government there has been care taken to withhold anything like a monopoly of the public service from the Scholars of its institutions, general tests open to all candidates, and selection by local Officers with regard to known character as well as proficiency in learning, being considered the proper grounds for nomination to Public Office. If the lads from the schools are drafted largely into official situations, opinions from the European Officers 121

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under whom they have served as to the degree of superior fitness exhibited by them would be of value. It is probable that Captain Candy, Superintendent of the Schools in the Deckan and of the Sanscrit College, could condense the materials for such a report and submit it, with his own comments, without much delay. He will especially say whether the general standard of acquirement in the vernacular school is as forward as he could desire and whether he would recommend the establishment of English Schools, with a due arrangement of merit Scholarships, in a few of the interior districts. He will explain also what is his system in regard to the Sanscrit College at Poona, what improvements through the introduction of European knowledge have been attempted and with what success, and what is the extent and promise of the English Classes. 39. Of the Government of Madras I would ask for the information of the present state of Education under the direction or encouragement of the State, within those Territories, and as to what proceedings were taken consequent on the expressed desire of the Honorable Court for the foundation of an English College at Madras. The Madras Presidency is remarkable in India as being that in which knowledge of the mere English language is most diffused among all who are attached in public or private capacities to European Officers; but comparatively little appears on any reports before me, to have been done in order to make such a knowledge conducive to moral and intellectual advancement. 40. In concluding this paper, I have to express my regret if it should have extended to an inconvenient length. But the importance of the subject will be my excuse with my colleagues for my having treated it in this manner, with a view to the suggestion of such practical conclusions as may correct existing defects, diffuse more accurate information, and possibly have some effect in satisfying and reconciling opposite opinions. (Sd.) AUCKLAND. DELHI: November 24th, 1839.

Notes 1 Printed in THE REVD. DR. DUFF’s Letters addressed to Lord Auckland on the subject of Native Education, etc., 1841. 2 Document No. 41. Page 170. 3 First ‘belong’ was written, and afterwards this was changed to ‘have been assigned.’ 4 Document No. 32. Page 130. 5 See Document No. 41. Page 175. 6 The expected reply does not appear to have been received until 1841. It is printed in the Report of the General Committee, Bengal, 1839–40, p. cli f. 7 Document No. 41. Page 179. 8 See paras, 23 and 24 of Note [A.]. Page 175. 9 Miscellaneous Essays relating to Indian subjects, London, 1880, Vol. ii, p. 314. (The essay quoted was written in 1837.) 10 Not printed here; but see p. xxxix f. of the Report of the General Committee 1839–40. 11 Miscellaneous Essays, pp. 315–316.

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12 ADAMS’s Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar. Edited by J. LONG, p. 304. 13 See para. 5 of the Note [A.]. 14 See para. 5 of the Note [A.]. 15 See details at the close of para. 8, and in paras. 10 and 15 of Note [A.]. 16 See para. 3 of the Note [A.]. 17 NOTE.—Paras. 10 to 15 supra [A.]. 18 See extract of dispatch cited in para. 36 of Note [A.]. 19 Recorded in the Legislative Department. 20 See Note para. 6 [A]. 21 Evidence of 1832, App. I, No. 11 [343–496], also in Madras Selections, ii, 1855, p. xl. 22 See paras. 20 and 21 of Note [A.].

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13 CHARLES TREVELYAN, EXTRACTS FROM ON THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE OF INDIA (LONDON: LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMANS, 1838), 36–43, 50–57, 78–91, 106–115

CHAP. II. The Study of Foreign Languages and Literature a Powerful Instrument of National Improvement.—The Instruction of the upper and middle Classes the first Object.

THE past history of the world authorizes us to believe that the movement which is taking place in India, if properly directed and supported by the Government, will end in bringing about a decided change for the better in the character of the people. The instances in which nations have worked their way to a high degree of civilization from domestic resources only are extremely rare, compared with those in which the impulse has been communicated from without, and has been supported by the extensive study and imitation of the literature of foreign countries. The cases in which the most lasting impressions have been made upon national character, in which the superior civilization of one country has taken deepest root and fructified most abundantly in other countries, have a strong general resemblance to the case before us. In those cases the foreign systems of learning were first studied in the original tongue by the upper and middle classes, who alone possessed the necessary leisure. From this followed a diffusion of the knowledge contained in the foreign literature, a general inclination of the national taste towards it, and an assimilation of the vernacular language, by the introduction into it of numerous scientific and other terms. Last of all, the vernacular tongue began to be cultivated in its improved state; translations and imitations sprang up in abundance, and creative genius occasionally caught the impulse, and struck out a masterpiece of its own. Every scholar knows to what a great extent the Romans cultivated Grecian literature, and adopted Grecian models of taste. It was only after the national mind

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had become deeply impregnated from this source, that they began to have a literature of their own. The writers of the Augustan age were bred in the school, were animated by the spirit, were nourished with the food of conquered Greece. Virgil was a mere imitator, however noble: the Roman dramas are feeble translations from the Greek: the entire Roman literature is only an echo of the Greek literature. The Romans made no scruple in acknowledging the obligations they were under to the cultivation of Grecian learning. Their enthusiasm was directed to the object of enriching their native language with all that, in that age of the world, could be imported from abroad. It is a curious fact that an intellectual revolution similar to that which is now in progress in India, actually took place among the Romans. At an early period, the Etruscan was, as Livy tells us, the language which the young Romans studied. No patrician was considered as liberally educated who had not learned in the sacred books of the augurs of Clusium and Volaterræ, how to quarter the heavens, what was meant by the appearance of a vulture on the left hand, and what rites were to be performed on a spot which had been smitten by thunder. This sort of knowledge—very analagous to the knowledge which is contained in the Sanskrit books,—was considered as the most valuable learning, until an increased acquaintance with the Greek language produced a complete change. Profound speculations on morals, legislation, and government; lively pictures of human life and manners; pure and energetic models of political eloquence, drove out the jargon of a doting superstition. If we knew more minutely the history of that change, we should probably find that it was vehemently resisted by very distinguished Etruscan scholars, and that all sorts of fearful consequences were represented as inevitable, if the old learning about the flight of birds and the entrails of beasts should be abandoned for Homer, and if the mysteries of the bidental should be neglected for Thucydides and Plato. The Roman language and literature, thus enriched and improved, was destined to still prouder triumphs. The inhabitants of the greatest part of Europe and of the North of Africa, educated in every respect like the Romans, became in every respect equal to them. The impression which was then made will never be effaced. It sank so deep into the language and habits of the people, that Latin to this day forms the basis of the tongues of France and southern Europe, and the Roman law the basis of their jurisprudence. The barbarous hordes which triumphed over the arms, yielded to the arts of Rome. Roman literature survived the causes which led to its diffusion, and even spread beyond the ancient limits of the empire. The Poles and Hungarians were led neither by any pressure from without, nor by any artificial encouragement from within, to make Latin their language of education, of literature, of business, and, to a very remarkable extent, of ordinary colloquial intercourse. They did so, we may presume, because their own language contained nothing worth knowing, while Latin included within itself almost all the knowledge which at that time existed in the world. After this came the great revival of learning, at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. At that period, the historian Robertson 125

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observes, “all the modern languages were in a state extremely barbarous, devoid of elegance, of vigour, and even of perspicuity. No author thought of writing in language so ill adapted to express and embellish his sentiments, or of erecting a work for immortality with such rude and perishable materials. As the spirit which prevailed at that time did not owe its rise to any original effort of the human mind, but was excited chiefly by admiration of the ancients, which began then to be studied with attention in every part of Europe, their compositions were deemed not only the standards of taste and of sentiment, but of style; and even the languages in which they wrote were thought to be peculiar, and almost consecrated to learning and the muses. Not only the manner of the ancients was imitated, but their language was adopted; and, extravagant as the attempt may appear, to write in a dead tongue, in which men were not accustomed to think, and which they could not speak, or even pronounce, the success of it was astonishing. As they formed their style upon the purest models; as they were uninfected with those barbarisms, which the inaccuracy of familiar conversation, the affectation of courts, intercourse with strangers, and a thousand other causes, introduce into living languages, many moderns have attained to a degree of elegance in their Latin compositions which the Romans themselves scarce possessed beyond the limits of the Augustan age.” Had the mental stimulus produced by the revival of letters been confined to scholars, the progress of improvement would have stopped at this point; but all who had time to read, whether they knew Latin or not, felt the influence of the movement, and this great class was receiving continual additions from the rapid increase of wealth. Hence arose a demand which the classical languages could not satisfy, and from, this demand sprang the vernacular literature of Europe. We are indebted to foreign nations and distant ages both for the impulse which struck it out, and for the writings which warmed the fancy and formed the taste of its founders. Abounding, as we are, in intellectual wealth, could we venture even now to tell our youth that they have no longer occasion to seek for nourishment from the stores of the Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, and Italian literatures? The French fell into a mistake of this kind, and they have suffered for it. Proud of the honour, and sensible of the political advantage of having their own language generally understood, they were not sufficiently alive to the new resources they might have derived from the study of foreign languages.1 Their literature, therefore, wants that copiousness and variety which is characteristic of the English and German. Now they see their error, and, instead of confining themselves to their own stores, and copying and re-copying their own models, they have begun to look abroad and study the masterpieces of other nations. German literature is a remarkable instance of the success with which industry and genius may nationalize foreign materials. It has arisen, almost within the memory of persons now living, on the basis of the astonishing erudition collected by the German writers from every living and dead language worth laying under contribution. Had our ancestors acted as the committee of public instruction acted up to March 18352; “had they neglected the language of Thucydides and Plato, and 126

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the language of Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island; had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but chronicles in Anglo-Saxon, and romances in Norman French, would England ever have been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanskrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors; in some departments, in history, for example, I am certain that it is much less so.

CHAP. III. The violent Opposition made by Oriental Scholars to the Resolution of the 7th March 1835.—The whole Question rests upon Two Points; firsts Whether English or Arabic and Sanskrit Literature is best calculated for the Improvement of the People of India; and secondly, Whether, supposing English Literature to be best adapted for that Purpose, the Natives are willing to cultivate it.—These Points considered.

THE resolution of the 7th of March 1835 was passed in the face of the most keen and determined opposition on the part of several distinguished persons whose influence had not been usually exerted in vain; and their representations were seconded by a petition got up by the numerous class of persons whose subsistence was dependent on the oriental colleges, and on the printing and other operations of the committee connected with them. The Asiatic Society also took up the cause with great vehemence, and memorialised the local government, while the Court of Directors and the Board of Control were pressed by strong remonstrances from the Royal Asiatic Society. The spirit of orientalism was stirred up to its inmost depths, and the cry of indignation of the Calcutta literati was re-echoed with more than its original bitterness from the colleges of France and Germany. In order to understand these phenomena, it will be necessary to go back a few years in the history of India. When Lord Wellesley established the college of Fort William, he provided munificently for the encouragement of oriental learning. For a long time after, that learning was nearly the sole test of merit among the junior members of the civil service, and such military and medical officers as aspired to civil employment. A superior knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic wan sure to be rewarded by a good place. The reputations of many members of the government and of nearly all the secretaries had been founded on this basis. The literary circle of Calcutta was almost exclusively composed of orientalists. The education committee was formed when this state of things was at its height, and hence the decidedly oriental cast of its first proceedings. By degrees the rage for orientalism subsided among the Europeans, while the taste for European literature rose to a great height among the natives. A 127

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modification of the committee’s proceedings suited to this altered state of things was called for; but the persons who had been trained under the old system still occupied the strongholds of the administration, and motives were not wanting to dispose them to an obstinate defence. The habits of a long life were now for the first time broken in upon. They felt as if the world were given to understand that they had spent their strength for nought, and that their learning was altogether vanity.3 The axe seemed to them to be laid at the root of their reputations. This was more than human nature could bear. Men who had been remarkable for selfrestraint completely lost their temper, and those who had been accustomed to give free expression to their feelings showed unusual warmth on this occasion. It was a striking exhibition of character. It is true that the well-earned honours of mature life had rendered several of these distinguished persons independent of their early reputation for eastern learning. But this availed nothing. The blow had gone straight to the sources of their habitual feelings, and the effect which followed was highly remarkable. The motive which led the oriental literary societies to take up the cause of that section of the committee which supported the interests of oriental literature is still more obvious. The object of the Asiatic societies is to investigate the history and antiquities of the East; to lay open to the European world whatever the records of Asia contain to illustrate and aid the progress of mind, of morals, and of natural history. The object of the education committee is to instruct the people of India in sound knowledge and true morality. The Asiatic societies are organs for making known the arts and sciences of Asia to Europe. The education committee is an organ for making known the arts and sciences of Europe to Asia. Yet different, and, to a great extent, incompatible, as these objects are, the education committee had acted, in the main, as if it had been only a subordinate branch of the Bengal Asiatic Society. The same gentleman was long secretary to both. Ancient learning of a kind which every body must admit to be more fit for an antiquarian society than for a seminary of popular education was profusely patronised. Extensive plans for the publication of Arabic and Sanskrit works, which exceeded the means of any literary association, were executed out of the fund which the British parliament had assigned for enlightening the people of India. The full extent of this union became apparent after it had been dissolved. A limb had been torn from the parent trunk, and the struggle with which the disruption was resisted showed how intimate the connection had been. By vehemently complaining of the suspension of the plans for the encouragement of ancient oriental literature, the literary societies virtually acknowledged the identity of their own operations and of the past operations of the education committee. Those societies are entitled to the highest respect, and nobody can blame them for endeavouring to obtain support in the prosecution of the laudable objects for which they are associated. The responsible parties were the education committee and the Bengal government. It was for them to consider whether the mode which had been adopted of disbursing the education fund was the one best suited to the accomplishment of the object for which that fund had been instituted. If it was, 128

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they had properly acquitted themselves of the trust reposed in them, whether their plans happened to coincide with those of the Asiatic Society or not; if it was not, some change was obviously required. This deeply important subject was long and carefully examined, both by the committee and the government. The decision which was come to has been already related, and it is needless to recount all the arguments which were used on the occasion. The whole question turns upon two points: the first of which is, whether English or Sanskrit and Arabic literature is best calculated for the enlightenment of the people of India; the other, whether, supposing English literature to be best adapted for that purpose, the natives are ready to avail themselves of the advantages which it holds out. When these points are determined the question is settled, and it is capable of being settled in no other way. The comparative state of science in European and Asiatic countries might be supposed to be too well known to admit of any dispute on the first point; but as our opponents sometimes argue as if it were still a doubtful question whether English or oriental literature is most calculated to advance the cause of human improvement, I shall appeal to several authorities which will, I think, be listened to with deference on this question. The pains which the late Bishop Heber took to obtain correct information on every subject which had even a remote bearing on the improvement of India are so well known, that nobody will be surprised at his having left his opinion on this vital point fully on record. The following is extracted from his letter to Sir Wilmot Horton, dated March 1824, published in the appendix to his journal. “Government has, however, been very liberal in its grants, both to a society for national education, and in the institution and support of two colleges of Hindu students of riper age, the one at Benares, the other at Calcutta. But I do not think any of these institutions, in the way after which they are at present conducted, likely to do much good. In the elementary schools supported by the former, through a very causeless and ridiculous fear of giving offence to the natives, they have forbidden the use of the Scriptures or any extracts from them, though the moral lessons of the Gospel are read by all Hindus who can get hold of them, without scruple, and with much attention, and though their exclusion is tantamount to excluding all moral instruction from their schools, the Hindu sacred writings having nothing of the kind, and, if they had, being shut up from the majority of the people by the double fence of a dead language, and an actual prohibition to read them, as too holy for common eyes or ears. The defects of the latter will appear when I have told you that the actual state of Hindu and Mussulman literature, mutatis mutandis, very nearly resembles what the literature of Europe was before the time of Galileo, Copernicus, and Bacon. The Mussulmans take their logic from Aristotle, filtered through many successive translations and commentaries, and their metaphysical system is professedly derived from Plato, (‘Filatoun’). The Hindus have systems not very dissimilar from these, though, I am told, of greater length and more intricacy; but the studies in which they spend most of their time are the acquisition of the Sanskrit, and the endless refinements of its grammar, prosody, and poetry. 129

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This brings us to the second point which we had to consider, namely, whether, supposing English literature to be best adapted for the improvement of the people of India, they are themselves ready to profit by the advantages which it holds out. If it can be proved that tuition in European science has become one of the sensible wants of the people, and that, so far from being satisfied with their own learning, they display an eager avidity to avail themselves of every opportunity of acquiring the knowledge of the West, it must be admitted that the case put by the committee of 1824 has occurred, and that, according to their own rule, the time has arrived when instruction in western literature and science may be given on an extensive scale, without any fear of producing a reaction. The proofs that such is the actual state of things have been already touched upon. As the principle of the school book society is, to print only such books as are in demand, and to dispose of them only to those who pay for them, its operations furnish, perhaps, the best test of the existing condition of public feeling in regard to the different systems of learning which are simultaneously cultivated in India. It appears, from their last printed report, that from January 1834 to December 1835 the following sales were effected by them: — English books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31,649 Anglo-Asiatic, or books partly in English and partly in some eastern language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,525 Bengalee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,754 Hinduee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,171 Hindusthanee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,384 Persian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,454 Uriya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834 Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Sanskrit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Indeed, books in the learned native languages are such a complete drug in the market, that the school book society has for some time past ceased to print them; and that society, as well as the education committee, has a considerable part of its capital locked up in Sanskrit and Arabic lore, which was accumulated during the period when the oriental mania carried every thing before it. Twenty-three thousand such volumes, most of them folios and quartos, filled the library, or rather the lumber room, of the education committee at the time when the printing was put a stop to, and during the preceding three years their sale had not yielded quite one thousand rupees. At all the oriental colleges, besides being instructed gratuitously, the students had monthly stipends allowed them, which were periodically augmented till they quitted the institution. At the English seminaries, not only was this expedient for obtaining pupils quite superfluous, but the native youth were ready themselves to pay for the privilege of being admitted. The average monthly collection on this account from the pupils of the Hindu college for February and March 1836 was, 130

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sicca rupees, 1,325. Can there be more conclusive evidence of the real state of the demand than this? The Hindu college is held under the same roof as the new Sanskrit college, at which thirty pupils were hired at 8 rupees each, and seventy at 5 rupees, or 590 rupees a month in all. The Hindu college was founded by the voluntary contributions of the natives themselves as early as 1816. In 1831 the committee reported, that “a taste for English had been widely disseminated, and independent schools conducted by young men reared in the Vidyalaya (the Hindu college) are springing up in every direction.”4 This spirit, gathering strength from time and from many favourable circumstances, had gained a great height in 1835; several rich natives had established English schools at their own expense; associations had been formed for the same purpose at different places in the interior, similar to the one to which the Hindu college owed its origin. The young men who had finished their education propagated a taste for our literature, and, partly as teachers of benevolent or proprietary schools, partly as tutors in private families, aided all classes in its acquirement. The tide had set in strongly in favour of English education, and when the committee declared itself on the same side, the public support they received rather went beyond, than fell short of what was required. More applications were received for the establishment of schools than could be complied with; there were more candidates for admission to many of those which were established than could be accommodated. On the opening of the Hoogly college, in August 1836, students of English flocked to it in such numbers as to render the organization and classification of them a matter of difficulty. Twelve hundred names were entered on the books of this department of the college within three days, and at the end of the year there were upwards of one thousand in regular attendance. The Arabic and Persian classes of the institution at the same time mustered less than two hundred. There appears to be no limit to the number of scholars, except that of the number of teachers whom the committee is able to provide. Notwithstanding the extraordinary concourse of English students at Hoogly, the demand was so little exhausted, that when an auxiliary school was lately opened within two miles of the college, the English department of it was instantly filled, and numerous applicants were sent away unsatisfied. In the same way, when additional means of instruction were provided at Dacca, the number of pupils rose at once from 150 to upwards of 300, and more teachers were still called for. The same thing also took place at Agra. These are not symptoms of a forced and premature effort, which, as the committee of 1824 justly observed, would have recoiled upon ourselves, and have retarded our ultimate success. To sum up what has been said: the Hindu system of learning contains so much truth as to have raised the nation to its present point of civilization, and to have kept it there for ages without retrogading, and so much error as to have prevented it from making any sensible advance during the same long period. Under this system, history is made up of fables, in which the learned in vain endeavour to trace the thread of authentic narrative; its medicine is quackery; its geography and astronomy are monstrous absurdity; its law is composed of loose contradictory 131

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maxims, and barbarous and ridiculous penal provisions; its religion is idolatry; its morality is such as might be expected from the example of the gods and the precepts of the religion. Suttee, Thuggee, human sacrifices, Ghaut murder, religious suicides, and other such excrescences of Hinduism, are either expressly enjoined by it, or are directly deduced from the principles inculcated by it. This whole system of sacred and profane learning is knitted and bound together by the sanction of religion; every part of it is an article of faith, and its science is as unchangeable as its divinity. Learning is confined by it to the Brahmins, the high priests of the system, by whom and for whom it was devised. All the other classes are condemned to perpetual ignorance and dependence; their appropriate occupations are assigned by the laws of caste, and limits are fixed, beyond which no personal merit or personal good fortune can raise them. The peculiar wonder of the Hindu system is, not that it contains so much or so little true knowledge, but that it has been so skilfully contrived for arresting the progress of the human mind, as to exhibit it at the end of two thousand years fixed at nearly the precise point at which it was first moulded. The Mohammedan system of learning is many degrees better, and “resembles that which existed among the nations of Europe before the invention of printing;”5 so far does even this fall short of the knowledge with which Europe is now blessed. These are the systems under the influence of which the people of India have become what they are. They have been weighed in the balance, and have been found wanting. To perpetuate them, is to perpetuate the degradation and misery of the people. Our duty is not to teach, but to unteach them,—not to rivet the shackles which have for ages bound down the minds of our subjects, but to allow them to drop off by the lapse of time and the progress of events. If we turn from Sanskrit and Arabic learning, and the state of society which has been formed by it, to western learning, and the improved and still rapidly improving condition of the western nations, what a different spectacle presents itself! Through the medium of England, India has been brought into the most intimate connection with this favoured quarter of the globe, and the particular claims of the English language as an instrument of Indian improvement have thus become a point of paramount importance. These claims have been thus described by one who will be admitted to have made good his title to an opinion on the subject: “How then stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother tongue; we must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate; it stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West; it abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions which, considered merely as narratives have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade; with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which 132

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tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all: in India English is the language spoken by the ruling class; it is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of government; it is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East; it is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Austral-Asia,—communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian Empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects.” As of all existing languages and literatures the English is the most replete with benefit to the human race, so it is overspreading the earth with a rapidity far exceeding any other. With a partial exception in Canada, English is the language of the continent of America north of Mexico; and at the existing rate of increase there will be a hundred millions of people speaking English in the United States alone at the end of this century. In the West India islands we have given our language to a population collected from various parts of Africa, and by this circumstance alone they have been brought many centuries nearer to civilization than their countrymen in Africa, who may for ages grope about in the dark, destitute of any means of acquiring true religion and science. Their dialect is an uncouth perversion of English suited to the present crude state of their ideas, but their literature will be the literature of England, and their language will gradually be conformed to the same standard. More recently the English language has taken root in the continent of Africa itself, and a nation is being formed by means of it in the extensive territory belonging to the Cape out of a most curious mixture of different races. But the scene of its greatest triumphs will be in Asia. To the south a new continent is being peopled with the English race; to the north, an ancient people, who have always taken the lead in the progress of religion and science in the east, have adopted the English language as their language of education, by means of which they are becoming animated by a new spirit, and are entering at once upon the improved knowledge of Europe, the fruit of the labour and invention of successive ages. The English language, not many generations hence, will be spoken by millions in all the four quarters of the globe; and our learning, our morals, our principles of constitutional liberty, and our religion, embodied in the established literature, and diffused through the genius of the vernacular languages, will spread far and wide among the nations.6 The objection, therefore, to the early proceedings of the education committee is, that they were calculated to produce a revival, not of sound learning, but of antiquated and pernicious errors. The pupils in the oriental seminaries were 133

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trained in a complete course of Arabic and Sanskrit learning, including the theology of the Vedas and the Koran, and were turned out accomplished maulavees and pundits,—the very class whom the same committee described as “satisfied with their own learning, little inquisitive as to any thing beyond it, and not disposed to regard the literature and science of the West as worth the labour of attainment.” And having been thus educated, they were sent to every part of the country to fill the most important situations which were open to the natives, the few who could not be provided for in this way taking service as private tutors or family priests. Every literary attempt connected with the old learning at the same time received the most liberal patronage, and the country was deluged with Arabic and Sanskrit books. By acting thus, the committee created the very evil which they professed to fear. They established great corporations, with ramifications in every district, the feelings and interest of whose members were deeply engaged on the side of the prevailing errors. All the murmuring which has been heard has come from this quarter; all the opposition which has been experienced has been headed by persons supported by our stipends, and trained in our colleges. The money spent on the Arabic and Sanskrit colleges was, therefore, not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth; it was bounty money paid to raise up champions of error, and to call into being an oriental interest which was bound by the condition of its existence to stand in the front of the battle against the progress of European literature. It is also of particular importance in such a country as India, and on such a subject as popular education, that the government should have some certain test of the wishes of its subjects. As long as stipends were allowed, students would of course have been forthcoming. Now the people must decide for themselves. Every facility is given, but no bribes; and if more avail themselves of one kind of instruction than of another, we may be sure that it is because such is the real bent of the public mind. But for the abolition of stipends, false systems might have been persevered in from generation to generation, which, with an appearance of popularity, would really have been preserved from falling into disuse only by the patronage of government. The result of the experiment has been most satisfactory. Formerly we kept needy boys in pay, to train them up to be bigoted maulavees and pundits; now multitudes of the upper and middle classes flock to our seminaries to learn, without fee or reward, all that English literature can teach them. The practice of giving stipends to students was part of the general system by which learning was confined to particular castes; this monopoly has now been broken down, and all are invited to attend who are really anxious to learn. Where formerly we paid both teachers and students, we now only pay the teachers; and our means of extending our operations have been proportionably increased; yet, so great is the demand for teachers, that if we could only increase their number at will, we might have almost any number of students. It is constantly urged by the advocates of oriental learning that the result of all our efforts will only be to extend a smattering of English throughout India, and 134

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that the question is between a profound knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic literature on the one side, and a super*********************************** of youth have to be instructed; the same desire exists on the part of the committee to give them a really good education; we have the same means at our disposal for accomplishing that object. A single show institution at the capital, to be always exhibited and appealed to as a proof of their zeal in the cause of liberal education, might answer very well, as far as the committee themselves are concerned; but what are the people of the interior to do, to whom this education would be equally useful, and who are equally capable of profiting by it? For their sake the committee have now established many Hindu colleges. English is a much easier language than either Arabic or Sanskrit. “The study of Sanskrit grammar,” Mr. Adam observes, “occupies about seven years, lexicology about two, literature about ten, law about ten, logic about thirteen, and mythology about four.” The course of study fixed for the Sanskrit college at Calcutta by Professor Wilson embraces twelve years, the first six of which are spent in learning grammar and composition; besides which, the boys are expected to know something of grammar before they are admitted. In three years boys of ordinary abilities get such a command of the English language as to be able to acquire every sort of information by means of it. The Sanskrit is altogether a dead language. The Arabic is not spoken in India. The English is both a living and a spoken language.7 The Brahminical and Moslem systems belong to bygone days; a large portion of them has become obsolete; a still larger is only faintly reflected in the habits of the people. The associations connected with the new learning, on the other hand, are gaining ground every day. The English government is established; English principles and institutions are becoming familiarized to the native mind; English words are extensively adopted into the native languages; teachers, books, and schools are rapidly multiplied; the improvements in the art of education, the result of the extraordinary degree of attention which the subject has received of late years in England, are all applied to facilitate the study of English in India. Infant schools, which have lately been introduced, will enable native children to acquire our language, without any loss of time, as they learn to speak. Nine years ago, when the first English class was established in the upper provinces,8 a few old fashioned English spelling books were with difficulty procured from the neighbouring stations. Nine years hence it is probable that an English education will be every where more cheaply and easily obtained than an Arabic or Sanskrit one. It is an error to anticipate the march of events, but it is not less so to neglect to watch their progress, and to be perpetually judging the existing state of things by a standard which is applicable only to past times. “This, too, will acquire the authority of time; and what we now defend by precedents will itself be reckoned among precedents.” Native children seem to have their faculties developed sooner, and to be quicker and more self-possessed than English children. Even when the language of instruction is English, the English have no advantage over their native 135

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class-fellows. As far as capability of acquiring knowledge is concerned, the native mind leaves nothing to be desired. The faculty of learning languages is particularly powerful in it. It is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the Continent, foreigners who can express themselves in English with so much fluency and correctness as we find in hundreds of the rising generation of Hindus. Readiness in acquiring languages, which exists in such a strong degree in children, seems to exist also in nations which are still rising to manhood. No people speak foreign languages like the Russians and Hindus. Such nations are going through a course of imitation, and those qualities of mind upon which their success depends seem to be proportionably developed. When we go beyond this point to the higher and more original powers of the mind, judgment, reflection, and invention, it is not so easy to pronounce an opinion. It has been said, that native youth fall behind at the age at which these faculties begin most to develope themselves in Englishmen. But this is the age when the young Englishman generally commences another and far more valuable education, consisting in the preparation for, and practice of some profession requiring severe application of mind; when he has the highest honours and emoluments opened to his view as the reward of his exertions, and when he begins to profit by his daily intercourse with a cultivated intellectual, and moral society. Instead of this, the native youth falls back on the ignorant and depraved mass of his countrymen; and, till lately, so far from being stimulated to further efforts, he was obliged to ask himself for what end he had hitherto laboured. Every avenue to distinction was shut against him; and his acquirements served only to manifest the full extent of his degraded position. The best test of what they can do, is what they have done. Their ponderous and elaborate grammatical systems, their wonderfully subtle metaphysical disquisitions, show them to have a German perseverance and Greek acuteness; and they certainly have not failed in poetical composition. What may we not expect from these powers of mind, invigorated by the cultivation of true science, and directed towards worthy objects! The English, like the Hindus, once wasted their strength on the recondite parts of school learning. All that we can say with certainty is, that the Hindus are excellent students, and have learned well up to the point to which their instructors have as yet conducted them. A new career is now opened to them: the stores of European knowledge have been placed at their disposal: a cultivated society of their own is growing up: their activity is stimulated by the prospect of honourable and lucrative employment. It will be seen what the next fifty years will bring forth. To return to the point from which I have digressed; it is true, that a smattering of English formerly prevailed to a considerable extent, without any beneficial result; and that English acquirements were held in great contempt. The government then encouraged nothing but Oriental learning; and English, instead of being cultivated as a literary and scientific language, was abandoned to menial servants and dependents, who hoped by means of it to make a profit of the ignorance of their masters. It was first rescued from this state of degradation by Lord William Bentinck who 136

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made it the language of diplomatic correspondence. It was afterwards publicly recognised as the most convenient channel, through which the upper and middle classes of the natives could obtain access to the knowledge of the West; and many very good seminaries were established, to enable them to acquire it. The prejudice against English has now disappeared, and to know it, has become a distinction to which people of all classes aspire. There can be no doubt therefore of our now being able to make a deep and permanent impression on the Hindu nation through this medium, if sufficient means of instruction are provided.9 Another argument urged for teaching Arabic and Sanskrit is, that they are absolutely necessary for the improvement of the vernacular dialects. The latter, it is said, are utterly incapable of representing European ideas; and the natives must therefore have recourse to the congenial, accessible, and inexhaustible stores of their classical languages. To adopt English phraseology would be grotesque patchwork; and the condemnation of the classical languages to oblivion, would consign the dialects to utter helplessness and irretrievable barbarism.

Notes 1 It has been justly observed, that for the French to pride themselves upon all foreign nations studying their language, while they study the language of no foreign nation, is like a blind man boasting that every body can see him, while he can see nobody. 2 This is taken from one of the papers recorded during the discussions which preceded the resolution of the 7th March 1835. I shall hereafter make several similar extracts. 3 Jacquemont makes the following remarks on this subject in one of his letters to his father, vol. i. p. 222–3:—“Le Sanskrit ne ménera à rien qu’au Sanskrit. Le méchanisme de ce langage est admirablement compliqué, et néanmoins, dit on, admirable. Mais c’est comme une de ces machines qui ne sortent pas de conservatoires et des muséums, plus ingenieuses qu’utiles. Elle n’a servi qu’à fabriquer de la théologie, de la métaphysique, de l’histoire mêlée de théologie, et autres billevésées du même genre: galimathias triple pour les faiseurs et pour les consommateurs, pour les consommateurs étrangers surtout, galimathias 10, &c. &c. La mode du Sanskrit et de l’orientalisme littéraire en général durera cependant, parce que ceux qui auront passé ou perdu quinze ou vingt ans à apprendre l’Arabe ou le Sanskrit n’auront la candeur d’avouer qu’ils possèdent une science inutile.” 4 The entire extract will be found at page 8. 5 These are the words in which Mr. Adam sums up his description of Mohammedan learning in India; and the real state of the case could not be more accurately described. Gibbon’s sketch of Moslem learning will be found in the 52d chapter of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, under the heads, “Their real progress in the sciences,” and “Want of erudition, taste, and freedom.” But however defective Arabian learning may appear when viewed by the light of modern science, it would be doing great injustice to the Augustan age of the caliphs at Bagdad to compare it with the present æera of Mohammedan literature in India. The Indian Mohammedans are only bad imitators of an erroneous system. Arabic is studied at Calcutta as a difficult foreign language; original genius and research have long since died out, if they ever had any existence, among this class of literary people in India; and the astronomy of Ptolemy and the medicine of Galen are languidly transmitted by the dogmatic teachers of one generation to the patient disciples of the next.

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6 The Buddhist religion, which originated in Behar, has spread to the furthest extremity of China, and the intervening nations have always been accustomed to regard India as the fountain-head both of learning and religion. Thibetan literature is a translation from Sanskrit, and the vernacular language of Behar is the sacred language of Burmah and the adjoining countries. It may be hoped that India will hereafter become the centre of a purer faith. The innumerable islands of the South must also be powerfully acted upon by Austral-Asia, which has been wonderfully reserved to be erected at once into a civilized and powerful country in the darkest region of eastern barbarism. 7 The familiar use of a living language is an advantage which the teachers of Latin and Greek, as well as those of Sanskrit and Arabic, might envy. 8 At Delhi. 9 Translations are sent, with the Governor-General’s letters, to the native princes, when there is any doubt as to their being understood.

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14 ‘APPENDIX: EXTRACT FROM THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF MEDICAL EDUCATION’, IN CHARLES TREVELYAN, ON THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE OF INDIA (LONDON: LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMANS, 1838), 207–220

Extract from the Report of the Committee appointed by the Indian Government to inquire into the State of Medical Education. AGREEABLY to your Lordship’s direction to that effect, we called upon Mr. Tytler to prepare a synopsis of what he conceives the pupils at the Institution should be taught in the different branches of medical science. This document, according to our view of it, does not contain by any means such a comprehensive and improved scheme of education as the circumstances of the case indicate the absolute necessity of. Leaving it entirely out of the question, then, at present, we would very respectfully submit to your Lordship in council our serious opinion, that the best mode of fulfilling the great ends under consideration, is for the state to found a Medical College for the education of natives; in which the various branches of medical science cultivated in Europe should be taught, and as near as possible on the most approved European system; the basis of which system should be a reading and writing knowledge on the part of candidate pupils of the English language, and the like knowledge of Hindustanee or Bengallee, and a knowledge of arithmetic; inclusive, of course, of proper qualifications as to health, age, and respectability of conduct. The Government might select from the various young men, who should pass the final examination, the most distinguished and 139

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deserving, for filling up vacancies as sub-assistant surgeons. A knowledge of the English language, we consider as a sine qua non, because that language combines within itself the circle of all the sciences, and incalculable wealth of printed works and illustrations; circumstances that give it obvious advantages over the oriental languages, in which are only to be found the crudest elements of science, or the most irrational substitutes for it. Of the perfect feasibility of such a proposal, we do not entertain a doubt: nevertheless, like any other, it will be found to divide the opinions of men of talent and experience. These will divide into an Oriental and an English party. Mr. Tytler’s long replies have imposed upon us the necessity of entering at greater length into the argument respecting the feasibility of the contemplated plan, than we could have wished. We beg to apologise to your Lordship for this circumstance, but as Mr, Tytler, instead of giving brief and simple answers to our questions, preferred committing them to paper in the form of long minutes; it became incumbent upon us to offer something in the way of refutation. The determined Orientalist having himself acquired the Sanscrit and the Arabic, at the cost of much and severe application, as well as of pecuniary expense, will view with great repugnance a suggestion of teaching science in such a way as may cast his peculiar pursuits into the shade, and independent of a language which he reveres as classical. The advocate for the substitution of the English language, on the other hand, will doubt whether the whole stores of Eastern literature have enabled us to ascertain a single fact of the least consequence towards the history of the ancient world; whether they have tended to improve morality, or to extend science; or whether, with the exception of what the Arabian physicians derived from the Greeks, the Arabic contains a sufficient body of scientific information to reward the modern medical student for all the labour and attention that would be much more profitably bestowed on the study of the English language; and lastly, whether the modicum of unscientific medical literature contained in the Sanscrit is worth undergoing the enormous trouble of acquiring that language. Unlike the languages of Europe, which are keys to vast intellectual treasures, bountifully to reward the literary inquirer, those of the East, save to a limited extent in poetry and romance, may be said, without exaggeration, to be next to barren. For history and science, then, and all that essentially refines and adorns, we must not look to Oriental writers. Mr. Tytler has favoured us with his opinions, on the question under consideration, at great length. The Rev. Mr. Duff, whose experience in instructing native youth is extensive and valuable, has also obliged us with his sentiments on the subject; which are entirely at issue with those of Mr. Tytler, who takes up the Oriental side of the question with equal ardour and ingenuity. Mr. Tytler denies that a system of educating the natives through the medium of English would be in the least more comprehensive, or by any means so much so, as one carried on in the native languages (Mr. Tytler, in that phrase including Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian); and considers it wholly inexpedient as a general measure. The Rev. Mr. Duff, on the other hand, although acknowledging that the native languages, by which we understand the Bengallee in the lower provinces, and the 140

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Oordoo in the higher, alone are available for imparting an elementary education to the mass of the people, affirms that the popular language does not afford an adequate medium for communicating a knowledge of the higher departments of literature and science, &c. “No original works of the description wanted,” he observes, “have yet appeared in the native languages; and though much of a highly useful nature has been provided through European talent and perseverance no translations have been made in any degree sufficient to supply materials for the prosecution of the higher object contemplated; neither is it likely, in the nature of things, that either by original publications, or translations of standard works, the deficiency can be fully or adequately remedied, for such a number of years to come, as may leave the whole of the present generation sleeping with their fathers.” (Answer to Question 20, p. 17.) Mr. Tytler’s reasons for his unfavourable opinion, in regard to the proposed plan, arise, he informs us, partly from the nature of language in general, and partly from the intrinsic difficulty of English itself. The difficulty, it strikes us, is magnified in Mr. Tytler’s imagination, and at any rate can scarcely be greater than that of acquiring Arabic and Sanscrit, which are about as foreign to the body of the people as English. “A bare knowledge of the English,” observes Mr. Tytler, “or of the words for objects, is plainly no increase of knowledge, unless it be accompanied with some additional information respecting the objects of which the words are the signs.” This is so self-evident a truism, that we are rather surprised Mr. Tytler should deem the stating of it of any use to his argument. The mere capability of uttering the word opium, for instance, would be of little use, unless accompanied by a knowledge of the qualities of that drug. It is not with a view to recommend a knowledge of mere words that we troubled Mr. Tytler for his opinion, and have now the honour of addressing your Lordship; but to rescue, if possible, the course of native medical education from this its pervading and crying evil; for assuredly, nothing, that has yet been made manifest to us tends to show that the pupils of the Institution, under the present system, acquire much beyond mere words; or to demonstrate, that an acquaintance with Sanscrit and Arabic vocables will give better ideas of things important to be known than English. In fact, to teach English science, English words must be used; or, in their stead, Arabic and Sanscrit ones must be coined. With the highest opinion of Mr. Tytler’s talents, acquirements, and zeal, and the greatest respect for his character, yet must we not be blinded to a certain degree of partisanship, which unconsciously, we doubt not, has apparently warped his otherwise excellent judgment on this question. A discrepancy in his opinions on this subject, however, appears to exist; for he would, to a certain extent, teach the pupils on English principles. If your Lordship will turn to Mr. Tytler’s synopsis, it will there be seen, that he proposes to teach the pupils the Latin and English names of the corporeal organs, and of the articles of the materia medica. For this purpose he would instruct them in the English system of spelling and pronunciation, in the declension of Latin nouns, and their rules of concordance. He would, in a word, lead them to the half-way house of English education, and there stop. “English” proceeds Mr. Tytler, “is one of the most difficult of all languages, and the most diversified in its origin. It arises from three sources—Saxon, Latin, and 141

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Norman-French, Its words and idioms vary in accordance with these three. Hence, a correct knowledge of it can be obtained only by a certain degree of knowledge of all the originals.” For the attainment of a hypercritical or highly scholastic knowledge, such as is not possessed by one Englishman out of a hundred, Mr. Tytler’s position may be readily acceded to. How many thousands are there, however, of Englishmen, persons of ability and intelligence in various walks of active usefulness, who know nothing, or next to nothing, of pure Saxon, Latin, and Norman-French? Nay, there is reason to suppose that there are not a few skilful and experienced surgeons not better versed in these languages, but who are valuable men in the profession notwithstanding. Will a native sub-assistant surgeon be the less capable of being taught to amputate a limb, because he cannot give the critical etymology of the words knife, limb, cut? Surely the great ends of life are not to stand still for want of knowledge of scholastic roots? It would be superfluous to point out, in a more elaborate manner, how very overstrained, and inapplicable to general experience, Mr. Tytler’s argument is. As very apposite to the subject under consideration, we beg to submit an extract or two from a forcible article by the late Dr. Duncan, jun., on Medical Education, which was published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for 1827. “The knowledge of languages, in itself, derives its chief utility from its facilitating the acquisition of useful knowledge; and, therefore, as the mind may be nearly equally disciplined during the acquisition of any one language as of any other, their utility is directly proportional to the value of the information contained in the books written in them.” Tried by this test, how utterly mispent must be the time devoted by the native medical student to the study of Arabic, Sanscrit, and Persian! “It is argued,” continues the article quoted, “in favour of the study of the Greek language, that it is the language of the fathers of physic; and that the terms of medical art have been almost all borrowed from it and the Latin; and that it seems impossible to understand properly their meaning, without possessing some knowledge of the sources from which they have been derived.” The first argument would be nearly equally conclusive in favour of the Arabic, that physicians might read Avicenna and Rhazes in the original; and with regard to the last, we shall reply, on the authority of Dugald Stewart. “It is in many cases a fortunate circumstance when the words we employ have lost their pedigree, or (what amounts nearly to the same thing,) when it can be traced by those alone who are skilled in ancient and modern languages. Such words have in their favour the sanction of immemorial usage, and the obscurity of their history prevents them from misleading the imagination, by recalling to it the objects or phenomena to which they owed their origin. The notions, accordingly, we annex to them, may be expected to be peculiarly precise and definite.” (Stewart’s Phil. Essay, p. 184.) Indeed all attempts at descriptive terminology have utterly failed, and have impeded, instead of advancing, the progress of knowledge, “Medicine (observes the same eminent writer, in another place,) is a practical profession. That knowledge is most essential to its students, which renders them the most useful servants of the public; and all reputation for extrinsic learning (such, for instance, as Sanscrit and Arabic,) 142

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which is acquired at the expense of practical skill, is meretricious, and deceives the public, by dazzling their judgment.” Although Mr. Tytler has throughout, unconsciously to himself, we doubt not, overstrained his argument, yet is there one passage which, we are free to confess, trenches on the extravagant. “The great sources of our language,” he states, “must be shown; the Saxon, the Latin, and the French. We must explain what words and what idioms are derived from each, and what changes they have undergone in their passage. Till this be all done, difficult as it may seem, we may by much practice impress upon the natives a sort of jargon, and agree to call it English; but it will bear scarcely more resemblance to real English than to the dialect of the Hottentots.” In a word, if we do not make lexicographers of native sub-assistant surgeons, they will not be able to set a fracture, or to prescribe a dose of calomel; and their English remarks or directions, though perfectly intelligible, will amount, in fact, to nothing but a Hottentot jargon! Need we, in refutation of this exaggerated view, remind your Lordship, that there are many respectable native gentlemen in Calcutta, who both speak and write English correctly and fluently? The works of the late Rammohan Roy were not written in a Hottentot dialect; and at this moment there are three newspapers in Calcutta printed in the English language, and yet edited by natives. Why should not other native students be equally successful with those alluded to? We readily grant that much is to be yet done to render the English language more popular in India; but assuredly the most likely way of effecting this very desirable end, is not to bestow a premium upon the study of the Arabic, Sanscrit, and Persian, and to close the portal of employment to the English student. According to Mr. Tytler, it is not only the difficulty of acquiring the English, which is such a formidable obstacle in the way of the learner, but the almost insurmountable one of finding properly qualified English teachers. We beg to refer your lordship to his observations on this head, contenting ourselves with the remark, that if English is not to be taught to native medical students, until such an utopian selection of schoolmasters as Mr. Tytler indicates be made, then must the English language, and the treasures of scientific knowledge it contains, be long to them a fountain sealed. Mr. Tytler has several elaborate comments on the study of Greek and Latin, the scope of which is to show, that these languages have a greater affinity to the English language, than English has to Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian. The argument is ingenious, but far from conclusive. Latin and Greek, indeed, were the languages of the learned in Europe, as Arabic and Sanscrit are of the learned in India. There the parallel ends. English, however, enjoys an advantage that Latin did not at the epoch alluded to by Mr. Tytler. It is a living language; it is the language of a great people, many of whom, it may now be expected, will settle in this country; it is also the language of the governing power. It is not too much to expect that the time is not far distant when English will become much more popular than it is, and when to speak and write it correctly will be deemed a distinguishing privilege. Let English have fair play, and be placed at least upon a par with Sancrit, Arabic, and Persian, and it will become manifest to the most indifferent observer, that the natives study the latter, not because they are the best media for instruction, 143

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but because they lead to employment and competency, which the English does not. Perhaps an exception should be stated with reference to the Sanscrit—judging from a recent memorial of a number of Hindu youths to the secretary of the sub-committee to the Sanscrit College, representing, that after many years spent in the study of Sanscrit, they are in a destitute condition, as they can find neither employment nor consideration among their countrymen. So long as European literature was confined to Latin, Mr. Tytler estimates the attempts of our ancestors as mere forced imitations of the classics, the far greater part of which are now deservedly forgotten. Supposing the fact to be even as stated, it cuts both ways; and we may, by a parity of reasoning, assume, that so long as Eastern literature is confined to Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian, the writings of Indian students will be mere forced imitations of the Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian classics. But Mr. Tytler is a great deal too sweeping in his remarks; for many of the works of our ancestors in science, morals, and poetry, that were written in Latin, so far from being forgotten, are held in the highest estimation, even at this day, and are remarkable no less for strength of reasoning than for purity and elegance of expression. We shall be perfectly content if native students should be found to think as justly, and write as beautifully, in English, as Buchanan, Bacon, and various others did in Latin; or, to come nearer our own times, and in a professional walk, as Harvey, Sydenham, Boerhaave, Haller, Heberden, and Gregory did, in the same language. It should be borne in mind, that when Latin was, it may be said, the cradle of science, the English language had not attained that fulness and correctness of which it can now legitimately boast. The style of vernacular writers was not formed, being quaint, pedantic, and vitiated; composition was in its infancy, and there were but few writers. The times, too, were far from favourable to the cultivation of letters. To compare English composition as it was in those days, with what it afterwards became, would be to institute a comparison between a Hindoo figure-maker and Canova. Ever since the Reformation, the English language has been advancing to its present magnificent state of universality, copiousness, and beauty. It would, indeed, be a strange thing, if in our day, when more works are published in a year than were in the olden time printed in half a century, the native youth of India, who may turn to the study of English, should, in defiance of the standard works put into their hands, and in spite of precept and example, follow such pedantic and vitiated models as those alluded to by Mr. Tytler. Facts daily occurring around us, demonstrate the groundlessness of such a fear. “As it was in Europe,” contends Mr. Tytler, “so it will be with the English productions of the natives of India; they will be a mere patchwork of sentences extracted from the few English books with which their authors are acquainted.” Mr. Tytler should at least have shown, that, to produce such an effect, the circumstances were precisely the same in the two countries. How he has reached his postulate, he has not condescended to say; nor is it of much importance to know; for it is, after all, a hypothetical assumption. In recommending that native medical students should possess a knowledge of English, we are swayed by a hope, not of their writing 144

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books, good or bad, but of their thoroughly understanding and digesting valuable works in that language, comprising as it does an inestimable body of scientific information; and in progress of time, of their translating them into the vernacular tongues of India, for the benefit of their countrymen. We wish them to be able to drink at the fountainhead, instead of depending to allay their mental thirst with driblets of translations, occasionally from the hands of an European. But the exclusive study of English, Mr. Tytler deems, will be chargeable with producing an effect which he greatly deprecates. It must necessarily, he thinks, discourage the natives from the cultivation of their own tongues. Were Arabic and Persian their own tongues, there would be some show of reason in the objection; but when we bear in mind that they are as foreign to the people as English, its validity vanishes at once. To the great body of the people, too, the Sanscrit is in effect quite a foreign language. Of the absorption of that language we need have no fear, so long as it is the interest of the Brahmins to foster it. But if the thing were possible, we are by no means disposed to view the substitution of English for these tongues as a misfortune. As to the objection, that the study of English would put an end to all native composition and indigenous literature; we would simply inquire, if there is in the world a less edifying and more barren literature than that of Hindoostan, or one that has done less for morality, philosophy, and science? With reference to that imitation of English writers, which Mr. Tytler assumes would beset native students, that gentleman quotes with complacency a saying of Johnson, “That no man was ever great by imitation,” and amplifies the apophthegm so as to comprehend masses of men; as if the saying stood, that no people ever became great by imitation. The saying thus applied, becomes an untenable sophism; for, on reflection, we shall find that the converse of the position holds true; since civilisation itself is nothing else but a complex system of imitation. We beg now to call your Lordship’s attention to the opinions of the Rev. Mr. Duff. In reply to the question, whether, in order to teach the principles of any science to native boys, he considered it necessary that they should know Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian? the reverend gentleman replies, that, “In reference to the acquisition of European science, the study of the languages mentioned would be a sheer waste of labour and time; since, viewed as a media for receiving and treasuring the stores of modern science, there is, at present, no possible connection between them.” On the other hand, in reply to the question,—if he thought it possible to teach native boys the principles of any science through the medium of the English language? He replied, that, “The experience of the last three years has, if possible, confirmed the conviction he previously entertained, not merely that it is possible to teach native boys the principles of any science through the medium of the English language, but that, in the present incipient state of native improvement, it is next to impossible to teach them successfully the principles of any science through any other medium than the English.” He further records his opinion, that the study of the English language might be rendered very popular among the natives. “The sole reason,” he justly observes, “why the English is not now more a general and anxious object of acquisition among the natives, is the degree of 145

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uncertainty under which they (the natives) still labour as to the ultimate intentions of Government, and whether it will ever lead them into paths of usefulness, profit, or honour; only let the intentions of Government be officially announced, and there will be a general movement among all the more respectable classes.” But the teaching of English acquires much importance, when we consider it, with Mr. Duff, as the grand remedy for obviating the prejudices of the natives against practical anatomy. “The English language,” he urges (Mr. Duff’s replies, p. 32.), “opens up a whole world of new ideas, and examples of success in every department of science; and the ideas so true, and the examples so striking, work mightily on the susceptible minds of native youth; so that by the time they have acquired a mastery over the English language, under judicious and enlightened instructors, their minds are almost metamorphosed into the texture and cast of European youth, and they cannot help expressing their utter contempt for Hindoo superstition and prejudices.” There is an argument of fact put in by Mr. Duff, which is admirably to the point. We allude to the introduction of the English language and of English science among the Scottish Highlanders, whose native language, to this day, is the Gaelic. The parallel is a very fair one; for no people were more superstitious, more wedded to their own customs, and more averse to leaving their native country, than the Highlanders: but since the introduction of the English language among them, the state of things is much changed. The same observation applies to Ireland and Wales, where, as in the Highlands of Scotland, the English is a foreign language; and yet its acquisition is eagerly sought after by the natives of all these countries, as an almost certain passport to employment. There are medical men, natives of these countries, scattered all over the world, whose mother tongue is Welsh, Irish, or Gaelic, which, as children, they spoke for years—just as the children of European parents in India speak Hindoostance and Bengalee; with this difference, however, that the latter soon forget the Oriental tongues; while the youth who acquire the indigenous language of Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, and Wales, never lose the language of those countries, because they do not quit them till a more advanced period of life. For the first years of youth the Highlanders at school, even of all ranks, think in the Gaelic; but this does not prevent their acquiring such a fluent and business-like knowledge of English, as to enable them to pass through life with credit, and not unfrequently with distinction. What is there in the condition, physical or moral, of the natives of this country, that should render them incapable of acquiring English as easily as the Irish, the Highlanders, and Welsh? (Signed)

J. GRANT, . . . . . . . . . . . . .President. J. C. C. SUTHERLAND, C. E. TREVELYAN, THOMAS SPENS, Members. RAMCOMUL, SEN., M. J. BRAMLEY,

}

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15 SARAH TUCKER, EXTRACT FROM ‘CENTRAL SCHOOL FOR NATIVE GIRLS’, IN SOUTH INDIAN SKETCHES, PART I (LONDON: JAMES NISBET, 1848, 3RD EDN), 73–84

LETTER IX. MY DEAR LUCY, How differently circumstanced are the women in India from those in our own happy land! Here, where the light of the Gospel still shines brightly, they are considered as the companions and friends of their fathers, their brothers, or their husbands—their feelings are consulted, their comfort is promoted, and their mental improvement is attended to; for, known to be co-heirs of immortality, they are felt also to be helps meet upon earth. But far different is the lot of the native women in India—their relation to God being unknown, their usefulness to man is the only object of consideration; and it is taken for granted that the only end of their existence is to promote his temporal advantage. The females of higher rank are secluded in their own apartments, where, confined to the society of their children and attendants, and seldom honoured by a visit from their husbands, they pass the tedious days in indolence or useless occupations. In the lower ranks they are, in fact, household slaves, and when the work within doors is finished, are thrust out to beat rice, to draw water, to collect cow-dung for fuel, or even to work as bricklayers’ labourers, while their husbands perhaps are sitting at home, sleeping, or indulging in listless idleness. Whether of high or low caste, the wife never ventures to eat with her husband or her sons; she must stand behind till they have finished, and then, taking the leavings of their meal, must retire to eat it out of sight.1 You will readily suppose that their education is not attended to, and will not be surprised that while the boys are generally sent to school and taught to read, to write, and keep accounts, the poor girls are brought up in the most entire ignorance. Generally speaking, the higher classes still remain inaccessible on this point to European influence, and allege that their daughters would be degraded by 147

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learning to read! But happily, the lower classes are not so prejudiced, and though in most places they showed at first great unwillingness to allow their girls to go to school, yet now, as they begin to see the advantage of it, their unwillingness has very much given way, and in some places they are even anxious for their education. But there is as yet a very small number of female schools in proportion to the multitude of children who might be instructed, for the parents are too poor to pay; and all that are at present established in South India are entirely supported by the liberality of Christian friends. The first movement towards female education in Madras itself was from the natives. In 1824, several parents applied to Mrs. Ridsdale to establish a day school for their daughters. She did so, and others arose in consequence; but no regular plan was adopted till 1830, when some ladies residing there, determined to form themselves into a Committee, and to establish a larger number of schools. They were encouraged by finding the children willing to come, and very intelligent and quick in learning their lessons; and after a little while, a large room was built in Black Town for a central school. This school is under the charge of Mrs. Winckler, whose lively and affectionate interest for the children is met on, their part by a fondness for school, and a desire for improvement, which leads to the assured hope, that her work of faith and labour of love will not be thrown away. There are generally about a hundred and forty girls present, and you would be delighted to see them, with their gentle yet eager countenances, standing in their classes, or more frequently sitting on the ground with their legs crossed, learning their lessons, or knitting, or working, or writing; and I assure you there are not many schools in England that could show such beautifully neat work as is sent out from this. You would wonder to see them write their copies, for, instead of paper, they have each of them an olei, or long strip of the palmyra leaf, about an inch and a half broad, and one or two feet long. This they hold in the left hand, and in their right, instead of pen and ink, they grasp a style, or sharp iron instrument, which they rest against a notch in the left thumb nail, and with it scratch the words on the leaf. They afterwards rub it over with powdered charcoal, or the leaf of some particular plant, which, sinking into the scratches, makes the letters black or green.2

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To us this would be a difficult and awkward manner of writing; but the natives, from long habit, write in this way very neatly and quickly. You would wonder too at their school books, which are of the same material as their copies, only the strips are shorter, and all cut to the same length and breadth; they are kept together by a string fastened to a shell, which is long enough to allow the leaves to be sufficiently separated to be read, and when they are not in use, is twisted round them. Sometimes the outside leaves are ornamented with various devices, and when nicely executed, the whole is remarkably neat and pretty.

The parents of some of the children at Mrs. Winckler’s school are employed in the service of Europeans, and being therefore comparatively well off, can afford to give them proper clothing, and to allow them two meals a-day. But the rest are extremely poor and wretched; they come to school half-naked, very dirty, and sometimes without food; so that it not unfrequently happens, that a girl, when standing up in her class, will become so faint from hunger and exhaustion, as to be obliged to leave her place and lie down. Miserable indeed is the outward condition of many of these poor girls: and yet, happy are they if they learn, as we may hope some of them do, the way to obtain true riches—gold tried in the fire, and raiment made white in the blood of the Lamb. Their parents are too poor to have even a house of their own, they live in the piols of the houses of the better classes, sheltering themselves with a screen of cocoa-nut leaves or bamboos, without any furniture except a few chatties,3 in one of which they make their fire, and in the others dress their food, or keep their rice and water. Sometimes, but not always, they have a mat to sleep upon. The poverty of these poor people obliges them to eat whatever they can get, fish, dead animals, and any kind of grain boiled soft; but the higher classes are very particular in their diet, and any departure from the established customs would occasion loss of caste. The food of these last is almost exclusively rice and vegetables, with curry, and sometimes a little assafœtida, which they say gives a flavour resembling animal food. When at home and alone, their food is served to them in small brass basins; but when they receive visitors, or are on a journey, they only use plates of leaves, that they may avoid all risk of defilement. These plates are very pretty, and are made of one leaf, if large enough, or if not, of several small ones, pinned together with little splinters of the stalk. A dinner party among the richer Bramins must be a curious sight. The guests are of course seated on the floor, and before each of them twenty or thirty of these plates are set, filled with various kinds of food. These are all placed on the bare floor; which, instead of a table cloth, is adorned with patterns of flowers, &c., very prettily laid out in sands of different bright colours, in frames, which are removed when the feast is concluded. 149

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From the same fear of defilement, they never allow their earthen vessels to be seen; but when they go to the bazaar or the well, will only take those of brass or lead, as these can be more thoroughly cleansed than the others. But I have wandered away very far from Mrs. Winckler and her school, and will now return there for a few minutes. There are examinations held every month, but besides these, there is an annual one, when all the Madras schools under the Ladies’ Committee are collected together at the central school, and the upper classes from each school are examined. A lady, who has several times been present, gives me the following account:— “The room is spacious and lofty, with pillars along the sides; at one end were the benches for the visitors, and the girls who were to be examined, about ninety in number, were seated at the other. The younger ones were ranged along the sides of the room, between the pillars and the outer wall, and the number altogether was above 500. On a table in the middle of the room were specimens of their work and writing, and on another, the rewards intended for distribution. “It was a very striking sight, when I first went in, to see all these girls seated on the floor, with olei copies lying before them, and books or samplers in their hands. “As I was early, I had time to look round the room; and one of the girls was called out that I might see her write. There was not a blank leaf left, so Daniel (the Madras head catechist), who was present, just took one of the written copies, and splitting it, made two fresh pages, the girl laid the leaf upon her knee, and wrote a few lines very neatly and quickly. “As soon as the visitors had arrived, and all was ready, a Tamul hymn was sung to an English tune; this was followed by a prayer in English, which was interpreted by Daniel into Tamul; then the Lord’s prayer in Tamul, in which the girls all joined. “They were first examined in Gen. xviii., which they had prepared on purpose, and they answered extremely well. One of the chaplains, who was there, then asked them questions on different parts of Scripture, and this interested me even more than the former, as they were quite unprepared, and yet gave very satisfactory answers. “They seemed thoroughly to understand the fall of Adam and the remedy provided: ‘What did Adam and Eve lose by eating the forbidden fruit?’ ‘They lost the likeness of God.’ ‘Is man now born in the likeness of God?’ ‘Illé,’ (No,) from many voices. I lost a great deal from not understanding Tamul; for, though the clergyman translated the questions and answers, it, of course, was not the same thing, particularly as, when several answered together, he only repeated the answer which seemed the most appropriate. When, however, the answer was only ‘Ama,’ (Yes,) or ‘Illé,’ (No,) I could understand and fully enjoy it. “They were well acquainted with the history of Abraham. When asked about his faith, one girl made a long quotation from Romans iv., which she applied very nicely: ‘Was Abraham justified by his righteousness?’ ‘Illé,’ from many voices. ‘By what then?’ ‘By faith.’ ‘By whose righteousness?’ ‘The LORD’s.’ They seemed 150

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quite to understand the alone way of salvation through JESUS CHRIST; and when asked whether Vishnoo or Síva could save them, the ‘Illé’ that sounded through the room, seemed to come from their hearts. “It is a painful part of the intercourse with these poor girls, to know that, after they have been thus declaring, and apparently with sincerity, that their idols cannot save them, they return home and join their parents in worshipping them.” There have not, however, been wanting instances of girls being so convinced of the falsehood of their own religion, and the truth of Christianity, that they have made an uncompromising confession of it, and suffered much in consequence. One girl refused to accompany her friends to a heathen temple, and when forcibly carried there, still refused to worship the idol; and another was driven from her home, and obliged to take refuge in the house of one of the catechists. I wish I could tell you more about these two girls, but I have never heard of them since. “When the examination was over, the girls came round to show their work and writing, and the absence of the English curtsey was more than supplied by their graceful salaam.4 “The rewards were then distributed, consisting chiefly of bags, needle books, and scissors, sent by friends in England; and the kind donors would indeed have been gratified, could they have seen the pleasure they afforded, and the smiles and salaams with which they were received.” I was much amused by an account I heard from the same lady of a doll being shown to some of these children. It was dressed as an English housemaid; but, as they cannot be persuaded that there are any white people except ladies and gentlemen, they were not a little astonished and perplexed when told that this was an English ayah. “What! ayahs dress like ladies?” “Do they live with them—and eat with them?” “Do they have knives and forks, or do they eat with their fingers?” “Shoes and stockings, too! Does it rain there? Is it not dirty? Do they wear them when they go out?” were a few of the expressions of surprise that were called forth. The idea, however, of all white people being ladies and gentlemen, is not confined to these poor children, for a gentleman who had lived in India from his earliest childhood, and came to England for the first time a little while ago, told me, that on his arrival, he could with difficulty divest himself of the same notion, and when walking in the streets of London, frequently found himself wondering where all the servants and low-caste people could be. But my letter has run on to an unusual length, and I will only add that I remain, Yours affectionately, S. T

Notes 1 Bishop Heber says, “The worst food, the coarsest garments, the meanest work, and the hardest blows, seem to be considered the woman’s portion.”

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2 A clergyman who has sometimes preached in the Mission church at Palamcottah, told me that the first time he gave out his text, there was suddenly such a scratching, like the nibbling of mice, that he could not think what it could be, till he found it was the seminary boys writing down the text upon their oleis. 3 Earthen vessels of various forms and sizes. 4 Gently bowing the head, with the hand on the forehead.

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Including: -

William Adam’s Letter to William Bentinck on Vernacular Education On Village schools and their defects On Female Education On Native language and English Language education On vernacular instruction On the improvement of Sanskrit Education MR. ADAM’S LETTER TO

LORD W. BENTINCK, ON

VERNACULAR EDUCATION. From W. ADAM, Esquire, to the Right Hon’ble Lord WILLIAM CAVENDISH BENTINCK, K. C. B., G. C. H., Governor General of India,—Dated the 2nd January 1835. MY LORD,—AT your Lordship’s request, I have the honor to address you in writing on the subject to which my recent personal communications with your Lordship have had principal reference. Having submitted a proposal to institute an investigation into the actual state of education in this country, with a view to ulterior measures for its extension and improvement, and the object of that proposal being approved by your Lordship, I have been instructed to describe the mode in which the plan might be carried into effect, and to furnish an estimate of the monthly expense that would thereby be incurred. A brief reference to 153

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the considerations that recommend the design is requisite to render those details intelligible. 2. It is assumed that Government is desirous of encouraging education amongst all classes of its subjects, whether Christians, Mahomedans, or Hindoos, as a means of improving their condition by a better knowledge of the arts of life that minister to human wants; of purifying and elevating their character by moral and intellectual instruction; and of qualifying them at once to appreciate the benevolent intentions and salutary measures of Government, and to give to those measures the moral force derived from the support of an intelligent and instructed population. Without this moral force, which education only can create, Government, however benevolently administered, is but the will of the strongest which finds no response where physical power does not reach, and legislation, however wisely devised, is but a dead letter, which reposes in the statute book, is barely enforced in the Courts, and out of them is inert and unknown. 3. Such being the understood objects of Government in promoting education in this country, the question arises—“What are the best The object of investigation. means to be employed for that purpose?” Without disputing any of the answers that have been or may be returned to this question, I have ventured to suggest that a preliminary inquiry without which every scheme must want a foundation to rest upon is—“What is the actual state of education amongst the various classes into which the population of the country is divided?” When the population of a country is homogeneous, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, and having common interests, such an investigation might be the less necessary; but where the more instructed portion of the population is separated from the less instructed portion by difference of language, as in Scotland; by difference of language and religion, as in Ireland; and by the further difference, as in India, caused by the relative position of foreigners and natives, conquerors and conquered, it is indispensable. In such cases it is only by a careful attempt to map the moral and intellectual condition of a people that we can understand either the extent of their knowledge or of their ignorance, discover either what they possess or what they need, and adapt the means employed to the end we desire to accomplish. In a recent investigation into the state of education in the Highlands of Scotland, it was proved that thousands could not read, natives of a country where it had been proudly boasted that all were educated. A similar investigation into the state of education in India may perhaps show, not that the people are less, but that they are more, instructed than we suppose, and that they have institutions among them both for the purposes of common education and for the propagation or rather preservation of the learning they possess. The institutions to which I refer will probably be found defective in their organization, narrow and contracted in their aim, and destitute of any principle of extension and improvement; but of their existence the large body of literature in the country, the large body of learned men who hand it down from age to age, and the large proportion of the population that can read and write, are proofs. Of course, I do not mean to intimate that their existence has been hitherto unknown, but that their 154

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number, their efficiency, their resources and the possibility of employing them as auxiliaries in the promotion of education have not been sufficiently considered. 4. To whatever extent such institutions may exist, and in whatever condition they may be found, stationary, advancing, or retrograding, they present the only true and sure foundations on which any scheme of general or national education can be established. We may deepen and extend the foundations, we may improve, enlarge and beautify the superstructure, but these are the foundations on which the building should be raised. All men, particularly uninstructed and half-instructed men, attach the same importance to forms as to substance, and as forms are merely conventional, it is desirable in the work of reform to disembarrass ourselves of opposition founded on the overthrow of ancient forms, and to enlist on our side the prepossessions in favor of their continued use. Besides, there is a probability that those forms, if not at the period of their original adoption, yet by long continued usage are suited to the manners, habits, and general character of the people whom we desire to benefit, and that any other forms which we might seek to establish would in reality be less fitted to supply their place. All schemes for the improvement of education, therefore, to be efficient and permanent, should be based upon the existing institutions of the country, transmitted from time immemorial, familiar to the conceptions of the people, and inspiring them with respect and veneration. To labor successfully for them, we must labor with them; and to labor successfully with them, we must get them to labor willingly and intelligently with us. We must make them, in short, the instruments of their own improvement; and how can this be done but by identifying ourselves and our improvements with them and their institutions? To do this, we must first ascertain what those institutions are, their actual condition, and every circumstance connected with them that can be made to contribute to the object in view. To make this important preliminary inquiry is the service for which I have offered myself to your Lordship. 5. In obedience to your Lordship’s orders, I have now to state the manner in which I would propose that this service should be perMode of investigation. formed. There are two descriptions of places with regard to which a somewhat different mode of investigation will be necessary, viz., first, principal towns or seats of learning, as Calcutta, Nuddea, Dacca, Moorshedabad; secondly, districts, as Jessore, Midnapore and Purneah. 6. With regard to the former—Taking up my residence at one of the principal towns or seats of learning, I would, with the aid of my Pundit and Moulavee and by friendly communication with the respectable inhabitants and learned men of the place, make an enumeration or list of the various institutions for the promotion of education; classify them according to the denominations of which they may consist, whether Hindoos, Mahomedans, or Christians; public, private, charitable; examine each institution of each class with the consent of the parties concerned, and make a memorandum on the spot of the number of the pupils; the nature and extent of the course of instruction in science and learning, the resources of the institution, whether public or private; if public, whether they appear to be efficiently and legitimately applied, the estimation in which the institution is held 155

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by the community to which it belongs, and the possibility or means of raising the character and enlarging the usefulness of any single institution, or of a whole class. Having exhausted the institutions of one class, I would proceed to another, and from that to a third, repeating the same process in each, until I had obtained a complete knowledge of the state of education in the whole town and neighbourhood. The memoranda thus taken down on the spot and at the instant, the fruits of personal knowledge and direct observation, would supply the materials from which a full and methodical report would be furnished to Government. 7. A somewhat different mode must be employed in investigating the state of education in a district where common schools and schools of learning are indiscriminately scattered over a large surface. In that case, fixing my principal residence at the head station of the zillah, I would diverge from it in all directions to the extreme bounds of the district, passing one, two, three, or more days at one place, according as objects of investigation of the kind connected with my immediate duty presented themselves, entering freely into communication with parents, teachers, and pundits on that subject, examining schools, both common and learned, and, as in the former case, making my memoranda at the time for future guidance in preparing a report. After having completed the range of one district, I would proceed to another, until I had in this manner gone over the whole country assigned to my investigation. 8. The number and frequency of my reports must depend upon the greater or less abundance of the materials with which observation and inquiry may supply me. I should commence my labors with the purpose of furnishing a separate report on the state of education in each principal town and in each district as soon as it has been examined, for there may be circumstances connected with the state of education in the town or district demanding early attention either for the purpose of remedying what is evil, or encouraging what is good. It is also possible, however, that one district may be so entirely a picture of another, with reference to this particular subject, that a separate report for each will be unnecessary. When I shall have gone the tour of a province, as of Bengal, Behar, Allahabad, or Agra, it would seem proper that I should then furnish a general report, condensing the details of the previous district reports, confirming and amplifying or qualifying and correcting the statements and opinions they contain by the results of more comprehensive observation, and drawing those general conclusions which can be safely grounded only on an extensive induction of particulars. A general report upon school books and books of instruction, or a separate report upon those in each language, distinguishing those that are most useful, pointing out when labor and money have been misapplied, to prevent a recurrence of the same evil, and indicating the department of knowledge in which chiefly defects remain to be supplied, is also a desideratum. The estimate of 100,000 such schools in Bengal and Behar is confirmed by a consideration of the number of villages in those two provinces. Their number has been officially estimated at 150,748, of which, not all, but most have each a school. If it be admitted that there is so large a proportion as a third of the villages that have no schools, there will still be 100,000 that have them. Let it be admitted that these calculations from uncertain premises are only distant approximations to 156

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the truth, and it will still appear that the system of village schools is extensively prevalent; that the desire to give education to their male children must be deeply seated in the minds of parents even of the humblest classes; and that these are the institutions, closely interwoven as they are with the habits of the people and the customs of the country, through which primarily, although not exclusively, we may hope to improve the morals and intellect of the Native population. It is not, however, in the present state of these schools, that they can be regarded as valuable instruments for this purpose. The benefits resulting from them are but small, owing partly to the incompetency of the instructors, and partly to the early age at which through the poverty of the parents the children are removed. The education of Bengalee children, as has been just stated, generally commences when they are five or six years old and terminates in five years, before the mind can be fully awakened to a sense of the advantages of knowledge or the reason sufficiently matured to acquire it. The teachers depend entirely upon their scholars for subsistence, and being little respected and poorly rewarded, there is no encouragement for persons of character, talent or learning to engage in the occupation. These schools are generally held in the houses of some of the most respectable native inhabitants or very near them. All the children of the family are educated in the vernacular language of the country; and in order to increase the emoluments of the teachers, they are allowed to introduce, as pupils, as many respectable children as they can procure in the neighborhood. The scholars begin with tracing the vowels and consonants with the finger on a sand-board and afterwards on the floor with a pencil of steatite or white crayon; and this exercise is continued for eight or ten days. They are next instructed to write on the palm-leaf with a reed-pen held in the fist not with the fingers, and with ink made of charcoal which rubs out, joining vowels to the consonants, forming compound letters, syllables, and words, and learning tables of numeration, money, weight, and measure, and the correct mode of writing the distinctive names of persons, castes, and places. This is continued about a year. The iron style is now used only by the teacher in sketching on the palm-leaf the letters which the scholars are required to trace with ink. They are next advanced to the study of arithmetic and the use of the plantain-leaf in writing with ink made of lamp-black, which is continued about six months, during which they are taught addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and the simplest cases of the mensuration of land and commercial and agricultural accounts, together with the modes of address proper in writing letters to different persons. The last stage of this limited course of instruction is that in which the scholars are taught to write with lamp-black ink on paper, and are further instructed in agricultural and commercial accounts and in the composition of letters. In country places the rules of arithmetic are principally applied to agricultural and in towns to commercial accounts: but in both town and country schools the instruction is superficial and defective. It may be safely affirmed that in no instance whatever is the orthography of the language of the country acquired in those schools, for although in some of them two or three of the more advanced boys write out small portions of the most popular poetical compositions of the country, yet the manuscript copy itself is so inaccurate 157

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that they only become confirmed in a most vitiated manner of spelling, which the imperfect qualifications of the teacher do not enable him to correct. The scholars are entirely without instruction, both literary and oral, regarding the personal virtues and domestic and social duties. The teacher, in virtue of his character, or in the way of advice or reproof, exercises no moral influence on the character of his pupils. For the sake of pay, he performs a menial service in the spirit of a menial. On the other hand, there is no text or school-book used containing any moral truths or liberal knowledge, so that education being limited entirely to accounts, tends rather to narrow the mind and confine its attention to sordid gain, than to improve the heart and enlarge the understanding. This description applies, as far as I at present know, to all indigenous elementary schools throughout Bengal.

SECTION V. FEMALE INSTRUCTION.

Some account of the means and amount of female instruction is indispensable, but on this subject I have been able to collect very little information. The female population of all ages in Nattore, according to Table I., amounts to 94,717. Of the total female population, 16,497 are under five years of age; that is, are below the teachable age, or the age at which the first instruction in letters may be or is communicated. Of the total female population, 16,792 are between fourteen and five years of age; that is, are of the age at which the mind is capable of receiving in an increasing degree the benefit of instruction in letters. The state of instruction amongst this unfortunate class cannot be said to be low, for with a very few individual exceptions there is no instruction at all. Absolute and hopeless ignorance is in general their lot. The notion of providing the means of instruction for female children never eaters into the minds of parents; and girls are equally deprived of that imperfect domestic instruction which is sometimes given to boys. A superstitious feeling is alleged to exist in the majority of Hindu families, principally cherished by the women and not discouraged by the men, that a girl taught to write and read will soon after marriage become a widow, an event which is regarded as nearly the worst misfortune that can befal the sex; and the belief is also generally entertained in native society that intrigue is facilitated by a knowledge of letters on the part of females. Under the influence of these fears there is not only nothing done in a native family to promote female instruction, but an anxiety is often evinced to discourage any inclination to acquire the most elementary knowledge, so that when a sister, in the playful innocence of childhood, is observed imitating her brother’s attempts at penmanship, she is expressly forbidden to do so, and her attention drawn to something else. These superstitious and distrustful feelings prevail extensively, although not universally, both amongst those Hindus who are devoted to the pursuits of religion, and those who are engaged in the business of the world. Zemindars are for the most part exempt from them, and they in 158

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general instruct their daughters in the elements of knowledge, although it is difficult to obtain from them an admission of the fact. They hope to marry their daughters into families of wealth and property, and they perceive that, without a knowledge of writing and accounts, their daughters will, in the event of widowhood, be incompetent to the management of their deceased husbands’ estates, and will unavoidably become a prey to the interested and unprincipled. The Mahomedans participate in all the prejudices of the Hindus against the instruction of their female offspring, besides that a very large majority of them are in the very lowest grades of poverty, and are thus unable, even if they were willing, to give education to their children. It may, therefore, be affirmed that the juvenile female population of this district, that is, the female population of the teachable age or of the ago between fourteen and five years, without any known exception and with so few probable exceptions that they can scarcely be taken into the account, is growing up wholly destitute of the knowledge of reading and writing. Upon the principle assumed in Section 1 in estimating the total population, it will follow that the juvenile female population of the whole district is eight times that of Nattore or 134,336; that is, in the single district of Rajshahi there is this number of girls of the teachable age growing up in total ignorance.

SECTION XII. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE STATE OF INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS MENTIONED IN THE PRECEDING SECTION.

It is impossible for me fully to express the confirmed conviction I have acquired of the utter impracticability of the views of those, if there are any such, who think that the English language should be the sole or chief medium of conveying knowledge to the natives. Let any one conceiving the desirableness of such a plan abandon in imagination at least the metropolis of the province or the chief town of the district in which he may happen to be living, and with English society let him abandon for a while his English predilections and open his mind to the impressions which fact and observation may produce. Let him traverse a pergunnah, a thana, a district, from north to south, from east to west, and in all directions. Let him note how village appears after village, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left, in endless succession; how numerous and yet how scattered the population; how uniform the poverty and the ignorance; and let him recollect that this process must be carried on until he has brought within the view of his eye or of his mind about ninety or a hundred millions of people diffused over a surface estimated to be equal in extent to the whole of Europe. It is difficult to believe that it should have been proposed to communicate to this mass of human beings through the medium of a foreign tongue all the knowledge that is necessary for their higher civilisation, their intellectual improvement, their moral guidance, and their physical comfort; but since much has been said and written and done which would seem to bear this interpretation, and since it is a question which involving the happiness and advancement of millions will not admit of 159

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compromise, I deem it my duty to state in the plainest and most direct terms that my conviction of the utter impracticability of such a design has strengthened with my increased opportunities of observation and judgment. Although the English language cannot become the universal instrument, European knowledge must be the chief matter of instruction; and the circumstances in which the country is placed point out the English language, not as the exclusive, but as one of the most obvious, means of communicating that instruction. I have, therefore, watched with much interest and promoted by any suggestions I could offer every desire and endeavour on the part of natives to acquire a knowledge of our language. In the districts I have visited, the desire cannot be said to be general, only because it is vain to desire that which is plainly unattainable; but it has been found to exist in instances and in situations where its existence is very encouraging. I have met with a learned Hindu and a learned Musalman in different districts, each in the private retirement of his native village attempting by painful and unassisted industry to elaborate some acquaintance with our language, and eagerly grasping at the slightest temporary aid that was afforded. Nor is it only in individual cases that this anxiety is displayed. The school at Raipur in the Beerbhoom district was established and continues to be supported through the desire of a wealthy native landholder to give an English education to his children. The Raja of Burdwan’s school is the more remarkable because it is established in Burdwan where another English school exists, which, although under Missionary direction, has been liberally patronized by the Raja, and in which the scholars receive superior instruction to that which is given by the Raja’s teachers. The support he has bestowed on the Missionary English school may be attributed to European influence or to a desire to conciliate the favor of the European rulers of the country; but the establishment of a separate school in his own house and at his own sole expense can be ascribed only to his opinion of the importance of knowledge of English to his dependents, and a desire to aid them in its acquisition. The English branch of the institution at Sahebgunge supported by Raja Mitrajit Singh and superintended by his son, does not appear to have been of native origin; and generally speaking the desire to know English is found in fewer instances in the Behar than in the Bengal districts. In both it is chiefly learned and wealthy men that have sought it for themselves or their children; and, with a view to purposes of practical utility, it is to those classes in the present condition of native society that it is most suitable. The orphan schools at Berhampore and Burdwan belong to a class of institutions which deserves special notice and encouragement not merely because such institutions supply the immediate wants of destitute orphans, which alone constitutes a strong claim, provided the means employed are not allowed to weaken existing domestic ties; but also because the object is to train them to the arts and habits of industry by which they may in after-life earn their own bread. In other schools a knowledge of books, of the words and phrases which books contain, and of the ideas which the understanding of children can apprehend or their memory retain, is taught; in these industrial institutions, some kind of art or trade is also taught, the physical powers are developed, enjoyment and profit are connected in the mind 160

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with labour as effect with cause, and thus both the capacity and the disposition are created that will prevent the youth so instructed from becoming a burden either to himself or to others, and that will make him an industrious and useful member of society. I am not aware of the existence of other institutions of the same kind in other parts of the country, and the two I have mentioned are still in their infancy. The increase of their number with a view to the improvement of the condition and habits of the lower classes of the people is eminently deserving of consideration. The importance of the object contemplated by the establishment of native female schools, and the benevolence of those who have established them, cannot be questioned, but some doubt may be entertained of the adaptation of the means to the end. The native prejudice against female instruction, although not insuperable, is strong; and the prejudice against the object should not be increased by the nature of the means employed to effect it. Now it appears nearly certain that, independent of the prejudice against the object, native parents of respectable rank must be unwilling to allow their daughters, contrary to the customs of native society, to leave their own homes and their own neighbourhoods and proceed to a distance, greater or less in different cases, to receive instruction; and this unwillingness cannot be lessened if it should appear that they will be placed in frequent and unavoidable communication with teachers and sircars of the male sex and of youthful age, and in some instances with the corrupt and vicious of their own sex. To re-assure the minds of native parents, native matrons are employed as messengers and protectors to conduct the girls to and from school; but it is evident that this does not inspire confidence, for, with scarcely any exception, it is only children of the very poorest and lowest castes that attend the girls’ schools, and their attendance is avowedly purchased. The backwardness of native parents of good caste may be further explained by the fact that the girls’ schools are under the sole direction of Missionaries; and the case of the Beerbhoom school shows that to combine the special object of conversion with the general object of female instruction must be fatal to the latter without accomplishing the former purpose. These remarks must be understood as strictly limited to the schools I have specifically described, and as inapplicable even amongst them to those in which the scholars, as in the case of female orphans, are under the constant, direct, and immediate superintendence of their Missionary instructors. In such cases the object and the means are equally deserving of unqualified approval; but it must be obvious that female instruction can never in this way become general.

SECTION II. PLAN PROPOSED AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE IMPROVEMENT AND EXTENSION OF VERNACULAR INSTRUCTION. The objections that apply to the plans brought under review in the preceding Section should at least make me diffident in proposing any other for adoption. The considerations I have suggested show that the subject has been viewed in various aspects, 161

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and in what follows I shall endeavour impartially to point out the difficulties, as well as the advantages, of the measure which, on the whole, I venture to recommend. The leading idea, that of employing existing native institutions as the instruments of national education, has been already suggested; and if their adaptation to this purpose had not been so much overlooked, it would have seemed surprising that they were not the very first means adopted for its promotion. Their importance, however, has been recognized, at least in words, by some of those who have been most distinguished for their intimate practical acquaintance with the details of Indian administration. Of these, I may cite here, on account of the comprehensive although cursory view it presents of the subject, the opinion expressed by Mr. Secretary Dowdeswell in his report of September 22nd 1809, on the general state of the Police of Bengal, contained in Appendix No. 12 to the Fifth Report on East India affairs. At the close of his report Mr. Dowdeswell says—“I have now stated all the measures which suggest themselves to my mind for the improvement of the Police, without entering into minute details, or deviating into a course which might be thought foreign to the subject. I am satisfied that if those measures be adopted they will be attended with considerable benefit in the suppression of the crimes most injurious to the peace and happiness of society,—an opinion which I express with the greatest confidence, as it is founded on practical experience of the system now recommended so far as the existing regulations would permit. I am, at the same time, sensible that a great deal more must be done in order to eradicate the seeds of those crimes,—the real source of the evil lies in the corrupt morals of the people. Under these circumstances, the best laws can only have a partial operation. If we would apply a lasting remedy to the evil, we must adopt means of instruction for the different classes of the community, by which they may be restrained, not only from the commission of public crimes, but also from acts of immorality by a dread of the punishments denounced both in this world and in a future state by their respective religious opinions. The task would not, perhaps, be so difficult as it may at first sight appear to be. Some remains of the old system of Hindu discipline still exist. The institutions of Mohammadanism of that description are still better known. Both might be revived and gradually moulded into a regular system of instruction for both those great classes of the community; but I pretend not to have formed any digested plan of that nature, and at all events it would be foreign, as above noticed, to the immediate object of my present report.” It does not appear what institutions Mr. Dowdeswell meant to describe, and confessedly his views were general and not very defined. A closer attention will show that Hinduism and Mohammadanism have certain institutions peculiar to them as systems of religious faith and practice, and certain other institutions peculiar to the people professing those systems, but forming no part of their religious faith and practice. To attempt to interfere with the former would be equally inconsistent with the principles and character of a Christian government, and opposed to the rights and feelings of a Hindu and Mohammadan people. But to revive the latter, and gradually to mould them “into a regular system of instruction for 162

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both those great classes of the community,” is the dictate both of sound wisdom and of the most obvious policy. The question arises in what manner native institutions may be most effectually employed, with a view to the gradual formation of a regular system of instruction for the benefit of all classes of the community; and the answer which, after mature consideration, I am deposed to give is by proposing the establishment of public and periodical examinations of the teachers and scholars of those institutions and the distribution of rewards to the teachers proportioned to their own qualifications and the attainments of their scholars,—the examinations to be conducted, and the rewards bestowed, by officers appointed by Government and placed under the authority and control of the General Committee of Public Instruction. This plan appears adapted to the character of the people and to the present condition of native society. Mr. Wyse in his recent work entitled Education Reform, Vol. I. p. 48, remarking on those dispositions which, in some manner, form the public character, the moral physiognomy, of nations, says—“This peculiar public character, formed of the aggregate of private, again acts in a very striking manner upon the character of the individual. But this action is still further affected by the changes of the times. A period of total quiet, resulting from a long continued acquiescence in old institutions, leaves a very different imprint upon the national mind from that which is the necessary consequence of a general breaking up of old principles and forms, and an earnest search after new. In the first instance, an education of stimulants becomes necessary, it is essential to the healthy activity of the body politic; in the second, steadiness, love of order, mutual toleration, the sacrifice of private resentments and factious interests to general good, should be the great lessons of national education.” At no period in the history of a nation can lessons of steadiness, love of order, mutual toleration, and the sacrifice of private to public good be deemed inappropriate; but if any where an education of stimulants is necessary to the healthy activity of the body politic, it is here where a long continued acquiescence in old institutions, and a long continued subjection to absolute forms and principles of government have produced and continue to perpetuate a universal torpor of the national mind. This education of stimulants I propose to supply on the basis of native institutions, and by means of a system of public and periodical examinations and rewards; and I hope to show, in conformity with the characteristics that have been sketched of a scheme likely to be attended with success, that, while the plan will present incitements to self-exertion for the purpose of self-improvement, it will be equally simple in its details and economical in expenditure, tending to draw forth the kindly affections of the people towards the Government, and to put into the hands of the Government large powers for the good of the people. The first proposed application of the plan is to the improvement and extension of vernacular education; and to the importance of this branch of public instruction testimony has been at different times borne by the highest authorities in the State. Of these, I shall quote two only in this place. Lord Moira in his Minute on the Judicial Administration of the Presidency of Fort William, dated the 2nd October 1815, after mentioning certain evils in the administration of the Government and 163

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in the character of the people, goes on to say—“In looking for a remedy to these evils, the moral and intellectual improvement of the natives will necessarily form a prominent feature of any plan which may arise from the above suggestions, and I have, therefore, not failed to turn my most solicitous attention to the important object of public education. The humble but valuable class of village school-masters claims the first place in this discussion. These men teach the first rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic for a trifling stipend which is within reach of any man’s means, and the instruction which they are capable of imparting suffices for the village zemindar, the village accountant, and the village shop-keeper. As the public money would be ill-appropriated in merely providing gratuitous access to that quantum of education which is already attainable, any intervention of Government, either by superintendence or by contribution, should be directed to the improvement of existing tuition and to the diffusion of it to places and persons now out of its reach. Improvement and diffusion may go hand in hand; yet the latter is to be considered matter of calculation, while the former should be deemed positively incumbent.” Twenty-two years have elapsed since these wise and benevolent views were expressed by one of the ablest and most distinguished rulers that British India has possessed, and no adequate means have yet been employed to discharge a duty declared to be positively incumbent by introducing improvement into the existing system of tuition practised by the humble but valuable class of village school-masters, and to extend the improved instruction to persons and places which the old system does not reach. We appear to have even retrograded, for not only has vernacular instruction been overshadowed and lost sight of by the almost exclusive patronage bestowed on a foreign medium of instruction, the English language, but even some of the principal efforts to improve the village schools and school-masters have, with or without reason, been abandoned. It was, I believe, under Lord Moira’s government that the Ajmere native schools were established and the Chinsurah native schools patronized by Government, but both have proved signal failures, and Government support has been withdrawn from them; the grand mistake being that new schools were formed subject to all the objections that have been described in another place, instead of the old schools and school-masters of the country that enjoyed, and still enjoy, the confidence of the people, being employed as the instruments of the desired improvements. The only other attempt known to me on this side of India to improve the system of vernacular instruction on a considerable scale unconnected with religion was that made by the Calcutta School Society, which received the special approbation of the Court of Directors. In 1825, in confirming the grant of 500 rupees per month which had been made to this Society by the Local Government, the Court made the following remarks:—“The Calcutta School Society appears to combine with its arrangements for giving elementary instruction, an arrangement of still greater importance for educating teachers for the indigenous schools. This last object we deem worthy of great encouragement, since it is upon the character of the indigenous schools that the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. By training up, therefore, a class of teachers, you provide for the eventual 164

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extension of improved education to a portion of the natives of India far exceeding that which any elementary instruction that could be immediately bestowed would have any chance of reaching.” The plan of the Calcutta School Society so highly approved was that of stimulating teachers and scholars by public examinations and rewards, and although it was very limited in its application, and very imperfect in its details, the effects upon the state of vernacular instruction in Calcutta were for a time highly beneficial. Yet the plan has been relinquished, the Society has ceased to exist, and the donation of Government, confirmed by the Court of Directors on the grounds above stated continues to be drawn by the nominal secretary and is now applied to the support of an English school and to the gratuitous education of thirty students of the Hindu College. It is evident, therefore, that in proposing to lay the foundations of national education by improving and extending the system of vernacular instruction, and to improve and extend that system, not by forming new and independent schools, but by employing the agency of the long-established institutions of the country, I am proposing nothing new. The following appears to be the substance of the views expressed by these authorities. The vernacular school-books prepared and issued under the authority of Government should embrace religious instruction as far as it can be communicated without engaging in religious controversy or exciting religious prejudice, without inculcating the peculiarities of any one religion or attacking those of another. Perhaps, the best way in which this might be effected would be, without employing any direct forms of religious inculcation, to cause the spirit of religion— its philanthropic principles and devotional feelings—to pervade the whole body of instruction on other subjects. On these other subjects, physical science, moral truths, and the arts and philosophy of civil and social life, the aim should be, not to translate European works into the words and idioms of the native languages, nor to adopt native works without the infusion of European knowledge, but so to combine the substance of European knowledge with native forms of thought and sentiment, and with the precepts, examples, maxims, and illustrations of native literature as shall render the school-books both useful and attractive. For this purpose the union of European and Native agency would be necessary,—European agency aided by the best works that have been framed in Europe and America for the use of schools, and Native agency of a high order of qualification to command readily the resources and appliances of native learning. Under the guidance of such general principles, and in the employment of such a united agency, a series of school-books in Bengali might be framed on the following plan:— The first of the series might be made with advantage to include all that is at present taught in scattered and disjointed portions in the vernacular schools, systematically arranged and presented in the clearest, most comprehensive, and most perfect form in which it can be prepared. It would thus be a text-book for instruction in writing on the ground, on the palm-leaf, on the plantain or salleaf, and on paper; in reading both written and printed compositions; in accounts both commercial and agricultural as taught in the works of Subhankar and 165

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Ugra Balaram; in the correct and fluent composition of letters, petitions, grants, leases, bonds, and notes of hand according to the most popular and approved forms; in the elements of grammar and lexicology as taught in Sabda Subanta, Ashta Sabdi, Ashta Dhatu, and the vocabulary of Amara Singh; and finally, in the moral verses of Chanakya. This work would make the learners, whether teachers or scholars, thoroughly competent in the knowledge and use of the most improved forms of their own vernacular system of instruction before introducing them to any higher grades of knowledge; and the first trial in every district would thus also be disembarrassed of the prejudices which might be raised if any new and strange subjects of instruction were suddenly and generally presented to them. Those portions of the above-mentioned native school-books that are in Sanscrit should be translated into Bengali. The second book of the series might explain the most important arts of life that contribute to comfort, improvement, and civilization, and might give elementary views of the sciences which have produced and must help to perfect them, Trade and the sub-divisions of manual labour; manufactures and the uses of machinery; and above all agriculture,—the most valuable products, the best modes and seasons of culture, the most useful implements and manures, the rotation of crops, draining, irrigation, large and small farms—all these are subjects which, in plain language and with appropriate local illustrations, might be brought home to the business and bosoms of nine-tenths of the people. The modes of applying agricultural capital are notoriously very rude and unproductive, and the quantity of land cultivated by the ryot is generally so very small that the value of that portion of the produce which falls to him as wages or profits barely supports him and his family even in the most favourable seasons, and in times of scarcity leaves him without resource. With such a vast agricultural population, upon the proper application of whose labor the entire prosperity of the country and the Government depends, what duty can be more imperative than to instruct them in the best use of all the circumstances of their condition? The third book of the series might be made explanatory of the moral and legal relations, obligations, and rights, whether personal, domestic, civil, or religious, of men living in a state of society and under the existing Government. A reference should be maintained throughout to the peculiar circumstances, wants, and character of the people. Thus, the expenditure of the people is in general so profuse and ill-directed as to account for much of the wretchedness of their condition. Inculcate, therefore, a prudent economy, and show not only by precept, but by examples and illustrations drawn from savings’ banks, &c., the advantages of steady industry and small accumulations as contrasted with the tyranny on the one hand, the slavery on the other, and the general distrust between man and man, arising out of the established system of money-lending and borrowing at exorbitant rates of interest. Again, the produce of their labor is often diminished by the illegal exactions of money-lenders, landlords, settlers, and the native officers of Government, whether of justice, revenue, or police. Teach the people their civil rights, the disposition of Government to protect them in the enjoyment of those 166

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rights, and the modes in which they may be most effectually protected. Still further, law to be obeyed, the violations of law to be shunned, and the punishments attached to those violations to be feared, should be known. But its requisitions, its prohibitions, and its sanctions are unknown to the body of the people, and law is to them, for the most part, the arbitrary will of the judge. In the absense of other means to make the penal laws generally known, let this school-book explain their principal provisions for the protection of person and property, the equal subjection of all to their authority, and the obligation and utility of contributing each person to the defence and security of every other subject of the State. The fourth book of the series might be employed to correct, enlarge, and systematize the knowledge of the learner respecting his native country, other countries, and the system of the world. If prepared for Bengali schools, it would explain the natural features and resources of Bengal, the political Government of British India, the physical and political geography of the other countries of the world, and the leading facts and principles of modern astronomy. It is easy for me to sketch the principal topics of these works, and the series might be still further extended; but it would be a more difficult task to fill up the outline in such a manner that the whole would deserve the approbation of Government and be acceptable to the people. Their utility, however, would compensate for the labor, the time, and the expense bestowed, for a really good school-book is a powerful instrument of good to a country. By these and by similar works a small native standard library might be formed; and the most important ideas they contain might, by the means I am about to recommend, be gradually worked into, and embodied with, the earliest impressions and the permanent convictions of native society. Having prepared and printed the first book of the series, the next step is to appoint a Government agent to each of the districts in which the plan is to be carried into effect. The duty to be assigned to him, as will afterwards more fully appear, is the examination of teachers and scholars, and with this view he should unite the acquirements both of a Native and English education. Without a good native education he could not, with credit and efficiency, act in the capacity of an examiner of native teachers and scholars; and an English education will be useful to conciliate the respect of his countrymen, to give him confidence in his own comparative attainments, and to enable him to receive and communicate to the people just views of the intentions of Government, and to the Government just views of the feelings and wishes of the people. In addition to these literary acquirements, an unimpeached character for steadiness, industry, and integrity is indispensable. Much will depend upon these examiners, and their appointment should be made with great care and discrimination. Those natives who have received an English education have in general too much neglected the ordinary branches of a Native education, and some difficulty may at first be experienced in obtaining competent persons; but a very little application on the part of the intelligent young men who have passed through the Hindoo College, the General Assembly’s Institution, and other public schools, will supply the requisite qualification, and the difficulty will speedily disappear. 167

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SECTION III. APPLICATION OF THE PLAN TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF SANSCRIT INSTRUCTION. The whole of the preceding details and reasonings contemplate the application of the plan to vernacular schools only. The principle, however, is to build on the foundation of native institutions generally, and, wherever they are to be found, to employ them as the instruments through which instruction may be most salutarily and most effectually communicated. I shall now consider what means may be employed to improve the system of instruction in the class of Sanscrit schools which are found in every district, and of which some account is given in the seventh and eighth Sections of the first Chapter. I do not propose that any thing should be done to extend or multiply such institutions. All that is proposed is, since their number and influence are undoubted, to bring them over to the side of true, useful, and sound knowledge. If there were no vernacular schools, it would still be desirable that there should be such schools for the instruction of the people. If there were no Sanscrit schools, their existence perhaps would not be desirable merely for the purposes of public instruction, which is the only subject now under consideration. But since they do exist, and since we cannot, if we would, cause them not to be, it is the plain dictate of common sense and of a wise policy not to despise and neglect them, but to conciliate, if possible, the good feelings of the learned and to employ their extensive and deep-seated influence in aid of the cause of public instruction. For the information of the reader I shall quote in this place some of the most prominent authorities I have met with on the encouragement to be given to native learning and the use to be made of it. In the records of the General Committee of Public Instruction I find a copy of a Minute dated 6th March 1811, ascribed to the Governor General, Lord Minto, and bearing also the signatures of the Members of Council, G. Hewett, J. Lumsden, and H. Colebrooke. This Minute possesses the greater interest both because it bears Mr. Colebrooke’s signature, and because it is believed to have suggested the provision on the same subject in the 53rd of George III. The following is an extract:—“It is a common remark that science and literature are in a progressive state of decay among the natives of India. From every inquiry which I have been enabled to make on this interesting subject, that remark appears to me but too well founded. The number of the learned is not only diminished, but the circle of learning, even among those who still devote themselves to it, appears to be considerably contracted. The abstract sciences are abandoned, polite literature neglected, and no branch of learning cultivated but what is connected with the peculiar religious doctrines of the people. The immediate consequence of this state of things is the disuse, and even actual loss, of many valuable books; and it is to be apprehended that, unless Government interfere with a fostering hand, the revival of letters may shortly become hopeless from a want of books, or of persons capable of explaining them. The principal cause of the present neglected state of literature 168

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in India is to be traced to the want of that encouragement which was formerly afforded to it by princes, chieftains, and opulent individuals under the native governments. Such encouragement must always operate as a strong incentive to study and literary exertions, but especially in India, where the learned professions have little, if any other, support. The justness of these observations might be illustrated by a detailed consideration of the former and present state of science and literature at the three principal seats of Hindu learning, viz., Benares, Tirhoot, and Nudiya. Such a review would bring before us the liberal patronage which was formerly bestowed, not only by princes and others in power and authority, but also by the zemindars, on persons who had distinguished themselves by the successful cultivation of letters at those places. It would equally bring to our view the present neglected state of learning at those once celebrated places; and we should have to remark with regret that the cultivation of letters was now confined to the few surviving persons who had been patronized by the native princes and others under the former Government, or to such of the immediate descendants of those persons as had imbibed a love of science from their parents. It is seriously to be lamented that a nation particularly distinguished for its love and successful cultivation of letters in other parts of the empire should have failed to extend its fostering care to the literature of the Hindus, and to aid in opening to the learned in Europe the repositories of that literature. It is not, however, the credit alone of the national character which is affected by the present neglected state of learning in the East. The ignorance of the natives in the different classes of society, arising from want of proper education, is generally acknowledged. This defect not only excludes them as individuals from the enjoyment of all those comforts and benefits which the cultivation of letters is naturally calculated to afford, but, operating as it does throughout almost the whole mass of the population, tends materially to obstruct the measures adopted for their better government. Little doubt can be entertained that the prevalence of the crimes of perjury and forgery so frequently noticed in the official reports is, in a great measure, ascribable both in the Mohammadans and Hindus to the want of due instruction in the moral and religious tenets of their respective faiths. It has been even suggested, and apparently not without foundation, that to this uncultivated state of the minds of the natives is, in a great degree, to be ascribed the prevalence of those crimes which were recently so great a scourge to the country. The latter offences against the peace and happiness of society have indeed for the present been materially checked by the vigilance and energy of the Police, but it is probably only by the more general diffusion of knowledge among the great body of the people that the seeds of these evils can be effectually destroyed.” The Minute then proceeds to recommend certain measures consisting in the reform of the Hindu College at Benares and the Mohammadan College at Calcutta, and the establishment of two new Hindu Colleges, one at Nudiya and the other in Tirhoot; and of two new Mohammadan Colleges, one at Bhaugulpore and the other at Jaunpoor. The cost of the two new Hindu Colleges was estimated at sicca rupees 25,618 per annum. The recommendations have been, in a 169

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great measure, superseded by subsequent arrangements, but some of them contain useful hints which may still be turned to account,—one is that pensions should be granted to distinguished teachers on condition that they deliver instructions to pupils at their own houses, another is that public disputations should be held annually at which prizes, rewards, and literary honors should be conferred on such of the students as shall have manifested the greatest proficiency. Both are judiciously adapted to Hindu usages. The preceding extracts exhibit opinions entitled to great consideration; but a closer analysis and more detailed statement of the grounds on which I would rest the importance and necessity of adopting measures for the improvement of Sanscrit instruction, are desirable. First.—Sanscrit schools occupy so prominent a place in the general system of instruction established throughout the country, that means should be employed for their improvement, and not only on account of the influence which the learned exercise or may exercise over the remaining population, but for the sake of the learned themselves as a distinct and numerous class of society. I refer to page 61 to show the extent of this class in the districts noticed in this report. In one district alone, that of Burdwan, there are 190 teachers, and 1,358 students, of learning; and in the city of Moorshedabad, where the number is fewer than in any of the other localities, there are 24 teachers, and 153 students. If we find that a particular class of native institutions brings together in one city and in one district so many teachers and students of learning who, if proper means were employed, would readily open their minds to European knowledge, why should we not avail ourselves of the facilities which those institutions present? Second.—The language of instruction in the schools of learning is regarded with peculiar veneration. It is called the language of the gods. It is probable that in one of its most ancient and simple forms it was the original language of Brahmanism, and was introduced into this country by its Hindu conquerors. Instruction communicated through this medium will be received by the learned class with a degree of respect and attention that will not otherwise be conceded to exotic knowledge. Why should we refuse to avail ourselves of this mode of gaining access for useful knowledge to the minds of a numerous and influential class? Third.—Sanscrit is the source and origin of all the Hindu vernacular dialects spoken and written throughout India and the adjoining countries, with as close an affinity, in most instances, as exist between Latin and Italian, or between ancient and modern Greek. These dialects are as numerous, are spread over as wide a surface, are employed by as populous races, and are as thoroughly nationalized among those races, as the corresponding dialects of Europe in European countries. Learned Hindus refer with pride to the number of languages that have sprung from the parent Sanscrit, and they derive from it their vocables, their idioms, and their structure. Just in proportion as the use of the vernacular dialects extends for the purposes of education and administration, will the value of the Sanscrit be felt. It is the great store-house from which, as intellectual improvement advances, those dialects will seek and obtain increased power, copiousness, refinement, and 170

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flexibility. “Any number of new terms,” says Mr. Hodgson, applying to the Indian Pracrits a remark made by Sir James Mackintosh respecting German, “any number of new terms, as clear to the mind and as little startling to the ear as the oldest works in the languages, may be introduced into Hindi and Bengali from Sanscrit, owing to the peculiar genius of the latter, with much more facility than we can introduce new terms into English; nor does the task of introducing such new terms into the Indian vernacular imply or exact more than the most ordinary skill or labor on the part of the conductors of education so long as they disconnect not themselves wholly front Indian literature.” Fourth.—The Sanscrit language is the common medium of communication between the learned in the different countries and provinces inhabited by the Hindu race, however differing from each other in dialect, manners, and customs. A Hindu educated in the learning, peculiar to his faith and nation, need not be, and is not, a stranger in any of them, although possessing no personal acquaintance, and although ignorant of the dialect of the country or province to which he may have proceeded. This is found to be a great practical convenience in the performance of the numerous pilgrimages which piety or superstition enjoins. By the same means also the learned productions of one province or country in time become the common property of all the learned throughout India. In the Bengal schools of learning young men, both from the western and southern provinces of India, are found pursuing their studies, and Bengalis, after finishing their studies in Bengal, often proceed into the western provinces for the purpose of acquiring those branches of learning which are not usually cultivated here. Sanscrit, without the secrecy, has thus all the advantages of the masonic sign and countersign. It is a pass-word to the hearts and understandings of the learned throughout India. In consequence of this established mutual interchange of knowledge, if any improvement can be introduced into the system of instruction in the schools of learning of Bengal and Behar, we may hope that it will gradually work its way among the entire learned body throughout the country. Fifth.—All the learning, divine and human, of the Hindus, is contained in the Sanscrit language. Religion, philosophy, law, literature, and medicine; all the learning that enters into the daily practices of their faith and is connected with the established customs of their race, their productions of taste and imagination, and the results of their experience of life and manners, all are found in the Sanscrit language, and in that only as their source and repository. Doctrine, opinion, and practice; the duties of the present life and the hopes of the future; the controversies of sects and the feuds of families, are ultimately determinable by authorities which speak only through that medium. The inference is obvious. If we would avail ourselves of this vast and various literature, for the moral and intellectual regeneration of India, we must stretch out the right hand of fellowship to those who can alone effectually wield its powers, and by patronage and conciliation obtain their willing co-operation. Sixth.—The patronage of Government bestowed on schools of learning would be most gratefully received both by the learned themselves and by the native 171

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community. It would entirely coincide with the customs of native society. Sanscrit schools have been frequently endowed by wealthy Hindus; the teachers are constantly invited, feasted, and dismissed with presents on occasions of important domestic celebrations; and both teachers and students, independent of all other considerations of castes and condition, are held in the greatest respect by the community. In the opinion of the learned themselves—an opinion which they have frequently expressed to me—it is the duty of rulers to promote learning, by which they, of course, mean Sanscrit learning. If common schools and their teachers are encouraged as I have proposed, while Sanscrit schools are neglected, it may be feared that the hostility of the learned will be often incurred, and that, through their all-penetrating influence, they will raise serious obstacles to the spread of popular instruction. On the contrary, if their schools, as well as the vernacular schools, are patronized, their own interests will be identified with the success of the Government plan, and we may confidently rely on their co-operation. It is not, however, on the ground of expediency only that this recommendation is offered. Sanscrit schools and teachers may be made to conduce as effectually to the spread of sound and useful knowledge as vernacular schools, with only this difference that each class of institutions will operate in a field from which the other is excluded. In Sanscrit schools we shall gain access to a large and influential class which by any other means we shall be unable to reach, and which it is of the utmost importance to the welfare of society should advance as the rest of society advances. There is no class of persons that exercises a greater degree of influence in giving native society the tone, the form, and the character which it actually possesses, than the body of the learned, not merely as the professors of learning, but as the priests of religion; and it is essential to the success of any means employed to aid the moral and intellectual advancement of the people, that they should not only co-operate, but also participate, in the progress. If we leave them behind, we shall be raising obstacles to our own success, and retarding the progress of the whole country. Learned Hindus will gratefully receive all the encouragement which we are willing to bestow, but it may still be made a question whether they would introduce books of useful knowledge on science and the arts into the regular course of their instruction. That amongst so numerous a body none will prove hostile or indifferent would be too much to expect; but in my own experience I have met with only one instance, that of a pundit in Rajshahi who expressed an unfriendly feeling to popular instruction. Poor and unpatronized, he asked me what advantage the extension of popular instruction would bring to him,—a question which rather confirms the view I have before presented regarding the character and expectations of the class. In another instance, that of the respectable pundit of the judge’s court at Mozufferpoor in Tirhoot, I found that all my attempts at explanation did not apparently remove from his mind the suspicion of some ulterior object, and he appears to have communicated his doubts to other learned men in that district to whom the subject was mentioned. This, however, was by no means generally the case. In conversation I have received repeated assurances 172

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from many pundits of their readiness to teach European science and learning in their schools, provided that the works put into their hands do not embrace the subject of religion on which they most distinctly intimated that they will teach, and countenance nothing but what is in their estimation strictly orthodox. In the Rajshahi, Moorshedabad, Beerbhoom, and Burdwan districts I had frequent conversations with pundits on this subject, and generally with the most satisfactory results; but it did not occur to me, till after leaving those districts, to ask any of them for their written opinions. On my return, however, to Calcutta, I put a case in writing before the pundits of the Sanscrit College, and subsequently before such pundits as I met in the districts of South Behar and Tirhoot, a translation of which, with their answer and the signatures attached to it, I subjoin. Two pundits of the Burdwan district, whom circumstances had prevented me from seeing when in their native district, followed me to Calcutta, anxious to give a full and correct account of their schools that it might be included in this report, and they took the opportunity, at the same time, of expressing their assent in writing to the opinion of the Calcutta pundits. More recently two pundits from the Jessore district and my own pundit belonging to the same district have, of their own accord, requested permission to add their names.

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17 EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF THE PRESIDENCY OF FORT WILLIAM IN BENGAL FOR THE YEAR 1839–40 (CALCUTTA: G. H. HUTTMAN, 1841), I–V, XXXVII, CCXXXII, CLV–CLIX, XCIV–CIV, CCXXXIII–CCXXXIV

APPENDIX. No. 1. MINUTE BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE GOVERNOR GENERAL. GENERAL DEPARTMENT.

Native Education.

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I have not hitherto, since I assumed charge of the Government, recorded my sentiments at any length on the important questions which regard the best means of promoting Education amongst the Natives of India. The subject is one of the highest interest, and especially calls for calm consideration, and for combined effort. But unhappily I have found violent differences existing upon it, and it was for a time, (now I trust past or fast passing away,) a watchword for violent dissension, and in some measure of personal feeling. I judged it best, under these circumstances, to abstain from what might have led me into unprofitable controversy, and to allow time and experience to act, with their usual healing and enlightening influence, upon general opinion. I may earnestly hope that we are now not very far remote from arriving at some satisfactory result in respect to our Education Controversies, and I will approach the topic, with the hope of contributing in some degree to this end. 2. Annexed to this paper will be found a Note compiled by Mr. Colvin, containing a condensed view of the principal facts, and of occasional notices of some considerations suggested by them, which relate to the general progress and present condition of the plans of Native Instruction as pursued in different parts of India, and of the tenour of the most important directions on the subject of Public Instruction 174

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which have been received from the Hon’ble the Court of Directors, and with reference to those facts, as they apply particularly to the progress effected in the different Presidencies, and to the circumstances which have come under my observation, when at the seat of several of our Institutions in Bengal, I will endeavour to state with all fairness the conclusions to which I have brought my mind on this subject. 3. I have first however to state my opinions on two specific references connected with the question which are before me from the President in Council—the one relating to the appropriation of Funds heretofore assigned to particular Institutions, and the other to Mr. Adam’s scheme for the improvement of the Indigenous Schools in the Bengal and Behar districts. 4. Before entering on the details of the first of these subjects, I may observe that it may in my opinion be clearly admitted, and I am glad from the papers before me, to see that this opinion is supported by the authority of Mr. Prinsep, that the insufficiency of the Funds assigned by the State for the purposes of public instruction has been amongst the main causes of the violent disputes which have taken place upon the education question, and that if the Funds previously appropriated to the cultivation of Oriental Literature had been spared, and other means placed at the disposal of the promoters of English Education, they might have pursued their object sided by the good wishes of all. In the Bengal Presidency, with its immense territory and a revenue of above 13 millions, the yearly expenditure of the Government on this account is little in excess of 24,000£ or 2,40,000 Rupees, and I need not say how in a country like India, it is to the Government Parliamentary Grant, . . . . . . . . . 8,888 that the population must mainly look for faciliInterest on Government 3,030 ties in the acquisition of improved learning. Notes, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There is, I well know, the strongest desire on Madrissa, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,666 Sanscrit College, . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,055 the part of the authorities, both in England and Delhie Escheat Fund; . . . . . . . . . 250 India, to support every well arranged plan for Benares College, . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,701 the extension of Education, and the dispatches Agra College of the Honorable Court are full of the evidence Endowment of Villages, 1,175 of their anxiety on the subject. I may cite in Interest of Government 622 particular the declaration of a dispatch of the Notes, . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,797 18th February, 1824. “In the mean time we wish you to be fully apprized of our zeal for Per Mensem. Rs . . . . 20,387 the progress and improvement of Education among the natives of India and of our willingness to make considerable sacrifices to that important end, if proper means for the attainment of it could be pointed out to us.” Such we may be assured is the feeling by which the Court is up to this time guided, and the difficulty has been not in any unwillingness to grant the money necessary to give effect to good plans, but in framing such plans, on principles admitted to be satisfactory, and in finding fitting agents for the execution of them. I have alluded to the limited amount and to the existing appropriation of our present funds not certainly with the slightest idea of casting reproach upon the previous course of administration, but merely

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as a fact which is of importance in its bearing upon former discussions. The sum immediately at command was limited. Parties wishing to promote the diffusion of knowledge in different forms contended eagerly the one to retain, the other to gain, that sum for the schemes to which they were respectively favorable, and had fresh sums been at once procurable, no one might have objected to their employment for a full and fair experiment on the new ideas which began to prevail. The inference to which I would point from these facts and observations is that a principle of wise liberality, not stinting any object which can reasonably be recommended, but granting a measured and discriminating encouragement to all, is likely to command general acquiescence, and to obliterate, it may be hoped, the recollection of the acrimony which has been so prejudicial to the public weal in the course of past proceedings. The Hon’ble Court have already, as was to be expected, acted on this principle. They have made a separate grant for the publication of works of interest in the ancient literature of the country to be disbursed through the appropriate channel of the Asiatic Society, and this measure is one which has been hailed with universal satisfaction. 5. On the merits of the first of the two questions immediately referred to me, which I would consider in the spirit which I have here commended, I would at once say, on the position that the Government has given a pledge that the funds heretofore assigned to particular institutions shall continue to be so for ever appropriated, that I cannot hesitate to express my conviction that the acts or intentions of the Government will not justly bear this very exclusive and restrictive construction—I remember the discussion of April 1836, and certainly I did not understand that the Resolution to which the Government then came was intended to have the force of a perpetual guarantee of the expenditure, wholly within each institution, (whatever might he the nature of the instruction to which they might be devoted), of the funds which might have been assigned to it. Had it been intended to promise that, whether Arabic, Sanscrit, or English were taught, the particular Institutions should at all events be retained, the meaning would surely have been expressed in much more distinct terms. My impression of the state of the case is briefly this— that the General Committee viewing the maintenance of the Oriental Colleges, on the footing to which I have referred, as prescribed and secured, proposed to consolidate all separate grants into one General Fund, the savings of which, after the Oriental Colleges should have been thus provided for, should be held by them to be clearly applicable to their general purposes. The answer of the Government on 13th April 1836, after a discussion in which I in the first instance expressed a willingness to assent to the propositions of the Committee, was in these guarded terms—“under existing circumstances, the Government in India thinks it will not be advisable to make the consolidation into one fund of all grants, made heretofore by Government for purposes of education, as suggested by the Sub-Committee of Finance, nor does his Lordship in Council imagine that the Committee will be put to much inconvenience by drawing its fund separately as heretofore and crediting them whether derived from a Government monthly grant or from the interest of 176

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stock previously accumulated to the particular seminaries to which they have been assigned leaving any excess available in any institution to be appropriated as may appear most equitable with reference to the Orders of Government, 7th March, 1835, and the pledges and assurances THAT MAY HAVE BEEN GIVEN to particular institutions.” The alteration of the word “belong” to “have been assigned” as marked above, will shew the spirit of compromise amongst varying opinions in which the draft was agreed to. There was here no statement that the consolidation was a thing wholly out of the question. The diversion of funds from particular institutions was admitted as a measure which might or might not be proper, and (the circumstances of all institutions not being before the Government) there is a reservation for the pledges and assurances, “that may have been given” to some of them.

Per annum.

Amount of Stipends December 1834

Under such a reservation, if a specific promise in perpetuity of a particular sum to a particular institution could be shown, such a promise would have of course to be respected; but otherwise by these Orders of April 1836, things were left exactly as they stood before: Whilst however, I am bound to declare that such is my distinct impression on the subject, and whilst for one I would reject the strict principle of absolute and irreclaimable appropriation, I am yet strongly of opinion that it will be best on every account to dispose of the question on the principle of a liberal consideration to all wants and claims. I see no advantage to be gained in this case by a close contest for strict constructions, and having taken a review of money estimates and of local wants, I am satisfied that it will be best to abstract nothing from other useful objects, while I see at the same time nothing but good to be derived from the employment of the funds which have been assigned to each Oriental Seminary, exclusively on instruction in, or in connexion with, that Seminary. I would also give a decided preference, within these Institutions, to the promotion in the first instance of perfect efficiency in Oriental instruction, and only after that object shall have been properly secured in proportion to the demand for it, would I assign the funds to the creation or support of English classes. And if they should already have partially used for other objects, the savings arising from the Seminaries supported by special funds, I would in recalling such savings, protect the General Committee from loss on that account. The Statement in the margin will shew the contribution from the Revenue which this final settlement of the subject will occasion. It will be perceived that, calculating from the amount of stipends as they existed untouched in the end of 1834, and Calcutta Sanscrit 696 8352 deducting 1–4th as required at all events for the College, ......... Oriental Colleges under a Scheme of ScholarMadrissa, ............. 634 7848 Benares College, ... 318 4176 ships such as I shall hereafter state that I would Agra ditto, ............ 480 5660 approve, the additional Annual Disbursement Delhie ditto, ......... 627 7524 from the Treasury will be about 25,000 Rupees, 33560 and perhaps there may be 6,000 Rupees more per Deduct 1–4th 8390 25170 annum on account of the office, which has been

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abolished, of Secretary to the Sanscrit College at Benares. I am well persuaded that the Hon’ble Court will approve of our having closed these controversies at this limited amount of increased expense. I would, upon this understanding, willingly join in the direction sent to the General Committee in the letter of Mr. Prinsep on the 31st of July last, “to avoid making any alienation (from the assigned funds of the Oriental Institutions) “without previously soliciting the sanction of Government.” They should, as I have said, be desired to appropriate the funds within the Oriental Colleges, first to Oriented and then to English instruction. I would nor on any account admit the extension of the system of Scholarships within these Colleges beyond the general proportion, (which should be on a liberal scale) allowed elsewhere, for this would be an excessive and artificial encouragement which might be justly objected to. But I would secure the most eminent Professors for the Colleges. I would encourage the preparation, within the limits of the funds, of the most useful Books of Instruction, such as of the Siddhants and Sanscrit version of Euclid which Mr. Wilkinson has urged upon us, and I would provide in some form which the General Committee should be required to take into early consideration, for an improved and effective superintendence of the Oriental Colleges of the North Western Provinces, where I know that such a supervision is very obviously required. Funds that might still remain available could be doubtless to much advantage devoted to European instruction in union with those particular Institutions, and I should look with very warm interest to an efficient scheme for imparting English Education to Mahomedans at the Madrissa in Calcutta. 6. The other reference made to me is with regard to Mr. Adam’s plan for the improvement of indigenous Schools and Teachers. I would observe upon it that it is impossible to read his valuable and intelligent report, without being painfully impressed with the low state of instruction as it exists amongst the immense masses of the Indian population. Attempts to correct so lamentable an evil may well be eagerly embraced by benevolent minds. Yet I cannot but feel with the President in Council that the period has not yet arrived when the Government can join in these attempts with reasonable hope of practical good. When Mr. Adam enforces his views “for the instruction of the poor and ignorant, those who are too ignorant to understand the evils of ignorance, and too poor, even if they did, to be able to remove them,” the inference irresistibly presents itself that among these is not the field in which our efforts can at present be most successfully employed. The small stock of knowledge which can now be given in Elementary Schools will of itself do little for the advancement of a people. The first step must be to diffuse wider information, and better sentiments amongst the upper and middle classes, for it seems, as may be gathered from the best authorities on the subject, that a scheme of general instruction can only be perfect, as it comprehends a regularly progressive provision for higher tuition. In the European States where such systems have been recently extensively matured, this principle is, I believe, universally observed. There is a complete series of Universities in great Towns, of Academies in provincial divisions, and of small local Schools, all connected 178

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in a combined plan of instruction. The extension of the plan to the Parish or Village School has been the last stage, as must naturally have been the case, in the national progress. Mr. Adam’s plan contemplated such a rise of able pupils from the Village to the Zillah Schools, but the suggestion could not immediately have effect. Here we are yet engaged on the formation and efficient direction of our Upper Institutions. When, indeed, the series of vernacular class of Books for our single Zillah Schools, which is still a desideratum, and to which I shall subsequently refer, shall have been published and their utility shall have been established by practice, Mr. Adam’s recommendations may be taken up with some fairer prospect of advantage. For the present I would confine our measures in reference to his reports to injunctions on the General Committee that they bear in mind his particular suggestions and objects in determining on the series of Class Books referred to. I would submit the plan to the Honorable Court for the expression of their sentiments and wishes—and in the collection of information for an eventual decision I would make use of the experience which the Bombay measures of Village instruction, alluded to in the Note annexed, will have afforded. For this purpose I would communicate Mr. Adam’s Report to the Government of Bombay, and ask how far the scheme which he describes is in accordance with that which is pursued in the Provinces of that Presidency—and what opinion may be formed from the result already obtained by their Village schools, of the propriety of carrying out Mr. Adam’s plans in their important parts. The encouragement to existing School Masters, which is the leading suggestion in Mr. Adam’s plan, will probably have been largely tried at Bombay, and the extent to which those School Masters have reaped improvement under such encouragement will be a most interesting subject of enquiry. I learn also in the course of my enquiries regarding the previous progress of Education in India, that a School Society existed for some time in Calcutta, the operations of which were directed with partial success to the amendment of indigenous Schools. Mr. Hare will probably be able to explain the history of this Society, which drew a grant of 400 or 500 Rupees a month from Government, and to give also the causes of its extinction: I would ask this Gentleman to favour Government with a report regarding that Society. And I would conclude upon this subject by recording my opinion that, when such a scheme as that proposed by Mr. Adam comes to be tried, the arrangements for introducing it should be on a liberal and effective scale and that it ought not to be undertaken at all until the Government is satisfied that it has at command a thoroughly zealous and qualified superintendence. 7. Having said thus much in answer to the references made to me by the President in Council, I would proceed to record my observations upon the topics which seem to me most important in regard to our plans of Education. I strongly feel that, in all that we can do, we must be prepared for much disappointment in our early efforts to satisfy the demands made upon us on this subject. By some it will be lamented that we do not at once perfect enlarged schemes for general Education: By others it will be regretted that what we do for the best pupils of 179

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our few Seminaries seems to produce so partial an effect. Feelings of this nature will attend us in whatever attempts we may engage for the improvement of any branch of our Indian Government. Our governing and instructed class belongs to a highly civilized community. It is in active and increasing intercourse with the European world where, in an advanced state of society, skill and enterprize are daily gaining new triumphs. It is naturally impatient for the introduction in India of every plan which has, though probably after repeated trials and failures, been adopted with success in European countries. And the spirit of free discussion excites benevolent minds to bring forward the most extensive projects. On the other hand, we are dealing with a poor people, to the vast majority of whom the means of livelihood is a much more pressing object than facilities for any better description or wider range of study. Our hold over this people is very imperfect, and our power of offering motives to stimulate their zeal is but of confined extent. The Agency which we can employ for reform is extremely narrow and liable to constant derangement. Of those who are willing to devote their energies to the business of giving or superintending instruction, Oriental Scholars are apt to be unduly prepossessed in favor of acquirements obtained by much labour, and to which they are indebted for their reputation; while mere European Scholars are liable to be ignorant of, and neglect national feeling, or are at all events incompetent to make a proper use of native means for the execution of their plans—Where even the mind of an able pupil has been very greatly informed and enlightened, the knowledge gained by him may seem to produce no adequately corresponding result in after life: The student may stand alone in the family or society of which he forms a part. These can very generally have few feelings in common with him, and he may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position, or he may yield to the influences by which he is surrounded, and accommodate himself to the sentiments and practices which his reason had taught him to disapprove. Add to this, that if he finds that his knowledge opens to him the prospect of advancement he will, under a restricted competition, be over confident in his own powers and unreasonable in his expectations, while at the same time he will be tempted to relax in the exertions necessary to maintain, or carry forward, the standard of proficiency at which he had arrived. These are circumstances of the operation of which we must all I think in a greater or less degree have had practical experience. I can only say upon them that we must neither entertain sanguine or premature hopes of general success, nor yet allow ourselves to be seriously discouraged. We must be content to lay even the first rude foundations of good systems, and trust for the rest to time, to the increasing demand of the public and of individuals for the services of educated men, to the extension which must every year take place of the Agency for instruction at the command of Government, and to the certain effects of the spread, however slow, of knowledge, and of the gradual growth of wealth and intelligence in the community. 8. I would in now offering my opinions and suggestions on the present practical directions of our plans, desire to consider the question of our educational 180

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policy as one of interest to every portion of the empire, without minute reference to merely local and temporary discussions. I am aware that we are yet in expectation of the orders of the Home Authorities on the subject of the changes in the scheme of education in Bengal, which were adopted by the Government in 1835. But I would not on this account longer withhold the explanation of my own sentiments on the course which should be adopted, and I do not anticipate that in what I shall propose, I shall be found to have deviated in any material degree from the wishes of the Honorable Court. 9. I would first observe that I most cordially agree with the Court in their opinion, which is quoted in paragraph 45 of Mr. Colvin’s note, that, with a view to the moral and intellectual improvement of the people, the great primary object is the extension among those who have leisure for advanced study, of the most complete education in out power. There cannot, I think, be a doubt of the justice of their statement that “by raising the standard of instruction among these classes, we would eventually produce a much greater and more beneficial change in the ideas and feelings of the community than we can hope to produce by acting directly on the more numerous class.” It is not to be implied from this that in my view elementary education for the mass of the people is a thing necessarily to be neglected, or postponed for an indefinite period, but it will have been seen that the hope of acting immediately and powerfully on the mass of the poor peasantry of India is certainly far from being strong with me. And the practical question therefore, to which I would hope before all others to give my attention is the mode in which we may endeavor to communicate a higher education with the greatest prospect of success. 10. One mode which has been ably contended for is that of engrafting European knowledge on the studies of the existing learned classes,—of the Moulvees and Pundits of India. I confess that from such means I anticipate only very partial and imperfect results. I would, in the strictest good faith, and to the fullest extent, make good the promise of upholding while the people resort to them, our established Institutions of Oriental learning. I would make those Institutions equal sharers with others in any general advantages or encouragements which we are satisfied ought to be afforded with a view to the promotion of due efficiency in study. I would from the funds which have been before allowed to them assist in them, as I have already said, any judicious plans for ameliorating the course of study, as by aiding the publication of works which may seem likely to be decidedly useful to the students. Nor am I at all disposed to undervalue the amount of sound education and morality which is to be acquired at these Seminaries, even without calling in the resources of European Science and Literature. I will not profess deep respect for the mere laborious study of a difficult language, or of the refinements and subtilties of Scholastic learning. But sensible, as assuredly I am, of the radical errors and deficiencies of the Oriental system, I am yet aware that the effect of all advanced education, and I will add especially of a Mahomedan education, is in cherishing habits of reflection, of diligence, and of honorable 181

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emulation, that it tends also to elevate the tone of moral character, though its practical effect is unfortunately too frequently marred by the domestic and social habits of Oriental life. Judging however, from the common principles of human nature, and from such experience as is referred to in the case of Mr. Wilkinson at Bhopal, it is not to the students of our Oriental Colleges, trained as it will be admitted that they are in a faulty system to which they are yet naturally and ardently attached, that I would look for my chief instruments in the propagation of a new knowledge and more enlarged ideas. It was not through the Professors of our ancient schools, but by the efforts of original thought and independent minds, that the course of philosophical and scientific investigation and of scholastic discipline was for the most part reformed in Europe. The process of translation, it is to be added, into the learned language must unavoidably be so slow that, on that account alone, the arguments in favor of a more direct method of proceedings appear to me conclusively convincing. 11. Another class of recommendations is that all the leading facts and principles of our literature and science be transferred by translations into the vernacular tongues. Mr. Hodgson in his book on Education, says, “As a practical measure for the immediate adoption of Government, I have no hesitation in saying that to found a College for the rearing of a competent body of translators and of schoolmasters, in other words, for the systematic supply of good vernacular books and good vernacular teachers (leaving the public to employ both, in case the Government fund be adequate to no more than the maintenance of such College) would be an infinitely better disposal of the Parliamentary grant than the present application of it to the training of a promiscuous crowd of English smatterers whose average period of schooling cannot by possibility, fit them to be the regenerators of their country, yet for whose further and efficient prosecution of studies, so difficult and so alien to ordinary uses, there is no provision nor inducement whatever.” 12. But those who support this course overlook in the first place the extreme practical difficulty of preparing any very extensive course of translated or adapted works. We are speaking now of the means of an advanced and thorough education, and not of a limited series of works for the purposes of common instruction, to the compilation of which, as I shall have immediate occasion to remark, I am entirely favorable. The difficulties of translation have been illustrated by our knowledge of what has been effected at Bombay, where the object has been prosecuted with much zeal, and I have annexed to this Minute a list of the works which have been prepared in Arabic by the European Officers attached to the service of the Pasha of Egypt, and it will be seen how very confined the number is, excepting in works of Military, Medical, or other Science. The clear truth seems to be that works of science may, at least to some considerable extent, (their range being necessarily contracted) be rendered into other languages within a comparatively moderate period, but the translation, within any time the extent of which we could reasonably calculate, of any thing like a sufficient library of works of general literature, history, and philosophy, is an impossible task. I have only, therefore, to 182

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conclude on this point by stating my entire concurrence in the opinion which has been quoted in the note from a despatch of the Hon’ble Court to the effect “that the higher tone and better spirit “of European Literature can produce their full effect only on those who become familiar with them in the original languages.” 13. I would then make it my principal aim to communicate through the means of the English language, a complete Education in European Literature, Philosophy and Science to the greatest number of students who may be found ready to accept it at our hands, and for whose instruction our funds will admit of our providing. All our experience proves that by such a method, a real and powerful stimulus is given to the native mind. We have seen that in Bombay as at Calcutta, from the time at which effective arrangements have been made for the higher branches of instruction in English, the understandings of the Students have been thoroughly interested and roused, and that the consequences have wonderfully, to use the words of the Calcutta Committee of Public Instruction in 1831, “surpassed expectation.” The difficulty which attends this course is the very important one, not of principle, but of practise, namely, that the wants and circumstances of our Indian population bring to our Colleges so few who desire, or are able to receive from us the complete English education, which it is our object to impart to them. Those who look with greater confidence to other methods of diffusing knowledge in this country, dwell especially upon this difficulty. Mr. Hodgson, argues that we have no reasonable ground to hope here for the same wide study of English Literature, and subsequent use of the information acquired in it for the purposes of vernacular composition, as occurred in the different stages of European civilization with reference to the Greek and Roman models from which that civilization was chiefly derived. His words are, “True the difficult and inapt Science of Greece and Rome was in modern Europe, first mastered in itself, and eventually worked into our own speech and minds. But how? by the employment of means adequate to the end by the existence of circumstance most powerfully efficient to forward that end. A thousand predisposing causes led a mighty nobility to seek in this lore the appropriate ornament of their rank and station. A Church which monopolised a third of the wealth of the Continent, called Rome its mother and Greece its foster mother, and throughout the great part of that Continent, the law, Ecclesiastical and Civil, was even lingually Roman. Hence the magnificent endowments and establishments and permanent inducements of all kinds by which a difficult and exotic learning was at length effectually naturalized amongst us. Hence the scholar if he pleased, might pursue in retirement letters as a profession, assured of a comfortable provision for life; or if he pleased, he might devote himself to the task of instructing the scions of a most influential and wealthy nobility, all of them from peculiar association necessitated to become his pupils whether they profited by his lessons or not, and thereby affording him the certainty of an enduring means of livelihood, or if he pleased he might pass from the Cloister or the College into the world, and there find the greater part of its most important concerns subservient to the uses and abuses of his peculiar gifts.” 183

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14. Mr. Wilkinson has also on different occasion remarked that it seems to him that Education in English should be confined for the present to the Presidencies, and to some of the principal Provincial Stations, as being the only places at which there is yet an actual demand for it. 15. Mr. Adam says of the condition of our English Scholars—“Extraordinary efforts have been made to extend a knowledge of the English language to the Natives, but those who have more or less profited by the opportunities presented to them do not find much scope for their attainments, which on the other hand little fit them for the ordinary pursuits of native society. They have not received a good Native education, and the English education they have received finds little if any use. There is thus a want of sympathy between them and their countrymen, although they constitute a class from which their countrymen might derive much benefit. There is also little sympathy between them and the foreign rulers of the country, because they feel that they have been raised out of one class of society without having a recognized place in any other class.” 16. But I believe that, in all these opinions, the practical value of superior English acquirements is very greatly underrated. A familiarity with the general principles of legislation and government, and the power of offering information or opinions upon public affair, in English Reports, (which is the form in which the higher correspondence regarding the British Administration in India will, of course, always be conducted) must be qualifications so directly useful, as (not to speak of the recommendations of an improved moral character,) to insure to the possessors of them a preference for the most lucrative public employments, after they shall have acquired that knowledge of life and of business, and that good opinion among those who have had opportunities of witnessing their conduct, which mere book-learning never can bestow. There are as yet, no doubt, circumstances of temporary operation, which will keep for a period our best English Scholars from reaping from their studies all the worldly profit which will ultimately accrue to them. Our course of instruction has not hitherto been so matured as to include any efficient and general arrangement for giving that knowledge1 of morals, jurisprudence, law, and fiscal economy, which the Hon’ble Court have so wisely and earnestly insisted on, and which will be most directly useful in the discharge of administrative duties. There are other obstacles also which for a time may impede our young scholars in their desire to obtain public office. They may over-estimate their own pretensions, and decline to accept the subordinate situations which alone it may at first be thought right to entrust to them. The cure for such exaggerated expectations will come with time. When this class of candidates becomes more numerous, there will be less hesitation with many of them in taking lower appointments. In the meanwhile, it is known that I am not disposed to adopt any special means, which could be felt as doing injustice to the rest of the community, for connecting our educated English students with the public service. The subject has been fully discussed in my Minute in the Judicial2 Department of September 4, 1838, the completion of the measures consequent on which I am 184

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anxiously awaiting. The scheme proposed by the Hon’ble the President in Council, to which in that respect I assented in the Minute referred to, included, however, the appointment of a limited number of Native Assistants to some of the best of our Zillah Judges, who would be instructed in the forms and practise of office. And so far there would be an immediate opening for the employment of several of our Students. The general character of my recommendations in that Minute was however, to establish a test of qualification, before selection for the honorable and responsible situation of a Moonsiff, for all candidates, wheresoever and in whatever language instructed, and to procure the compilation and printing of Manuals of legal instruction, in the native tongues as well as in English, which might be taught every where by private masters, or in public Institutions. To the principle of this plan I would steadily adhere. But in our Colleges I would carry instruction of this kind further than would be the aim of these Manuals, which would be more proper for use in our common schools. Having thus supplied suitable aids for the acquisition of the knowledge most requisite in public life, I would look with assured confidence to the recognition by the community of the advantages of an advanced English Education, comprizing those branches of study, a conversancy with which would place an instructed Native Gentleman on a level with our best European Officers. It is true, and no one has more heartily concurred and rejoiced in the determination than myself, that the vernacular tongues and not English will be the future languages of the Courts and Offices in the interior of the country. But this circumstance will in no degree detract from the force of those inducements of English study of which, as regards the vast and most important correspondence which must ever be conducted in English, I have just spoken, nor need I dwell on the degree to which such inducements will be increased by the mere fact of English being the language of the ruling and governing class in India. This is an encouragement to the pursuit of English that will probably greatly counterbalance the want, which has been justly noticed by Mr. Hodgson, of those motives to its cultivation which would have existed in such strength had English been here, as the Classical languages were in the West, the established languages of Theology and of Law. 17. It will be observed that I have referred chiefly to inducements connected with employment in the public service as likely to lead Indian students to ask admission to our Colleges. This, we may be satisfied, is the principal motive which will as yet operate to bring them to any of our educational Institutions. Excepting perhaps partially in Calcutta (and possibly, though I am not informed on the point, at Bombay) the wealthy and higher classes of India do not send their sons to public Colleges and Schools. Those who come to us for instruction are in search of the means of livelihood either in places under the Government, or in situations under individuals which, in the peculiar constitution of Indian Government and Society, bring them, in a greater or less degree, in connection with the public administration. I mention this point as explanatory of the importance to be attached to the nature of the instruction communicated to our students. The remark applies with equal force to our institutions for the study of the Classical learning of the East. 185

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Putting aside the money stipends which were formerly allowed, the great object of the students in the Sanscrit and Arabic Colleges of the Government has been to rise to office as Law Pundits and Moulvies in the Courts. The knowledge which gains for men reputation and profit among the Native community, as great religious Teachers, or among the Hindoos as proficients in Astrology, is not to be acquired at those Colleges, and will best be obtained elsewhere from private Native instructors. If there be not a demand for the same number of Law Pundits and Moulvies as previously, the attendance at the Colleges may be expected to decline though in the Arabic in a much less degree, than in the Sanscrit Colleges; for Mahomedan studies fit men far more than those of Hindoo learning for all the active offices of life. 18. What has been said may suffice to prove that there are weighty and daily growing inducements to the pursuit of English education, if directed with a proper attention to the wants of Scholars and to practical results. It remains that means should be furnished, at least to the most promising of the Scholars, to continue their studies to the desired completion: as incontestible proof appears to have been given3 that their poverty would otherwise generally compel them to retire from College as soon after their leaving boyhood as an opportunity of securing a provision for their subsistence might be open to them. On this point I will immediately remark separately, but I would here again say that I am of opinion, in full concurrence with the President in Council, that whatever amount of reward and support for meritorious students may be granted to those attached to our English, should be granted also, in perfectly like proportion, in our Oriental Institutions. The pledge to maintain these latter Institutions, while resorted to by the people, involves to my mind the clear obligation to maintain them with all the conditions which are judge I necessary for the general efficiency of our educational schemes. 19. Assuming upon the preceding reasoning that our aim as regards those seminaries of highest learning which are not, like the learned Eastern Colleges, specially assigned to other objects, should be to communicate European knowledge through the medium of the English language, it is next to be considered what should be the character of the minor Academies or Schools, such as may probably be eventually established at every Zillah Station. 20. I have not stopped to state that correctness and elegance in vernacular composition ought to be sedulously attended to in, the Superior Colleges. This is a matter of course in the scheme of instruction. But a question may well be raised whether in the Zillah Schools, the subject matter of instruction ought not to be conveyed principally through the vernacular rather than the English medium. 21. I would certainly be much in favour of that course if I saw any solid reason to believe that instruction of a common order would more readily and largely be accepted from the Government in the one mode than the other. I am quite of opinion that a very valuable amount of useful knowledge may be easily conveyed, when good class books and persons competent to teach from them are provided, through the means of the vernacular languages. And while I am satisfied 186

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that some not trivial amount of moral and intellectual stimulus and improvement is obtained from the Minor English Schools at present existing, yet the standard of proficiency in them is probably not so great as that the mass of Scholars in them would not be nearly as much gainers from merely vernacular tuition. 22. It is an argument for the use of the vernacular medium in such schools that, after the first expense of preparing school-books has been incurred, instruction in that manner would, it may be expected, be more economical than through English, which requires the employment of an English master on a salary at least two or three times as high as would be adequate for a native teacher who had received an English education, and was at the same time perfectly conversant with his own tongue. Employment as a School-master would also be a natural and proper provision for studious young men, who had gone through a complete course at the English Colleges. Such a master would of course be able to instruct a class attached to a vernacular school in the first elements of English learning, so as to lay a foundation for those who wished further to prosecute that study. 23. It is a deduction from the saving which the substitution of Native for English Masters in the Zillah Schools might produce, that English superintendence over several circles of such Schools would probably for a long period be indispensable, and a charge on that account must be estimated for. It is also to be reckoned that the cost of compiling and translating a proper series of vernacular class books is likely to be considerably greater than might at first be supposed. 24. I would speak with much respect of the authority of Mr. Wilkinson on this subject. But I will avow that I am by no means convinced of the applicability of his system or suggestions to the objects of a common education. It is, at least, not certain that he will in the end carry the body of Hindoo Astronomers along with him in his correction of prevalent errors. In any event it is not the abstruse parts of Mathematical Science which could be of use in our Zillah Schools. In fact, Mr. Wilkinson’s system is almost wholly dependent on his own eminent personal talents and exertions, his admirable zeal, his great knowledge, the weight of his excellent character, and perhaps also, it should not be concealed, the influence attaching to his position as the British Political Agent. It would not be safe to draw conclusions as to what may best be done by ordinary agents within the British Provinces from what may have been accomplished in vernacular instruction by Mr. Wilkinson in Schore. Some of his remarks too as to the failure of attempts at English education within foreign states are not good grounds for anticipating failure within our own districts, where other circumstances and motives are in operation. 25. I do not admit into this discussion the question of promoting at the present time the formation of a body of vernacular literature. Instruction through the vernacular languages, to a definite extent for ordinary purposes, may possibly be, as the readiest mode to the attainment of those purposes proper and desirable. But anything like a body of enlarged literature can, I am thoroughly convinced, be created only with time, by the unprompted exertions of private authors, when 187

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a general demand for such literature shall have arisen among the people. The Honorable Court have in a passage which has been quoted4 declared themselves strongly in favor of a liberal encouragement or native private authors and translators, and I would by no means dissent widely from their views though the encouragement must be given with judgment, or the Government will be constantly in hazard of aiding mediocrity or premature and ill-directed efforts. But these are considerations apart from the settlement of the plans of School instruction on which we are now engaged. 26. I have thus stated what has seemed most important on the subject of introducing the vernacular medium in our common District Schools—I mean as to the general principle of such a change; for the measure could not be named as one for very early adoption, with no class books prepared, or Teachers versed in those books yet trained for their duties. And as the contrary system has been actually established, it is right that, unless urgent reasons for abandoning that system demanded attention, it should be fully tried, with the improvements of which it may fairly be susceptible. We may be said to have two great experiments in progress, one in the Bengal, the other in the Bombay Provinces,—the provincial education being in the former conducted chiefly through the English, in the latter almost, if not quite exclusively, through the vernacular languages. It will be most interesting that both experiments shall be closely watched, and thoroughly developed. It is possible that in Bengal, in aiming at too much, we may have withheld some facilities for acquiring knowledge which might otherwise have advantageously been left open. And in Bombay the standard of proficiency in the Mofussil Schools may have been fixed and allowed to remain too low, with no principle in the scheme by which they are regulated which would constantly animate exertion, and maintain a spirit of progressive improvement. 27. The immediate practical question in respect to Bengal seems to be that which I have before mentioned, namely, whether it may be reasonably supposed that a vernacular would be more readily and largely accepted in our District Schools than an English education, and on this subject I am not able, after much careful reflection, to discover any reasons which could lead me to answer the proposition in the affirmative. Native youths will not come to our schools to be instructed in vernacular composition. This qualification is more quickly and easily to be attained from other sources. We can in those schools draw little, if any, aid from existing native literature. The desire for the new ideas and information which will be imparted at them must therefore be among the great inducements to attendance, and those who are candidates for such instruction will not, I think, in any important degree be deterred by having to undergo also the labour of learning the English character and language. The fact indeed is, as it is to be presumed from the evidence, which has been recorded5 on the subject, that a knowledge of the English language itself with a view to the business, however humble of life, is one main object of most of the scholars. It is fortunate that, in the pursuit of such an object, they can be led on to higher studies and ends. For 188

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mere instruction of a general nature (such as our masters now give) through the vernacular medium, it may, it seems to me, well be doubted whether even the number of pupils would seek our schools who now resort to them. 28. On the other hand, I confess that I regard it as a serious defect in our plans that we have compiled no proper series of vernacular class books. It is obviously desirable that, as we have vernacular classes, the books used in them should not only be correct and elegant in style, but should be themselves of the most useful description.6 I would urge also the justness and importance of the advice of the Honorable Court that such a series of class books should be prepared under one general scheme of control and superintendence. Much expense will thereby be saved, and efficiency greatly promoted. The cost would equitably and willingly be divided among many parties. The works would either be selections from English books of instruction already published, or original compilations adapted for native pupils. In either case the charge of the first selection or compilation in English would be borne in part by the Education Funds of Bengal, and in part by those of the other Presidencies, especially by those of Bombay, where such works must be urgently required for the vernacular schools in the interior. The new Pautsalah of Calcutta, the projectors of which have proposed a good series of works, would also of course contribute, and aid might be expected from benevolent individuals or associations, in different parts of India. The present opportunity is favorable for entering on the undertaking. When the books shall have been prepared in English, they will afterwards, as the Hon’ble Court have observed, be translated at each Presidency into the vernacular languages current in it, but the first step for all the Presidencies must be the primary compilation. I would, then, place the body, which at Bombay represents the Government in the direction of native education, in communication with the Committee of Public Instruction at Calcutta, and make it my first injunction to the latter Committee in concert with the Managers of the Hindoo College Pautsalah or others, to draw a definite scheme of the several sets of books wanted for instruction through the vernacular languages in seminaries of ordinary education—then to consider and report by what means, and at what estimated cost to be distributed among what parties, these books can be drawn up, and with what further cost the printing of them would be attended. With this information before them the Government can determine on the completion of the plan, and on the amount of funds which can properly, independent of the usual income of the Committee, be assigned to it. 29. I need scarcely repeat that I look with particular favor on the suggestions of the Managers of the Pautsalah, for including in the list of works Treatises on the Elements of Law, general and local, of Political Economy, and of Morals. 30. When the series of class books shall have been printed, and especially when those further Manuals of the Precedents, Rules and Practice of our Courts to which my Minute in the Judicial Department7 of September 4, 1838 referred, shall have been added to them and made a part of instruction, it is more probable than 189

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at present that students will attend the vernacular classes of our Zillah Schools, for the sake of the general and practical knowledge to be acquired at them. In that stage of progress it would be my second direction to the Calcutta Education Committee to relax their rule8 for the discontinuance of separate vernacular instruction, and to allow students to attend the full course of English or vernacular tuition as they might themselves prefer. 31. The day however when all this can be accomplished may yet be distant. It is easy to wish for and to project such compilations as will be requisite for the purpose, but the means in India for the efficient execution of them are unavoidably limited, and in this respect, as in other parts of our endeavours, we must expect delays and partial disappointments. 32. Meanwhile we have to improve the Institutions which are established, and to make the most of them for the great end sought for. My leading recommendation on this point would be so to connect our Zillah Schools with the Central Colleges as to give from the latter to the ablest students of the Zillah Schools a stimulus that will carry them beyond the ordinary range of instruction which is reached by the mass of the Zillah pupils: Without such a stimulus, we shall fall short of the point which we must desire to gain in the promotion of national improvement. 33. This brings me to the question of pecuniary scholarships for meritorious students, for such a stimulus as I have spoken of is scarcely to be given excepting by attaching in some form scholarships of that description to the Central Colleges, to which the best of the Zillah scholars may be eligible. On the general question regarding pecuniary support to promising students to enable them to perfect their studies, I think that I may content myself by referring to the facts and opinions which have been detailed on this point; and I will only therefore profess my decided adoption of the principle laid down by the Hon’ble Court in the words which I shall again quote from their despatch of September 29th 1830— “Provided (they say,) that the privilege of scholarship is restricted to young men who have afforded proof of a peculiar capacity and industry, it appears to us to be a highly useful and proper mode of encouraging and facilitating their acquisition of high attainments.” My third present direction to the Calcutta Committee would now therefore be to consider and report with all expedition on the details of a scheme for assigning a certain number of Scholarships to all our higher Seminaries—those in the English and Oriental Colleges being in an equal ratio. In consequence of the very general poverty of students I would fix the ratio on a high scale, say at 1–4th of the number of pupils if that number “should afford proof of peculiar capacity and industry.” I do not suggest Scholarships in our ordinary schools, as the most deserving pupils of these will best be provided for in the Colleges, and the average efficiency of such schools, can well be maintained by honorary prizes or single donations of money. Of the College Scholarships it may perhaps be the most convenient in the first instance that some should be assigned in regular rotation to be competed for by the pupils of each Zillah School. The 190

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amount ought, from the commencement, to be enough for the decent subsistence of a Native Student, and there might be some small increase admitted after a year or two, as an incentive to continued effort. On the other hand the Scholarship should be forfeited if a proper standard of attainment were not exhibited at each yearly examination. I would not grant Scholarships for a year only, liable to be then lost if, upon the chance of an examination, another competitor might stand higher on the list; for the uncertain tenure of the emolument would be very unfavorable to hearty consistent study. But I would provide by such safe guards as I have mentioned against the growth of indolence or indifference in the student. Four years is an ordinary period for holding such Scholarships at home, and it may be sufficient here. The following is the scheme of the Flaherty Scholarships in the University College, London, taken from the report of the Council of that Institution for 1838. “They (the Council) have determined to apply the income of this fund towards the formation of Scholarships to be called Flaherty Scholarships, which at the same time that they stimulate and reward the exertions of the students might commemorate the zeal and munificence of this body. This donation increased by the investment of the surplus dividends until the Scholarships are in full operation, together with the sum of £250 supplied by the Council out of the funds of the College, will constitute a fund producing £200 per annum, which will be sufficient to create four Scholarships, each amounting to £50, annually for four years. One of these Scholarships will be vacant every year, and is to be given in alternate years to the best proficient in classical languages, and in Mathematics and in Natural Philosophy, the first is intended to be given in the present year to the best proficient in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.” 34. I would state to the Education Committee that it is the wish of Government eventually to bring the9 Medical College at Calcutta within our general scheme on this subject. But I would not press any immediate proposition to that effect. It will be enough to request now that the General Committee report specially in each of their successive yearly reports, whether they think that the time has arrived at which the assimilation could properly be introduced. 36. If instructions founded upon these observations should, with the concurrence of the President in Council, be communicated to the Calcutta General Committee, I would be glad that it should be added to them that, if the Committee should doubt the feasibility of attaching Scholarships to Central Colleges on some such general scheme as has been suggested for the improvement of the pupils of the Zillah Schools, they will then submit such other recommendations as they may think most likely to promote the object contemplated by that scheme—the advancement of the best pupils of the body of our scholars beyond the present scale of common acquirement being regarded as a point of the first importance in our educational plans. 37. I have not more to observe on the immediate guidance of the measures of the Calcutta Committee. Before 191

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APPENDIX. No. XI. List of Examination Questions for Scholarships for the year 1841. JUNIOR ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIPS. NO. 1. ENGLISH GRAMMAR. I. Define the nine parts of speech? II. Explain and illustrate by examples the use and importance of the definite and indefinite articles? III. Decline all the personal pronouns? IV. Conjugate the verb active “to fall,” and the verb passive “to be commanded?” V. Write the past tense and the past participle of the following verbs. “To bring,” “to chide,” “to creep,” “to go,” “to drive,” “to know,” “to load,” “to see,” “to speak,” “to thrust,” “to weave,” “to take,” “to be.” VI. Parse the following sentences. “If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence.” “For Human Knowledge, which concerns the mind, it hath two parts, the one that enquireth of the substance or nature of the soul or mind, the other that enquireth of the faculties or functions thereof. _________________ Be famous then By wisdom, as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o’er all the world, In knowledge, all things in it comprehend: VII. Point out and correct the errors, if any, in the following sentences; giving your reasons— 1st. He that is wrong, you should correct. 2nd. The body of the community whenever they can come to act can meet with no resistance. 3d. Let each esteem others better than themselves. 4th. Who do you live with now? 5th. _________________ thus with the year Season’s returns, but not to me return Day or the sweet approach of even or morn. 6th. In death the vanquished, and the victor lies, 7th. Whom do you believe that I am. 192

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8th. O thou my lips inspire, Who touched Isaiah’s lips with fire. 9th. Between you and I, this is not right. VIII. Explain the distinction between “shall” and “will,” and illustrate it by examples. IX. Point the following sentence, and rectify in it the use of capital letters. The struggle Between the Macedonians and the greeks. And before that The disputes of the Greek commonwealths among themselves for an unproductive Superiority form one of the Bloodiest Scenes in History one is Astonished how such a small Spot could furnish men sufficient to sacrifice to the pitiful Ambition of possessing five or six thousand more Acres or two or three more Villages yet to see the Acrimony and Bitterness with which this was disputed between the Athenians and lacedemonians what Armies cut off what Fleets sunk and burnt what a Number of Cities sacked and their Inhabitants slaughtered and captived One would be induced to believe that the decision of the Fate of Mankind at least Depended upon it. X. Give the derivation, meaning and application in sentences of the following words. Omnipotent—apparent—paternal—defend—complete—complicated—portable— sanctify—astronomy—autograph—zoology—inundation—soliloquy. XI. Scan the following lines: 1st. Be wise to-day, ’tis madness to defer; Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life. 2nd. ’Twas when the seas were roaring; With hollow blasts of wind; A damsel lay deploring, All on a rock reclined. 3rd. My banks they are furnished with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep; My grottoes are shaded with trees, And my hills are white over with sheep. NO. 2. GEOGRAPHY. 1. What is a diameter of the earth? What is the axis? Or what extent in English miles are the earth’s mean diameter, and circumference, respectively. What occasions the alternation of day and night?

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2. What is the distance of the earth from the sun? What is meant by the earth’s orbit? What occasions the variety of the seasons, and the difference in the lengths of the day and night?

No. IV. Copy of a Despatch from the Honorable the Court of Directors, dated the 20th January 1841, on the subject of Native Education. PUBLIC DEPARTMENT. No. 1 OF 1841. OUR GOVERNOR GENERAL OF INDIA IN COUNCIL. India Public Letter dated 30th Sept., No. 29, 1837. P. 1 to 8. 18th Jan., No. 8, 1837. P. 67 to 71. 1st March, No. 5, 1837. P. 101 to 107. 12th Feb., No. 8, 1838. P. 34. 19th Nov., No. 36, 1838. 16th March, No. 5, 1839. 12th Oct., No. 33. Gov. Genl.’s Lt., dated 13th Dec., No. 2, 1839.

Para. 1. We now reply to the Letters of the date, noted in the margin, which relate to the general arrangements respecting Native Education. 2. It will be our endeavor to express our opinions and orders upon this important subject in the briefest possible terms, purposely abstaining from any examination into the controversy to which it gave rise.

3. In reference not only to the desire which has been manifested by numerous and respectable bodies of both Mohammedans and Hindoos, but also to more general considerations, it is our firm conviction that the Funds assigned to each Native College or Oriental Seminary, should be employed exclusively on instruction in, or in connexion with, that College or Seminary, giving a decided preference within those Institutions to the promotion, to the first instance, of perfect efficiency in Oriental instruction. 4. We have already sanctioned the disbursement of 6,000 Rupees a year, through the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for the expense of printing the most esteemed works in the literature of the Mohammedans and Hindoos, and we authorize you to give such further encouragement as you may think desirable, to similar works, or to translations into the Native Languages, or to any works designed for educational purposes. 5. It is our opinion that a just consideration for the circumstances of the Students requires that Scholarships should be attached to the Oriental Seminaries in proportion to their endowments, such Scholarships to be invariably bestowed as rewards for merit, and to last for a sufficient term to enable the Student to acquire 194

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the highest attainments of which the collegiate course admits, but the continuance of them for any part of the term, to be always dependent upon continued industry and good conduct, and we direct you to instruct the Committee of Public Instruction to act upon this principle. 6. We consider it essential that the Native Colleges should be placed under European Superintendance of the most respectable description, both as to station and attainments. 7. It is by no means our intention that the arrangement now authorized for restoring to its original object the Funds appropriated to each Oriental Institution, should interrupt the measures in progress for the dissemination of European knowledge, whether by translations into the Vernacular tongues, or, by means of the English language. On the contrary we cordially subscribe to one of the principal declarations of the Resolution of 7th March 1835, that “it should be the great object of the British Government to promote European Science and Literature amongst the Natives of India,” and have no hesitation in sanctioning it, as a general principle for the conduct of our Indian Governments. 8. We are aware that the opinions which we have now expressed, favorable on the one hand to the application of the Funds belonging to the Native Colleges or Seminaries, for Oriental instruction in the first instance, and, on the other hand to the diffusion of European instruction, involve an increase of expense to the State. To this we are prepared to submit, concurring as we must do in the opinion which our Governor General has expressed of the insufficiency of the funds hitherto allotted to the purposes of public instruction in India. You have therefore our authority to make up any deficiency in the income now at the disposal of the General Committee which may be occasioned by restoring the allowances of the several Oriental Colleges to the purposes for which they were originally made. 9. We forbear at present from expressing an opinion regarding the most efficient mode of communicating and disseminating European knowledge. Experience indeed does not yet warrant the adoption of any exclusive system. We wish a fair trial to be given to the experiment of engrafting European knowledge on the studies of the existing learned classes, encouraged as it will be by giving to the Seminaries in which those studies are prosecuted, the aid of able and efficient European Superintendance. At the same time we authorize you to give all suitable encouragement to translations of European works into the Vernacular languages, and also to provide for the compilation of a proper series of Vernacular class-books according to the plan which Lord Auckland has proposed. 10. Lord Auckland’s suggestion to connect the Provincial Schools with a Central College, so that the ablest Scholars of the former may be transferred to the 195

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latter, for the purpose of securing superior instruction, seems very judicious, and we shall be prepared to sanction the grant of a sufficient number of Scholarships for that purpose. We also entirely concur in His Lordship’s proposal to render the highest instruction efficient in a certain number of Central Colleges, in preference to extending the means of inferior instruction, by adding to the number of Ordinary Zillah Schools. 11. You will have observed from this despatch that we very generally concur in the view taken by our Governor General of this interesting and important subject. The remarks of His Lordship upon the reference made to him of Mr. Adam’s propositions will be noticed in a separate letter, as well a variety of details which at different times you have communicated to us regarding Native Education. We are, &c., (Sd.) W. B. BAYLEY. ” GEORGE LYALL. ” H. LINDSAY. ” JOHN SHEPHERD. ” W. H. SYKES. ” P. VANS AGNEW. ” J. P. MUSPRATT.

(Sd.) F. WARDEN. ” J. THORNHILL. ” RUSSELL ELLICE. ” J. L. LUSHINGTON. ” HENRY WILLOCK. ” A. GALLOWAY.

}

LONDON, 20th January, 1841.

(True Copy,) C. A. BUSHBY, Secy. to Govt. of India.

No. V. GENERAL ORDERS BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE PRESIDENT IN COUNCIL. FORT WILLIAM, 12TH AUGUST. Government having resolved, in the General Department, to sanction the formation of a Secondary School in connection with the Medical College of Calcutta for the instruction of Native Doctors for the Military and Civil branches of the Service, the following rules relating to admission to the School and to the terms of service which have been established by the Hon’ble the President in Council are published for general information, and will take effect from the 1st of October 1839. 1st. The School will be thrown open for the admission of any persons desirous of acquiring Medical knowledge, as well as for the instruction of those who 196

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enter the institution under the engagements and terms of service hereinafter specified. 2d. To the first of these classes of persons the subjoined rules do not apply, it being understood that such persons resort to the Institution in order to qualify themselves for eventually undertaking private practice in the Medical profession. 3d. The class of students intended for the subordinate Medical Service under Government is to consist of not more than fifty persons, admissible on the 1st of October 1839, and in the following and every subsequent year respectively twenty additional pupils are to be admitted. 4th. The qualification required of these students at the time of admission is that they shall be able to read and write the Hindoostanee language, in the Devanagree or Persian character, their capability being certified by any interpreter to a Native Regiment, and further ascertained by examination before the Examiners of the College of Fort William—on receipt of the Reports of the Examiners, the Council of the Medical College will select such as possess the best certificates restricting admission to the numbers of students above specified. 5th. Hindoos and Mahommedans are equally admissible when duly qualified on the sole condition that they be of respectable character. Where qualifications are equal, a preference will be shown to the sons or near relatives of Native Officers, and other respectable persons in the service of Government. Candidates from the provinces of Assam and Arrakan will be specially considered. 6th. The students are to be regularly enlisted as Soldiers, and to be subject to the Articles of War for the Government of the Native Army. 7th. Students are admissible into the Institution at from 46 to 22 years of age, and upon their admission they are to enter into an engagement to serve the Government as Native Doctors, as vacancies may occur, for a period of not less than seven years from the time of their leaving the Institution in that capacity, unless prevented serving that period by physical inability proved before a Medical Committee and certified accordingly. After a service of seven years they may demand their discharge in time of peace. 8th. From the date of admission into the Institution the students will receive diet money, at the public charge, at the rate of (5) Five Company’s Rupees each per mensem, to be continued to them during the period of their abode at the Institution, and to be drawn in Monthly Abstract by the Secretary to the Medical College. 9th. It will at all times be in the power of the Council of the Medical College to discharge any individual student on being satisfied that from dullness, idleness, negligence, or mi conduct he is not likely to profit by the instruction given at the Institution, or to become properly qualified for the exercise of the duties for which he is designed. 197

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10th. The students will be required before they obtain admission into the service as Native Doctors to pass an examination before the Professors of the Medical College, upon whose report of their qualification for the public service made through the College Council to the Medical Board, the students will be appointed to the situation of Native Doctors on the occurrence of vacancies in the same manner as Native Doctors have hitherto been appointed. 11th. The pay of Native Doctors on appointment to the service is fixed at (20) Twenty Company’s Rupees a month in Garrison or at a Civil Station, and (25) Twenty-five Company’s Rupees a month in the field of which sums (5) Five Rupees are to be considered as batta and deducted when on leave of absence from Corps and Stations. 12th. Although the engagement of Native Doctors to serve in that capacity does not extend beyond seven years, yet in the event of such individual continuing to serve, his allowances will after seven years be advanced to (25) Twentyfive Company’s Rupees in Garrison or at a Civil Station, and (30) Thirty Rupees in the Field, provided the Medical Officer under whom such Native Doctors may be serving at the time grant a certificate that the general character and professional conduct of the individual deserve this indulgence. The certificate to be countersigned by the Superintending Surgeon of the Division or Circle. 13th. Pensions will be granted to Native Doctors at the following rates, and under the conditions of service therein specified. A Native Doctor who from wounds or injuries received on service shall become no longer fit to serve, will be entitled at any period less than fifteen years to an invalid pension of twelve rupees per mensem—after fifteen years to one-half of his field pay if in the Military and of his Garrison pay if in the Civil branch of the service,—after twenty-two years to the whole of his pay, provided that in every case the inability of a Native Doctor to serve, as occasioned by wounds or injuries so received, be duly certified by the usual Medical Committee for invaliding. 14th. A Native Doctor if invalided under ordinary circumstances of inability to perform his duties, will be entitled at the expiration of fifteen years to a pensionary provision of Ten Rupees per mensem, and after twenty-two years to onehalf of his Field or Garrison pay agreeably to the branch of the service in which he is employed. 15th. Native Doctors attached to Civil Stations are liable to serve with the Army when so directed in General Orders, or the same advantages in every respect will thereupon be extended to them when thus serving as to Native Doctors attached to Corps. The foregoing rules are applicable only to those Native Doctors who may be educated at the Secondary School of the Calcutta Medical College. 198

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APPENDIX M. Depository List of the Bombay Native Education Society’s Works. Copies remaining on the 1st January 1839

MURATHEE. Beejah Gunnet, or Elements of Algebra, translated from the works of Doctor Hutton and Bonnycastle by Lieut.-Col. G. Jervis, late Secretary to the Society, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kurtuvya Bhoomittee, or Practical Geometry, translated from the course compiled by Colonel Pasley, of the Royal Engineers, by Ditto ditto, Logarithms, Tables of, by Ditto Ditto, . . . . . . Triconamitter, or a treatise on Plane Trigonometry and Mensurations of Heights and Distances, with Tables of Logarithmetic Lines, Tangents, &c. by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shickshamalla, a course of Mathematics, 1st volume, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto, 2d volume, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adikarun Bhoomittee, or Elements of Geometry, translated from ditto, Hutton’s Course of Mathematics, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bodh Katha, translated from Tarachund Dutt’s Pleasing Stories by Sadasew Cassinath Chubay, late Native Secretary to the Society, . . Bodh Vuchun, or Advice to Children in short sentences, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Æsop Neeti Katha, or Æsop’s Fables, by Ditto, Pall Mitra, or a selection from Bergum’s Children’s Friend, 1st volume, by Ditto, . . . . . . Ditto ditto 2d volume, by Lieutenant P. Gastord, Leepeedhara, containing the Alphabet, Combined Letters and a collection of Words from one to five Syllables, by Pundits in the service of the Society, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vurnmalla, or School Tables, according to the Lancasterian System of Education, by Ditto, Maharashtra Kosh, or a Murathee Dictionary for the use of the Natives, by Ditto, . . . . . . 199

Price of each Copy

95

3

0

0

250 1437

5 0

0 4

0 0

235

2

0

0

883 146

2 10

8 8

0 0

418

3

0

0

917

0

8

0

327 710

0 3

8 0

0 0

712 620

3 4

8 0

0 0

1158

0

6

0

136

12

0

0

271

18

0

0

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Copies remaining on the 1st January 1839

MURATHEE. Supplement to Murathee Dictionary, by Ditto, . . Punchopakhyan, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shalla Pudhutee, a Treatise on the Management of Schools according to Lancasterian System of Education, by Major J. Molesworth, a late Member of the Committee, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shilpavidya, or Treatise on Mechanics of the Library of Useful Knowledge, by Mr. Webell, . . Murathee Bukhur, or Grant Duff’s History of the Marathees, translated by Major D. Capon, . . Kitta, or Specimens of Bolbodh and Moore Characters, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sarah Sangraha, Pinnock’s Catechism of General Knowledge, by Ball Gungadhar Shastree, Esq., Honorary Native Secretary, . . . . Mathematical Geography of the Library of Useful Knowledge, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . Ball Viakrun, a little Grammar, by Ditto, . . . . England Deshachee Bukhur, or History of England, translated by the European and Native Secretaries of the Society, . . . . . . . Ditto, 2d volume, ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bhoogole, or Dialogues on Geography and Astronomy, by Mr. W. B. Mainwaring and Ramchunder Shastree, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pudarth Viduan, or Conversations on Natural Philosophy, by Hurry Kessowjee, a Member of the Translating Committee, . . . . . . . . . . . Conversations on Chemistry, by Ditto, . . . . . . Ball Ghoshtee, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Missur Deshachee Vrittant Kutha, or History of Ancient Egyptians, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Punchung, or Almanack, by Captain R. Shortrede, a Member of the Translating Committee for 1836, Kshtraphul Ghunphul, or Mensurations of Planes and Solids, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . England Deschachee Vurun, or England Delineated, by Nana Nurayen, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Price of each Copy

434 1020

2 0

0 0

0 0

244

0

2

0

208

0

0

0

774

6

0

0

641

0

1

0

434

0

8

0

374 930

0 12 0 3

0 0

717 839

5 6

0 0

0 0

430

4

0

0

321 412 48

6 16 0

0 0 6

0 0 0

412

0

8

0

95

1

0

0

991

0 12

0

952

1

0

0

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF FORT WILLIAM

Copies remaining on the 1st January 1839

MURATHEE. Gungadhur’s Grammar, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dadoba’s Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neeti Kutha, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ball Oopdesh, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ankh Leepee, or Numeration Tables, . . . . . . . Bhoogole Vidiyah, or little Geography, . . . . . Hurry Kessowjee’s History of England, . . . . . Atlas, containing 9 Mans, by Dadoba Pandoorung and Nunna Narrayen, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jagti Jot, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wat Sarachi Goshta, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialogues on the means of improving the conditions of the People, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The History of the Medes and Persians, . . . . . Ditto of Assyrians and Babylonians, . . . . . . . . Ditto of Athenians, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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GOOJRATHEE. Adikarun Bhoomittee, or Elements of Geometry, by Lieutenant Colonel G. Jervis, late Secretary of the Society, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gunnit, 1st part, 1st edition, by Ditto, . . . . . . . Ditto, 1st part, 2d edition, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . Ditto, 2d part, 1st Ditto, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . Kurtavya Bhoomittee, or Practical Geometry, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Triconamittee, or Treatise on the Plane, Trigonometry and Mensuration of Heights and Distances, &c., by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beeja Gunnit, or Elements of Algebra, Ditto, . . Shicksha Malla, a course of Mathematics, in 2 volumes, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto, 1st volume, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gunnit, Translated from the works of Hutton and Bonnycastle, with Book-keeping, by Ditto, . . . Vidyana Oopdesh, a Preliminary Treatise to the Library of Useful Knowledge, translated by Do., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

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GOOJRATHEE. MURATHEE. Bodh Vuchun, or Advice to Children, in short sentences, by Pundits in the Service of the Society, 1st edition, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto, 2d ditto ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fables in Banyan Goojrathee, by Ditto, . . . . . Ditto in Parsee ditto, by ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leepeedhara, or Spelling, 2d edition, by Ditto, Æsop Neeti Kutha, or Æsop’s Fables, by Ditto, Shallapudhuttee, a Treatise on the management of Schools, by Do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bhoogole, or Dialogues on Geography and Astronomy by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dodsley’s Fables, a selection from, by Kissen Doss Joojuldass, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vurnmalla, or School Fables, according to Lancasterian System of Education, per set, . . . Puncho Pakhyan, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gunnit, Translated from the works of Hutton and Bonnycastle, with Book-keeping in MS., . . . . Kitta, or specimens of Goojrathee Characters, Balmitra, or Berquin Children’s Friend, 1st volume, by Runchore Doss, and Ghirdhurbae Goojrathee Inspectors, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ankh Leepee, or Numeration Tables, by Pundits in the Service of the Society, . . . . . . . . Atlas, containing 9 Maps, by Dadoba Pandoorung and Nana Narayen, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ball Viakrun, or little Grammar, by Ditto, . . . Bhoogoole Videyah, or little Geography, by Ditto, Ball Oopdesh, or Advice to Children, by Ditto, Kshtraphul Ghunphul, or Mensuration of Plane and Solids, by Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

255 1104 222 1253 977 384

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PERSIAN. Unwari Sohili, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dewani Hafiz, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yusoof Wa Zuleekha of Jami, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Insha, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

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PERSIAN. MURATHEE. Lumsden’s Persian Grammar, 2 vols. . . . . . . . Ressaleh Tahsecluth Tukfeef, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Table, exhibiting in one connected view the Sub-Division and Measures of Nouns, &c. Tareekhi Negaristan, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meeruti Sekundri, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tareekhi Ferishta, in 2 volumes, . . . . . . . . . . . Goolistan of Sadi, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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HINDOOSTANEE. Jamee Ool Hickayat, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gilchrist’s Oriental Linguist, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map of the Globe, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tytler’s Elements of General History, translated by Lewis DaCosta, Esq., Calcutta, for the Society, in 3 volumes, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taleem Numu, containing Moral Sentences and Tales; Rules of Arithmetic; Grammatical Rules; Forms of Letters; Deeds, &c. volume 1st, by Mahomed Ibrahim Mukba, Esq. a Member of the Society, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto ditto, 2d volume, Ditto do. . . . . . . . . . . . ENGLISH. Borradaile’s Report, in 2 vols. . . . . . . . . . . . . Adan’s little Grammar, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nicholson’s Mathematics, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key to Ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prefixes and Affixes, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Questions on the History of England, . . . . . . . Questions for General Examination, . . . . . . . . Little Spelling Book, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mill’s British India, in 6 vols. russia, . . . . . . . Gibbon’s Rome, in 8 ditto ditto, . . . . . . . . . . . Grant Duff’s History of the Marathus, in 3 ditto, Murray’s Grammar, in 2 vols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anacharsis’ Travels, in 7 volumes, with Plates, Bingley’s Useful Knowledge, in 3 volumes, . . . .

203

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ENGLISH. MURATHEE.

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Pinnock’s America, 1st part, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tables of Weights and Measures, . . . . . . . . . . Account of India, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Etymological Manual, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joyce’s Arithmetic, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Guy’s Geography, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key to Joyce’s Arithmetic, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abercrombie on the Intellectual power, . . . . . Ditto on the Moral Feelings, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Milton’s Poems, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abridgement of the History of England, . . . . . Sequel to little Spelling Book, . . . . . . . . . . . . McCullock’s Grammar, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto Series of Lesson, in Prose and Verse, . .

56 257 254 399 352 26 24 17 23 17 500 500 195 250

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SUNSKRIT. Colebrooke’s Grammar, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forster’s Essays, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gungadhur’s Umercosh, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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MISCELLANEOUS. MURATHEE. Ditto ditto Dictionary, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taloola Khan’s Turkish Grammar, . . . . . . . . . Boutan Dictionary, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16 11 11

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

See paragraph 5 of the Note. Recorded in the Legislative Department. See details at the close of para. 8, and in paras 10 to 15 of Note. See paragraph 3 of the Note. [******* * **] 10 to 15 of the Note. See Extract of Dispatch cited in para. 36 of Note. Recorded in the Legislative Department. Note para. 6. See paras. 20 and 21 of Note.

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18 PRISCILLA CHAPMAN, EXTRACT FROM HINDOO FEMALE EDUCATION (LONDON: R. B. SEELEY AND W BURNSIDE, 1839), 64–97

CHAPTER VII. NECESSITY OF A PRINCIPLE THAT WILL ESTABLISH MUTUAL CONFIDENCE— ENGLISH EDUCATION—EXCLUSION OF SCRIPTURE FROM GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS—COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF MISSIONARY LABOR—NATIVE CO-OPERATION NOT TO BE EXPECTED—DIFFICULTIES OF FINDING RIGHTLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS IN INDIA—PROGRESS HITHERTO LIMITED TO THE POOR—MEANS OF EXTENSION.

IT is the practice in questions of European polity, to contemplate the constitution of society, with reference to certain acknowledged rights, admitted to be inherent in ourselves; and a renovating principle is appealed to, the powers of which, for whatever period they may have been dormant, are never supposed to have ceased entirely: on the contrary, when circumstances call them into action, they often appear to have gathered fresh vigour from the occasion of repose. No such self-regulating compact is to be found amongst the Hindoos, either in civil or domestic society; which is the great reason for their disunion and consequent weakness: the tyranny of caste has expunged any record of the civil rights of man, whilst custom and prejudice have taken the place of law and principle. It is a distinguishing feature of their system, that they must continue in the position of their progenitors, whether good or bad: thus occupations and habits are never changed, but descend from generation to generation. The greatest evil is endured in preference to, what they consider, the slightest innovation of old customs; and in no instance is this more apparent, than in the home circle, where discord, confusion, and misery reign, from the long-established idea, that the wife must and ought to be the slave, instead of the help-meet. There is one exception, however, which we would mention, as in itself worthy of admiration, though sometimes evil in its consequences: the attachment which the Hindoo feels to the inheritance of his fathers; for, like the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, it is neither the better land or the worth of it in money, that would readily induce the exchange, so that property often lies waste and useless, in the hands of its proprietor, which would otherwise become valuable. 206

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It is quite essential for the right direction of measures intended to benefit the people, that the real character of their feelings and customs, should be understood, and that fear of consequences should never induce even apparent respect for what is evil. The Hindoo knows how to value consistency in others, though he has no courage to maintain it in his own conduct; and it is not indulgence to their prejudices, that gives power over them. No compromise with Hindooism or Mahomedanism, will ever succeed in gaining that influence which will do the people real good. A completely new principle of feeling and action must be given. There are many indeed amongst the Hindoos, and even the Brahmins, who venture to prognosticate, that a new era will soon commence, when their nation will become Christian. But it is not well to indulge here in these deep and interesting anticipations; present duties are sufficiently momentous. The readiness with which all classes have accepted the national boon of English education, Hindoo and Mussulman attending the same college, shows both a zeal and capability for receiving such knowledge, as may qualify them for employment under government; but shackled as the instruction is, by obligations to which the authorities hold themselves bound, not to interfere with their religious opinions, they may alas! ‘be ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ Encouragement of a much more pleasing character is to be derived from the attendance at the missionary schools, where the whole instruction rests upon divine truth. In all the Female and Missionary Boys’ schools, the object of giving Christian instruction is avowed in the most open manner, and it is altogether impossible for those who send their children to such institutions, not to know that they are instructed in the Christian religion, and invited to embrace the hopes and promises, as well as confident assurances of the pardoning mercy of God, which are presented to the sinful children of men in the gospel of his son. In the avowed purpose of government to exclude the Scriptures and religious books even from the libraries, the Church and the individual Christian may be said to possess a charter in their favor; though it is seldom indeed that real conversion takes place whilst the children remain in the schools, they being minors till the age of sixteen; yet the difference of moral effect under the two systems is very apparent. With reference to female education, it is impossible for government to interfere; neither can the means for improving the condition of the female population become the subject of legislation. This makes it important that other means should be discovered, to assist and benefit them. It would be vain to encourage a hope of the Brahmins’ assenting, and becoming instrumental in the education of the sex so degraded. They never can act in concert in any matter which has not the immediate tendency to enrich themselves; and were they so disposed, it must be borne in mind, that their influence would work additional misery, by exposing the female character still more prominently to the influence of the religion of Kali, which is justly designated, ‘pure unmixed evil.’ Not merely is the absence of confidence in native society a bar to all advancement, but the “fear of man” is exemplified in the Hindoo character to an inconceivable extent, and paralyses the best powers. It is next to an impossibility to obtain the united attention of natives, even in 207

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immediate association with Europeans, for any subject of improvement, though they generally admit its probable advantage, without hesitation. Fair promises of consultation with others are always given, but they seldom, amount to any thing further; for no one has the courage to be the first to begin any thing new. We must not therefore indulge any expectation of measures promoting the female welfare, being originated, or finding ready support from the Hindoos themselves. Hitherto the East Indian population, descendants of Europeans in India, have had little or no weight with the natives: there are but few subjects of interest calculated to bring their united energies into action, and as an independent community, they are very deficient in those characteristics which qualify for the exercise of influence; if we except their familiar acquaintance with the vernacular language, an attainment which the European acquires with considerable difficulty, and probably never with the same fluency of expression. At Madras, the Rev. C. Tucker has made an important effort to give to the education of the East Indian females, such a direction as may bring valuable assistance to the work; and we trust that the day is not far distant, when many will be so established and settled in the faith, as to give them an influence, beyond that of mere tuition, with the Hindoos. Of the orphan children of European parents, educated in charitable institutions in India, from whom assistance might have been reasonably expected, but few have hitherto become serviceable in this sphere; there is every inducement for these young women to marry early, and a proper fear of associating with the heathen, has degenerated into a prejudice, that any contact with the natives is degrading. An encouraging example has been shown by such as have come forward, and the hope must be indulged, that the education which they receive, may be blessed in qualifying and disposing them to engage in this important service. The time is not yet arrived, that we can look to the converts to Christianity for any independent efforts; the sufferings which attend the sincere and faithful avowal of the truth, are such as leave them frequently in a state of great weakness, and they themselves are the objects of their pastor’s unceasing prayerful attention. Some years must elapse, before children of Christian converts now under instruction, can be fitted, if ever they should be disposed, to engage in duties of charity, towards their benighted countrywomen. For the reasons thus stated, it seems not only necessary, but natural to look to Christian countries, and especially to England, to supply the means that are required for the instruction of the Hindoos or Mahomedan females. It is clear that native females of good caste need but little encouragement to dispose them to welcome ladies who would visit them with a Christian object: none but such as are experienced in their Christian course can, under existing circumstances, hazard the attempt; and it is equally true, that when not merely the jealous character of the men must be overcome, but if possible, their confidence secured, the character and deportment of the visiting lady should be such as is calculated to command respect. The ‘Ladies’ Society’ in Calcutta, in the hope that their countrywomen will not turn a deaf ear to so strong an appeal, have made known their readiness to provide visiting teachers, whenever they may be called for. We cannot however forget that we are taught in the gospel, “that not many wise men after the flesh, not many 208

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mighty, not many noble are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen: yea, and things which are not to bring to nought things that are.” The dissemination of the Gospel in India is no exception, and in the humble efforts hitherto made for the female population, it is almost exclusively to the poor, that the glad tidings have been carried. That they have not been wholly unwilling hearers, will be evinced by facts, and those who have seen the children under Christian tuition, are struck with the effect of the benefit conferred, legible in their countenances: nor can it be doubted that the marked distinction between the expression of unmeaning vacancy, and that given by a mind occupied with good thoughts, must be more or less perceptible to the parents, to whom the richest blessings may thus be conveyed through the weakest instrumentality. Though the actual improvement of character is apparently small, under the tuition which has been given; yet when the children of the lower castes that have been instructed in any of the female schools, are compared with those of the highest rank, the contrast in mind and manner is strikingly in favour of the former. The effect of European influence upon native society, is however far from being a subject of exultation: for when it is remembered what is the power of example upon the heathen, every one must feel a deep humiliation, and confess that the profession of Christianity in India has hitherto been very unproductive. As a nation, we are progressively brought into a nearer connexion with the millions of our fellow-subjects in India, and their welfare should not merely be the concern of residents in the east, who have many claims upon them; but occupy the prayerful and constant endeavours of the church at large. In a work of this character, the disproportion of time and means to the magnitude of the undertaking, would be altogether an overwhelming discouragement, unless it be viewed in the light of a direct fulfilment of the commandment of our Lord. To the minds of such as think that happiness can exist where the gospel is unknown, and that the Hindoo, being enlightened by useful knowledge alone, will care for the moral and intellectual condition of their females, no expectation of carrying conviction can be entertained; but such persons are entreated to search still closer into the subject, with the sincere desire that infinite wisdom may teach them to distinguish between truth and error.

CHAPTER VIII. SUBDIVISION OF CHARITABLE EFFORTS—CLASSIFICATION OF LABOR—MISS COOKE’S ARRIVAL—AVOWAL OF MOTIVES—DISCUSSION WITH THE NATIVE WOMEN—MISTRUST OF PARENTS—FORMATION OF SCHOOLS—PATRONAGE OF

THE

MARCHIONESS

OF

HASTINGS—VOLUNTARY

ATTENDANCE

AT

EXAMINATION—CONCENTRATION OF LABOR REQUISITE.

THE necessity of an avowed Christian direction to the efforts which may effect the elevation of the Hindoo females from their present degradation to their proper 209

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level, having been prominently set forth, the history of past attempts is offered in the hope of exciting further endeavours on their behalf. In the present early stage, we have to notice the subdivision of labor, which affords ample scope for diversity of talent and experience. The nature of the work, demanding constant exercise of patience, must beget occasional feelings of discouragement, under which a sanguine expectation may be reasonably entertained that, when one branch is languishing, there may be the full ear, promising an ample harvest, in another. We may class the efforts with which we are acquainted, thus— First: General gratuitous education of female native children of Hindoos and Mussulmans promiscuously, without limitation of age, at day schools supported by voluntary contributions, where the scriptures are the prominent subject of instruction. Secondly: The same object carried on by individual residents, children being collected on their own premises, and at their own expence. Thirdly: The visiting females of the higher castes in their dwellings, with the same Christian object. Fourthly: The gathering of orphan children from the heathen, and maintaining them in asylums or privately, for their education as Christians. Fifthly: Taking charge of the children of native converts, to board and educate them consistently with their baptismal profession. Of the first branch, the Central School at Calcutta claims particular mention, as being the institution which primarily engaged the general public attention in Bengal. The history of this establishment is more or less known, through the medium of the annual reports of the Ladies Society for Promoting Native Female Education, established in Calcutta, and notices in periodical publications. It was in May 1821, that the lady so prominently instrumental in this work, Mrs. Wilson, then Miss Cooke, left England for India, bearing a recommendation from the British and Foreign School Society to the Calcutta School Society, in furtherance of her strong desires to be made useful to the poor neglected females of India. She reached Calcutta in November; but the Committee of the Society to whom Miss Cooke looked for aid and support in her plans, being composed partly of native gentlemen, were not prepared unanimously and actively to engage in any general plan for native female education; therefore an arrangement was entered into with the corresponding committee of the Church Missionary Society, who took the necessary measures for the establishment of female schools. Whilst engaged in studying the Bengali language, and scarcely daring to hope that an immediate opening for entering upon the work, to which she had devoted herself, would be found, Miss Cooke paid a visit to one of the native schools for boys, in order to observe their pronunciation; and this circumstance, trifling as it might appear, led to the opening of her first school in Thunthuniya. Unaccustomed to see a European lady in that part of the native town, a crowd collected round the door of the school, amongst them was an interesting looking little girl, whom the school pundit drove 210

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away; Miss Cooke desired the child to be called, and by an interpreter asked her, if she wished to learn to read? She was told in reply, that this child had for three months past been daily begging to be permitted to learn to read with the boys, and that if Miss Cooke (who had made known her purpose of devoting herself to the instruction of native girls) would attend next day, twenty girls should be collected. Accompanied by a female friend conversant with the language, she repeated her visit on the morrow, and found fifteen girls, several of whom had their mothers with them. Their natural inquisitiveness prompted them to inquire, what could be Miss Cooke’s motive for coming amongst them? They were told that, ‘she had heard in England that the women of their country were kept in total ignorance, that they were not taught to read or write, that the men only were allowed to attain any degree of knowledge, and it was also generally understood, that, the chief obstacle to their improvement was that no females would undertake to teach them; she had therefore felt compassion for them, and had left her country, her parents, and friends, to help them.’ The mothers with one voice cried out, (smiting themselves with their right hands) ‘O what a pearl of a woman is this!’ It was added, ‘she has given up every earthly expectation, to come here, and seeks not the riches of this world, but desires only to promote your best interests. ‘Our children are yours, we give them to you,’ was the reply of two or three of the women at once. One of them asked, ‘What will be the use of learning to our girls, and what good will it do them?’ She was told ‘it would make them more useful in their families, and increase their knowledge, and it was hoped that it would also tend to gain them respect, and produce harmony in their families.’ ‘True,’ said one of them, ‘our husbands now look upon us as little better than brutes.’ Another asked, ‘What benefit will you derive from this work?’ She was told, ‘the only return wished for was, to promote their best interest and happiness.’ Then said the woman, ‘I suppose this is a holy work, and well-pleasing to God.’ As they were not able to understand much, it was only said in return, ‘that God was always well pleased, that his servants should do good to their fellow-creatures.’ The women then spoke to each other in terms of the highest approbation, of what had passed. This explanation of Miss Cooke’s plans, seemed to have prevented much suspicion from being entertained as to her motives, and according to the habit of the natives, when any advantage may accrue, petitions for female schools were presented from different quarters of the native town; and eight schools were speedily established. One instance of the mistrust with which untutored minds are apt to view disinterested efforts for their good, occurred. The girl who first presented herself at Thunthuniya, after having attended daily for some weeks, was withdrawn, and under pretext of going to a distance to make poojah, or worship, was absent about a fortnight, although daily enquiry was made for her: her father one day presented a paper, written in English, which he required Miss Cooke to sign, and promised in that case to send his child to school again. This proved to be an agreement, by which Miss Cooke was to bind herself, to make no claim upon the child hereafter, on the ground of educating her, and that her parents should be at full liberty, to take her away when they chose. The paper being signed, the child 211

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returned to school. Thus in 1822, eight little schools for girls were formed, of which the detail is given, to shew the real nature of the work. The first Thunthuniya commenced, Jan. 25, with twelve children, but they soon increased to twenty-five. Jan. 16. The Mirzapore school was opened by a pundit, collecting fifteen girls; the population in this neighbourhood being chiefly Mussulman (who change their places of abode, as the place of their employment may suggest,) a regular attendance by the same children, was much prevented. Feb. 12. In consequence of a petition for a a female school, signed by several inhabitants, with twenty-two names of children, as wishing to learn to read, affixed, a place was taken in the adjoining neighbourhood for them to assemble in: The same number of children were collected, but they were other than those whose names had been given. March 25. At a school opened in Soho-bazar, seventeen girls were collected by the master, some from 12 to 15 years of age, they proved however less regular in attendance, and more quarrelsome than the smaller children. April 2. Krishna Bazar school, was formed, contained forty-five girls, collected by a respectable pundit. April 30. Shyan Bazar school, a very active Mussulman woman assembled eighteen girls, the numbers soon increased to forty-five. May 3. Mullick Bazar. This school had twenty-seven scholars; it laboured under the disadvantage of a very ignorant master, but as he had great influence among the people, it was thought best not to part with him. May 18. Koomer Tolly school, was formed. Eighteen girls were collected by the pundit. At the end of four months from Jan. 12, 1822, Miss Cooke’s efforts had been so far blessed, and attended with more favourable results than she had anticipated. The number of girls then on the school list, was two hundred and seventeen; about two hundred in daily attendance. The review of these her first efforts, was therefore far from discouraging. With respect to the influence on the children themselves, Miss Cooke perceived sufficient good effects, to hope for more. When they were first assembled, it was difficult to get them either to sit or stand still, much more so, to keep them reading or writing, for a quarter of an hour at a time; and it occurred more than once at the first opening of the schools, that while changing the card, on which the girls were reading the alphabet, the children had disappeared. The master very coolly said, ‘they were gone to eat.’ After a little while however, they became as anxious to remain as long as she did, and the parents appeared to take an interest in their children’s learning. One poor woman used to bring her little children two miles, and wait to take them home; and in one instance a respectable man stood over his little daughter, the whole time of lessons. A very decent woman took her niece to Miss Cooke and said, “Pray make her wise or learned, it is all I wish for her.” Another woman complained that the pundit did not teach her daughter fast enough: and a great girl, urged to take 212

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more pains on account of her age, said, ‘indeed she wished to learn and that she repeated her letters and spelling day and night.’ These little incidents gave indications of a brighter day, that would sometime or other dawn upon the poor females of India, and for the time, amidst much that appeared adverse, served to uphold a stedfast hope. In 1823 the number of schools was increased to twenty-two, and of scholars to four hundred. The Marchioness of Hastings afforded great encouragement to the establishment of these schools; she not only patronized the commencement, but gave work to be done by the children, and a few days before her departure from India, visited in person most of the schools, inspected the classes, commending those who had made the greatest proficiency, and encouraged them by rewards. The parents were much attracted by her ladyship’s goodness in visiting lanes and gullys, where Europeans are scarcely ever seen, and won by her kind and condescending notice of their children. On June 23, a general examination of the first and second classes of all the female schools took place at the Mission House at Mirzapore. When public notice was given, it was not known that the day fixed for the examination, was a noted Hindoo holiday, a very small attendance was consequently apprehended; in this instance however the children were allowed to do as they pleased, and out of one hundred and twenty requested to attend, not more than ten were absent, five of whom were ill. The first classes were able to read with ease ‘the Tract on Female Education,’ by a learned pundit, rather a difficult book from the number of Sanscrit phrases. Others read in books of fables, and in Watts’ Catechism, translated into Bengali; their needlework was then shewn, and the composure and seeming delight with which the little creatures went through the task, seated at the feet of their kind patronesses, much exceeded what had been anticipated. Rewards were distributed from a stock left by Lady Hastings. Seventeen months previous to this examination none of these children nor the young women who had qualified themselves as teachers, knew a letter of the alphabet, nor could they have been persuaded to have entered the house of a European. The idea of learning to sew they reluctantly received, regarding it as degrading; but after a time the inquiry was, ‘What, no work to-day?’ This altered feeling was more or less apparent; a girl eleven years old begun to instruct her two elder sisters at home, and in another quarter of the town, a child of the same age, taught her little sister who was only six years old, to repeat nearly the whole of Watts’ Catechism. When Miss Cooke first entered upon this work, she was usually accompanied by a Brahmin youth, who had learned English in one of the Society’s schools. This was now no longer necessary, from her having made progress in the language, and from the eagerness of the children to assist. It was made known in the schools that if the best readers were present and neatly dressed, when Miss Cooke should call, some of them should accompany her in a palanquin carriage, to visit the other schools; by six in the morning the best girls were in the school-room clean and neat, and those selected, went with manifest pleasure to assist her to teach in the other schools. Encouraged by these favourable circumstances, the Church 213

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Missionary Committee, in February 1823, circulated proposals for the concentration of the work, by the erection of the Central School.

CHAPTER IX. FORMATION OF THE LADIES SOCIETY FOR NATIVE FEMALE EDUCATION IN CALCUTTA—FOUNDATION OF THE CENTRAL SCHOOL LAID—EXAMINATION OF THE CHILDREN—MRS. WILSON’S REPORT OF THE WORK—CENTRAL SCHOOL OPENED—ANECDOTES OF THE CHILDREN.

THE Ladies’ Society for Native Female Education in Calcutta and its vicinity, of which the Right Hon. Lady Amherst, consented to be Patroness, was formed in March 1824, and in the month of June, the corresponding committee of the Church Missionary Society made over to their charge the native schools for girls; the superintendence of which remained undisturbed in the hands of Mrs. Wilson, late Miss Cooke. Her husband, the Rev. J. Wilson, being a missionary in connexion with the Church Missionary Society resident at Mirzapore, was well qualified to render her every valuable support in the work. The second public examination of the schools, then numbering from four to five hundred scholars, was held in December, 1824, at the vestry room of the old church. The scene was striking, and many of the women and children evinced a proficiency truly astonishing, when the obstacles they had to surmount were considered. The first classes read the New Testament, not only with facility, but with evident comprehension of its meaning; specimens of their needlework and writing were exhibited, and both surpassed the most sanguine expectations, that could have been entertained when the work was first commenced. After the examination, suitable rewards were distributed, and a variety of contributions were disposed of amongst the visitors, the proceeds being set apart for the erection of a central school, this was the first sale held in Calcutta for the benefit of the Ladies’ Society. The foundation stone of the Central School was laid on the 18th of May, 1826, on the eastern corner of Cornwallis Square, in the district of Simlah, being in the centre of the thickest, as well as the most respectable Hindoo population. A brass plate having the following inscription, was deposited with the usual ceremonies. CENTRAL SCHOOL FOR THE EDUCATION OF NATIVE FEMALES, FOUNDED BY A SOCIETY OF LADIES WHICH WAS ESTABLISHED ON MARCH

25, 1824.

PATRONESS THE RIGHT HON. LADY AMHERST.

GEORGE BALLAND, FSQ. Treasurer. MRS. HANNAH ELLERTON, Secretary. MRS. MARY ANN WILSON, Superintendent. 214

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This Work was greatly assisted by a liberal donation of sicca rupees 20,000 from RAJAH BOIDONATH ROY BAHADUR. The foundation stone was laid on the 18th May, 1826, in the seventh year of the reign of His Majesty King George IV. The Right Hon. WM. PITT, LORD AMHERST, Governor-General of India. C. K. ROBINSON, ESQ. Gratuitous Architect. The Venerable Archdeacon Corrie, whose memory is justly blessed in connexion with every work of Christian charity, offered prayer for the divine blessing upon the institution. The gift of Rajah Boidonath was an example of native munificence most thankfully welcomed, as an encouragement to the nation to embrace the occasion to lay aside their unhappy prejudice; for sometime he continued to give a kind countenance to the work, and Mrs. Wilson was admitted to visit the Rané, on the most friendly terms, instructing her in the English language. At a later period when the Central School was in full operation, the Rané expressed a wish to see it, and consented to meet several ladies on the occasion of her visit; she was extremely delighted, and made a most pleasing impression upon all who were present. Not long after, the Rajah withdrew almost entirely from public life, and although it is ascertained that the Rané maintains an unceasing regard for Mrs. Wilson, it has not been considered etiquette for her to receive any stranger as formerly. Collections in London, forwarded through the Church Missionary Society amounted to £500, and in Calcutta to 2000 rupees: Numerous other donations were received, giving a total sum for the building, of 45,000 rupees. The prosecution of the work has since depended entirely upon voluntary contributions. We return to the annual examinations of the children, as important to establish their readiness to embrace the benefit of education, and their ability will no longer be a matter of question, especially when it is remembered that there is a constant succession of children, and many other hindrances, which will appear in the further history of the work. In December 1825, the female children were examined in the Church Mission library, Mirzapore; specimens of needlework and writing were exhibited, which afforded very pleasing testimony of their improvement, and it was with peculiar pleasure that one little girl about three years old, was observed, when brought to Lady Amherst, to repeat correctly the Lord’s prayer in her own native language; others had committed to memory the commandments, and several could repeat correctly the whole of a little book on the Principles of the Christian Religion. Mrs. Wilson furnished the following observations on the course of the labors of the society.’ The children afford us, on the whole, much gratification, and make tolerable progress, and could they be placed under Christian teachers instead of heathens, no doubt they would be more regular in their attendance, and make 215

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corresponding improvement. I believe our female schools are doing much in a general way towards bringing us better acquainted with the Hindoos, and not only are the prejudices against teaching females giving way, but a very decided preference is now manifested in favour of the object. The parents of the children are chiefly poor, and always ignorant. Calling the other day at a school, I was delighted with two little sisters, one four the other five years old; they stood up as if to exhibit their attainments, and repeated several little hymns which they had committed to memory. On my remarking they were good children, and by coming to school every day would soon read well, the people observed, ‘and their parents are very wise, for they say if the girls do not come daily, we are to fetch them and beat them.’ I generally find the teachers very inattentive to their work, and have not more than two or three whose word I can believe. Notwithstanding all the checks that are employed, it seems next to impossible to keep them actively engaged among the children, during the hours they are in the school. Again, holidays and poojahs have a very bad effect upon the minds of the children; it frequently happens after their public feasts, that the children have either nearly forgotten all they had learned, or else feel restless and careless about their lessons; early marriages operate also as a sad hindrance to their improvement. The more respectable natives still continue to manifest great apathy concerning the education of their daughters; yet in spite of many, many discouragements, the work goes on far beyond what I first anticipated, several hundred children are brought together; their minds are usefully employed, and their habits begin to assume something of a more rational and pleasing appearance.’ In December 1826, an examination of the little girls took place at the Episcopal residence, the appearance of the scholars was increasingly satisfactory, a considerable proportion were of an age capable of benefitting by the instruction imparted, and of four hundred girls in daily attendance, about two hundred were examined,— some in the little work on Geography, others in the Gospels, and some in Watts’ Catechism, and in ‘Conversations between a mother and her daughter,’ a simple book written for their instruction, to which they are very partial. A poor blind girl exhibited considerable interest; she had from listening to the other children, got by heart many passages from the Gospels, and repeated very correctly the greater part of the second chapter of St. Luke. Among the specimens of needlework there was a sampler very well executed by a native Christian woman, and presented to Lady Hastings with the following words embodied: UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE MOST NOBLE HOUSE OF HASTINGS, WE POOR HINDOO FEMALES FIRST BEGAN TO ENJOY THE BLESSINGS OF EDUCATION, FEBRUARY,

1822.

On the 1st of April, 1828, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson took possession of the Central School, and commenced with fifty-eight girls. Mrs. Wilson had succeeded in 216

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drawing the nineteen small schools into three large divisions, and in these divisions the number of children was two hundred and fifty. It was on the 17th Dec. 1828, that the first examination was held at the Central School. There was one class of teachers or monitors consisting of twenty-five native females; young as they were, they were all either widows or forsaken by their husbands: they had been educated in the schools of the Society, and when they became destitute, they had recourse to Mrs. Wilson, who was thus able to employ them in the service of their country women. In Dec. 1829, Miss Ward, who had joined Mrs. Wilson from England, to assist in her labors, and was left in charge of the Central School, (during Mrs. Wilson’s temporary absence to the upper provinces, seeking, with the benefit of her health, the further extension of operations,) gives the following report. The daily attendance of the girls is from one hundred and fifty to two hundred, divided into twenty classes, four of which comprising fifty girls, are reading the Acts, St. Matthew’s gospel, and Pearce’s geography, they also write upon slates from dictation; six other classes containing sixty girls, read the Bible History and other elementary books; the other ten classes spell on cards, and learn the alphabet. It was however remarked that, the usual interruptions to the labors continued in full force, and would not cease to exist while the parents remained in the same state of ignorance. Very recently on inquiry of a woman, accustomed to bring from sixteen to twenty children, to the school, why she had brought so few, she said six girls are to be betrothed today, and several others are gone to visit them.’ The eldest of these children is not more than ten, the two younger four or five. But some facts in connection with the children will be found interesting. More cases of death amongst the children were brought to the knowledge of the teachers, and the dying testimony of a little girl from the lower classes, who died of fever after fifteen days illness, was very encouraging. The account was given by her Hindoo mother, and she affirmed that the child had from the commencement of her illness daily asked to be taken to the Central School, telling her mother, she could remain with her no longer, as she must become a Christian, and the great God was calling her. Her mother reminded her of their idols, and asked whether she would not worship them. ‘No, they are false and useless,’ was the reply. The child fixed a day on which she was to be taken to the Central School; it was rather a distant one, but noted by the Hindoos, being the first of a Heathen festival. As the appointed day dawned however, her spirit took its flight: she assured her mother to the last, she knew she was going to the great God. The poor mother seemed to take no comfort for some little time, but in hovering around the school, coming in when it was open, walking among the classes, weeping and exclaiming, ‘Ah! here are all the other children indeed! but mine is not!’ A girl about eight years old lost her mother, and was left without any known relative: she expressed a wish to live with Mrs. Wilson, and to become a Christian, but the moment this was known, the old woman in whose house the mother died, declared she had owed her thirty rupees for rent, which if Mrs. Wilson would pay, the child should be given up to her. At the same time however she went to 217

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a magistrate, and by claiming the child as a relative, got the little girl made over to her, telling the neighbours that when the child married, she should get more money than would pay the debt. A very poor Heathen woman (a widow) with one daughter six years old, had been staying a short time in the family of a native Christian, belonging to the Institution; through one of its members, she became employed in the school, and begged Mrs. Wilson to take her child. She was told that, those children were preferred who had no parents, but that she might bring her girl, and Mrs. Wilson would see what could be done. Instead however of coming, she sent her child very scantily clothed and dirty, bidding her remain with Mrs. Wilson, and say ‘that her mother had thrown her away.’ The woman did not make her appearance again till the child was baptized, which she heard of with evident pleasure, though she said nothing, but about two months afterwards presented herself to be instructed, and received for baptism. In 1833, there appeared to be little to record that was new respecting the children; seven girls from the gospel classes requested to be appointed monitors, by which arrangement they earn a small sum of money, and are retained longer under instruction, at an age best qualified for benefiting by it. One of these teachers being ill, requested Mrs. Wilson to go and see her at her own house. On being questioned as to her knowledge of the Scriptures and prayer, she assured her kind instructress before many witnesses that she both read the Scriptures in private, and prayed to God through Jesus Christ, and that in doing so, she found great comfort. Several young Brahmins were present who paid great attention to her answers, and one of these youths produced an English Bible, inquiring the meaning of several passages. About the same time a girl of ten years of age, called several times at the house of the Catechist belonging to the Central School, expressing her anxious wish to become a Christian, and begging to be allowed to take food with the family, by which act she would lose caste, when she thought her father would be willing to give her up. The Catechist at length brought her to Mrs. Wilson, who considering her extreme youth, and fearing some domestic quarrel had made her wish to leave her home, desired the Catechist to take her to her father’s house, and inquire of him, whether he were willing to let the child attend school again? The child was very averse to returning. The father appeared civil and said he would reason with her, and if after three days he could not persuade her to change her mind, he would give her up to Mrs. Wilson. It appeared that the girl’s wish to become a Christian was known to all the neighbours. Hearing nothing further on the subject, at the end of a week, the Catechist was sent to inquire the father’s determination. He then appeared very firm, and said ‘he should by no means give up his daughter to Mrs. Wilson, and that he had not only forbidden her to attend school again, but to prevent the possibility of her doing so, he had removed her to the house of a married sister, who would watch her closely;’ thus all trace of this promising girl was lost.

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19 EXTRACT FROM REPORT ON PUBLIC INSTRUCTION IN THE NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES, 1850–51, IN J. A. RICHEY, SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART 2 1840–1859 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1922), 257–258

Extracts from the Report on Public Instruction in the NorthWestern Provinces, 1850–51. (a) The Sanskrit Department at the Benares Sanskrit College. In addition to the regular branches of Sanskrit learning studied in the College the Logic of Europe continues to be taught by the Nyaya Pundit and European Astronomy, Mathematics and Mechanics by Pundit Bapu Deva. A tolerable telescope having been lately procured the Pundit has been able to show to his pupils some of the celestial phenomena which they knew previously by description. In particular, he had a good opportunity of exhibiting the planet Venus when reduced to a very slender crescent. It was interesting to observe the surprise depicted on the faces of a large party of Astronomers congregated on the lofty roof of the Pundit’s house in the city as each one saw the star developed into its crescent form. The moon happened fortunately to be close by presenting an exact repetition of the form upon a large scale, and leaving no room for doubt as to the real cause of the phenomenon. Bapu Deva’s pupils appeared in high spirits on the occasion, and quite delighted at being able to give this ocular demonstration of the correctness of their College class books to their less enlightened and not a little astonished friends among the Astrologers of the city. We shall, I hope, be able to employ the telescope frequently to demonstrate the accuracy of the Astronomical predictions of Europe, by referring to the table of the relative positions of Jupiter’s moons, and letting the doubter select, a month or two in advance, the arrangement of any given evening to be tested. I am sorry that the want of appliances prevents at 219

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present our bringing the Experimental divisions of Physical Science more prominently forward in the Sanskrit Department. We shall have more conveniences for this in the new College building.”

(b) The Anglo-Sanskrit Class at the Benares Sanskrit College. The progress of the English class of Pundits is to me most gratifying. With their aid, I now hope to effect much that I could not have hoped to effect without it. Aided by these men, I shall now listen with simple disregard to the discouraging reiterations of those, who insist that the truths of Science and of Philosophy cannot be communicated to the Hindoos, without the use of words which would go to barbarize their languages—as if a language richer in roots than any European one and far more finely organized, could not supply as many available terms as if Sanskrit needed instruction at the hand of its grand-child, the Greek. To render intelligible our plan of operations for the next Session, I may remark that my first attempt to open a communication with the frequenters of the Sanskrit College, was made in the shape of a set of lectures on the Circle of the Sciences. The Sanskrit version of these lectures was carefully revised by Pundit Bapu Deva, whose rendering of man of the scientific terms was most felicitous. I learn that these renderings have been incorporated into the English and Sanskrit Dictionary now preparing by Professor Monier Williams, for the use of the College at Haileybury. In those portions of the lectures which related to Sciences which this Pundit had not studied, we were less successful than in the others.

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20 J.E.D. BETHUNE, ‘MINUTE, 23RD JANUARY 1851’, IN J. A. RICHEY, SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART 2 1840–1859 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1922), 28–31

Minute by the Hon’ble Mr. Bethune, dated 23rd January 1851 The question which has given rise to such animated discussion at Bombay and nearly led to the resignation by Mr. Erskine Perry of the office of President of the Board of Education there, is not exactly the same by which the friends of Native Education in this Presidency were divided in Mr. Macaulay’s time. The struggle here was whether the provisions of the Act of Parliament of 1813 for “the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in “India” could be most effectually fulfilled by instruction given through the medium of English, or of Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic; all being (with some exception in favour of Sanskrit) alike foreign to the language of the people where improvement was contemplated. The essence of the Bombay dispute appears on the face of it to be in the conflicting claims of English and the Vernacular dialects of that part of India; but there is also another important question behind that. I have never neglected any opportunity of inculcating the importance of inducing the students of our college to cultivate also their native language; but I have addressed these exhortations to our English scholars: firmly believing that it is through them only that we can expect to produce any marked improvement in the customs and ways of thinking of the inhabitants of India. I am therefore alarmed at the doctrine openly professed by Mr. Willoughby and concurred in by the Government of Bombay that “he ranges with those who think that our object should be to impart a moderate degree of useful knowledge to the masses throughout the Presidency, rather than that our efforts should be exclusively directed to train up a few first rate scholars in the schools at Bombay.” In another passage duly 221

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following this in the same minute, he seems to consider the main purpose of our schools to be the training up of “good Manchetdas, good Moonsiffs, good village accountants, good police pestells and a host of other minor native functionaries” “for the public service.” I entirely dissent from this doctrine. I believe it to be equally opposed to the sentiments entertained by the most enlightened among our predecessors who have devoted their zeal and talent to the cause of native education, and to the instructions of the Hon’ble Court. I see the reasonable grounds that there are for hoping that, by the hold which the English ideas are gradually gaining of our most advanced students, we may, in the course of another generation at farthest, have the powerful support of a numerous native party in urging us on to attack and alleviate some of the most prominent social evils of the country. The great curse of caste, infant marriages, polygamy and the enforced celibacy of widows, with all the crimes and abomination that follow in their train, are mainly supported by superstitions which melt away, like snow before fire, when brought into direct contact with European knowledge and this work is being gradually but surely done in our Bengal schools and colleges. A native convert of high respectability and consideration said to me soon after my arrival in India “the best Missionary institutions are the Government schools,” and every thing I have since seen confirm the profound truth of that observation, in which I am now glad to learn from the papers sent to me, Mr. Mount Stuart Elphinstone concurred. It would be unreasonable to desire greater progress than is now being silently effected by the system adopted on this side of India, through our four colleges at Calcutta, Hoogly, Kishnaghur and Dacca with their affiliated schools. I hoped and believed that a similar system had been introduced in the Bombay Presidency by the establishment of central English schools, aiming at a high standard of proficiency, not only in Bombay, but also in some of the principal towns of the presidency, such as Poona, Surat, Ahmedabad and others. It seems that there are only eight English schools subordinate to the Board of Education throughout the Bombay Presidency, and the inference to be drawn from the Government’s letter to the Board dated 24th April 1850 is that they would look with more satisfaction on a diminution than an increase of that number. The printed report does not shew in detail in the manner adopted by us, what is the course of study followed in these schools, but from various incidental remarks contained in the several minutes of those who have taken part in the discussion, I should be led to infer that their standard is very far inferior to ours. Colonel Jervis says (Rep. p. 83) “experience shews that natives who speak English well, and can even write it with tolerable accuracy, cannot read and understand the commonest English work:” and Mr. Willoughby states (Rep. p. 138), that, in answer to his question, “of the number in the English schools (1855) how many, by estimate, can interchange ideas with, and understand their European masters and teachers?” he obtained from an authentic source the following answer “there are in the college classes 56, and in the upper schools 164, total 220, who can understand, with more or less facility, what is said to them in English. The number of those “who can speak English with any fluency is very much smaller.” It is scarcely necessary 222

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to say what a very different state of cultivation of English this account discloses from that which we witness in Bengal where not only our advanced students read and speak English with as much fluency and correctness as Englishmen themselves, but where a continually increasing class of educated natives employ the English language by choice in their communications with each other, even in matters relating to their own families and most confidential affairs. It is also a significant fact that the fee in the Elphinstone Institution is only one rupee monthly, and in the other English schools eight annas, whereas in the Hindu College of Calcutta the monthly fee is eight rupees and two rupees are paid even in the lower classes of the collegiate branch school, which is now entirely independent of Government support, furnishing in the last year nearly 10,00 rupees from fees alone paid by 440 students. The conclusion that I draw from this comparison is that, instead of agreeing with Mr. Willoughby and the Bombay Government (Rep. p. 135) “that too much attention is at present paid to English instruction,” I am inclined to suspect that much more attention ought to be paid to it, in order that there may be any reasonable expectation of deriving from it any practical advantage, and I deprecate the intimation conveyed in the Government letter to the Board (5 April 1848), that, for the future, they must not devote even so much attention to the study of English as they have done, but must treat it as of secondary moment to the communication of knowledge in the Vernacular. I think the indication of such opinion held by the Bombay government of sufficient moment to make it desirable that the Government of India should intimate to the Hon’ble Court that they have drawn its attention, and express its own opinion on a question, the right solution of which is fraught with consequences of such immeasurable importance to the welfare of the whole Indian empire. J. E. D. BETHUNE. The 23rd January 1851.

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21 J.E.D. BETHUNE’S SPEECHES AT KISHNAGHAR, IN GENERAL REPORT ON PUBLIC I NSTRUCTION IN THE LOWER PROVINCES OF THE BENGAL PRESIDENCY (CALCUTTA: F. CARBERRY, MILITARY ORPHAN PRESS, 1852), III–XV

“This is my third visit to Kishnaghur: and I hope that all among you, who were assembled to meet me here on the last occasion Address at Kishnaghur. of my coming among you, are able to give a good account of the past year; and are conscious not only of having stored your minds and memories with new words and ideas, but of having improved your reasoning faculties, and strengthened your powers of independent thought. For it is a truth of which you will become more and more convinced as you advance in years that, valuable as the information is which you imbibe in your scholastic lessons, the great end to be sought in any scheme of education, worthy of the name, is to enable you to think for yourselves in your future life; and, by the habits of patient study which you acquire here to gain a facility and the right temper of mind for meeting and overcoming difficulties which you may find in your future career, when you have to apply your sharpened intellect to the right apprehension of the world in which you will have to live, and your own moral and social duties with respect to the position you may occupy in it. “And it is by this test, of their fitness for leading to such results, that the importance of the studies should be tried which are adopted in our Colleges. “I have been led into the train of thought which has given rise to these remarks by observing that Omesh Chunder Dutt of this College, who was the first senior scholar of last year, would have re-appeared in the same place, if he had not fallen so far behind his successful competitor, Sreenath Doss, of the Hindu College, in mathematics and natural philosophy. It has been frequently said of late, either ignorantly or maliciously, but at all events very untruly, that for some years an undue preference has been given in our Colleges to the study of science, in discouragement of literature; and this has been attributed to my personal predilection 224

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for that branch of knowledge. It may not therefore be useless to explain my views of the function which such studies are meant to fulfil: because the remarks to which I allude, though crude and shallow, have been extensively circulated; and, if left wholly unanswered, may give rise to misapprehension among the real friends of Education in this country. “The study of foreign languages has ever been a favourite pursuit in almost every celebrated place of Education in modern Europe: and those who are opposed to the particular system of our English schools and colleges, have found ample ground for attack in the inordinate time which, according to their views, is wasted in mastering the difficulties of two dead languages, Greek and Latin. The moderate defenders of that system, admitting that some changes in the plan of study might be desirable, have grounded their defence, not only on the fact that the study of these powerful and elegant languages purifies and elevates the taste and genius of those who become familiar with the masterpieces of poetry, oratory, and historical narrative which are enshrined in their literature, but also on this, that the difficulty of mastering the artificial subtlety of their construction affords an excellent mental discipline for preparing a young student for the acquisition of any other kind of knowledge which he desires. But they do not supply all that is needed. Assuredly it would not be to them that we should resort for a code of ethics or of moral and political philosophy: for the minds which should be filled only with the precepts of the master-spirits of antiquity, on such topics, would possess at least as much of error and positive falsehood as of truth, however harmonious and concisely elegant might be its embodied expression. The founders of these institutions, therefore, feeling that the human intellect is never more nobly or more profitably employed than in the search after truth, would have thought their schools very imperfectly endowed, if they had not made some special provision for training the minds of their pupils for entering upon that study. In the colleges of this country, the principle is the same, though the details are different. The English language here supplies the place which is filled in England by the Latin and Greek: inferior for the purposes of education in some respects, far superior to them in others. I do not consider it an overstrained assertion that those languages do not surpass English in majesty and power of diction more than English is superior to them in the real instrinsic value of the knowledge that is to be gained by studying the works of the best classical authors in each. The want, therefore, to which I have referred is not quite so great for the Hindu student of English, as for the English student of Greek; yet still even here something more is needed: some branch of study in which the attention of the learner shall be fixed exclusively or almost exclusively on the truth taught, and little or not at all on the form of the vehicle through which it is conveyed. “There are three subjects of science which have been prominently put forward for accomplishing this purpose, each of which is preferably cultivated at one of three famous British universities. Without meaning to allege of any of them that its attention is exclusively devoted to its favourite science, I may say that the 225

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study of logic has met with most favour at Oxford, metaphysics at Edinburgh, and physics, by which term I include mathematics and natural philosophy, at my own university of Cambridge. “The advocates of logic, by which is meant the science of pure reasoning, without reference to the subjects of its propositions, seem to consider that they have established their claim to preference when they find that their assertion cannot be denied, that no legitimate reasoning can be carried on, which in any way sins against the rules which it formally teaches. “There is, however, another question behind, whether most of those rules are not elaborate and complicated expressions for elementary and almost intuitive truths. I frankly own that, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of some eminent persons, I have never been able to bring myself to attach much value to the study of logic as a formal science, at least as usually taught: and I believe that all in it that is of any practical use is learned with much greater facility by every mathematical student, who has advanced as far as to understand the doctrine of simple algebraical equation: and that, as soon as he has mastered the tolerably obvious principle that he must be careful not to change the meaning of his symbols in the course of his investigations, he is as safe from being misled by the usual fallacies that are put forward in treatises on logic as exercises in the art, as if he had been regularly trained to discourse of an illicit process of the minor, or an undistributed middle term. Dr. Whateley’s treatise, is, I believe, considered a text book on this subject, and at the end of it, he has given more than an hundred examples of propositions which may be taken fairly enough as tests of the value of all the precepts that precede them. I took the trouble to read them through lately, and I own that I should be grievously disappointed if any of those whom I see in the front benches before me would find much difficulty in distinguishing on the first perusal which are true and which are false inferences among them; though probably there are few, if any, who can use the received logical phraseology in describing the process by which he arrived at his conviction in each case. “Ménage probably meant nothing more than a lively joke when he defined logic to be ‘the art of talking unintelligibly of things of which we are ignorant’; for to take this sarcasm seriously would imply a complete misapprehension of the objects of the science: nevertheless, it is not denied by any who are acquainted with the history of philosophy in Europe, it is indeed admitted by the friends of formal logic, though of course they seek to avoid the inference drawn from their admission, that men never reasoned worse than when the science of formal reasoning was in greatest vogue and reputation. I have been informed that the Hindus possess a Sanscrit form of the same science, which does not appear to have been more fortunate as an improver of the reasoning faculty in man, than its European brother. “The study of metaphysics, which term I do not now use in the extensive sense given to it by some German philosophers, according to whom it seems to include almost every possible branch of human knowledge, but with the more confined and yet still sufficiently wide meaning of the study of the laws of human perceptions, 226

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thoughts and feelings, is most interesting and important: but the vagueness of it, still more than the difficulty, renders it in my opinion ill-suited for the purpose which I now have in view. The real progress that has been made in it is very slight, and the primary truths, on which its conclusions must be made to rest, cannot be exhibited as it were experimentally and objectively by the teacher: he is forced to call on his pupils to exercise a process of self-examination, in order to understand and assent to his theory, which even highly cultivated minds find difficult to sustain long, and which presupposes a considerable amount of mental training in the minds of its recipients. There is also considerable danger, from the very nature of the ideas with which this science is conversant, that it should foster a tendency to dreamy barren speculation, which I believe to be a prevalent intellectual vice of the inhabitants of this country: the remoteness and indistinctness of its images do not supply that healthy corrective which is needed for a people whose philosophy has much in it everywhere which is cognate to their old cosmical theory, explaining the stability of the earth by supposing it supported by an elephant, the elephant upon a tortoise, and the tortoise they know not upon what; and so considering the difficulty disposed of when removed two steps farther out of the reach of sense and observation. “Now mathematics and natural philosophy, when rightly taught are exactly and excellently well calculated to supply this defect. “Through the hard, dry, incontestable truths of elementary arithmetic and geometry, founded upon our simplest conceptions of number and form, we are able to give good practical lessons in the art, if not in the science of logic: and this application of logical reasoning I believe to furnish a far better mental discipline than the formal science itself affords; and that there is an incalculable advantage in forcing the young student to perceive that there is such a thing as abstract truth, not in any way dependent upon the opinions and authority of his instructors, but derived from the very nature of the subject of his thoughts; and in accustoming him, when he has seized such truth, to follow it boldly and steadily into its remote consequences, as unassailable as the principles from which they are derived. “Accordingly, a favorite reproach against mathematical studies by those who, it is charitable to think, have little knowledge of their nature, scope, and tendency, is that they make men too logical; that the habit of strict reasoning to which they become accustomed unfits them for balancing probabilities, and weighing one kind of evidence against another, expertness in which makes a shrewd practical man of business. I apprehend this to be an utter mistake; and the probability of its being so seems in some degree supported by the great number of distinguished mathematicians who have become acute lawyers, skilful physicians, and eminent statesmen. Besides, it is a complete misapprehension to suppose that the study of physics deals solely with certainties. Even in the purely mathematical branch we have the elegant and abstruse theory of probabilities, specially concerned with those propositions only of which we have only obscure and imperfect evidence; and it may be questioned whether the wit of man ever produced anything more admirably subtle than Laplace’s great work on this subject. But not to dwell on 227

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this, such objections surely overlook the application of mathematics to natural philosophy, in the pursuit of which many of the most valuable faculties of the mind are called into action. Industry and acuteness of observation for collecting phenomena; judgment in discriminating between appearances resembling but not wholly identical with each other; invention for the discovery of crucial experiments to test the merits of conflicting theories, and decide between them: while the powerful resources of mathematical calculation stand ever ready to the hand of the adept to solve mere difficulties of intricate combination, like some mighty engine, by which a man can wield at will masses of matter far beyond his unassisted strength to lift; and extricate from among the data of observation and experiment the hidden consequences which lie too deeply buried in involved circumstances for undisciplined reason to discover. “To select one among the many beautiful applications of mathematical knowledge,—what science can be thought more magnificent, or better suited to raise the intellect than Astronomy? “To those who have not painfully followed the successive steps of demonstration, each resting on what went before, and patiently built up from the most elementary propositions of Euclid to the sublime speculations of Newton and his followers, does it not appear little short of miraculous, that human sagacity, unaided by divine revelation, should have soared so far beyond the world in which mankind are placed as to have detected the laws which link the whole visible creation into one mighty and stupendous system? that the astronomer can predict with unerring skill the paths and motions of those points of starry light,—points of light to the ignorant, but rolling worlds to him,—so far removed from our sphere that many are even invisible to our sense, but for the assistance of wonderful instruments, which also are of his invention? that he shows them wandering in their all but boundless career, obedient to the same universal law, which governs the motions of a ripe fruit or withered leaf falling at our feet? “Let me bring this more vividly before you by illustration. Go with me in imagination where I was a few years ago, in one of the busiest thoroughfares of London, the busiest city of the world, into the study of a philosopher, the late Francis Bailey, a stock-broker by profession, but by taste and genius a mathematician and an astronomer. How is he occupied? Great part of his room is filled with the framework of machinery, the object of which is to make massive globes of metal alternately approach and recede from a light pendulous body, hanging from the roof by a slight silken fibre. This he is carefully watching, and is diligently noting its vibrations through a small telescope from another corner of the room. Can you guess what he is about? These are the scales with which he is weighing the mass of “this great globe which we inherit,” and which this apparatus will enable him to ascertain with greater accuracy than you could arrive at, if you were to undertake to determine the weight of this building in which we are now assembled. “Not let me go to the most recent and most admirable triumph of mathematical skill. Look on this young student in Paris! He is unprovided with any telescope, or any mechanical apparatus but the pen in his hand. Many volumes, however, lie 228

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open before him, in which he finds recorded the differences between the observed and computed places of the planets; and, carefully transcribing these, he appears buried in the most intricate calculations. What result has he obtained that makes his check flush with truimph! Let me attempt shortly to explain it to you. He has just completed an examination of the irregularities of the most distant planet then known to belong to our system. This remote body, be it observed by the way, was itself discovered to be a planet only some sixty or seventy years ago; and, since it is so distant from the sun that its year is about as long as 84 of our’s, it has not yet completed one revolution round the sun, since its real nature was discovered by the late Sir William Herschel. Yet, already, the path in which it ought to move according to the then state of our knowledge was so well known, by the application of the same general laws on which innumerable previous verifications had led astronomers to place implicit reliance, that its deviations from the course they had by anticipation marked out for it, began to fill them with uneasiness. How are these irregularities to be accounted for? “It cannot surely be, that, having reached the confines of our solar system, the laws which we acknowledge are faintly and imperfectly followed there, as might be the case in some distant province of a mighty empire? No: the laws which the Great Architect of the Universe has impressed on His creation are not as those of earthly potentates; they are felt and obeyed throughout His works. There must then be some cause of which we have been hitherto ignorant, and of which consequently in our calculations we have taken no account. We know that every visible planet exercises some influence on the motion of this distant one; for all these we have already made allowance. Can there be another planet beyond all which have been yet discovered, but the existence of which makes itself apparent to us by these unexplained irregularities of that which we have seen and measured? If so, where is it?—what is its size?—which way is it travelling?—and with what velocity? “These are the questions this young French student has proposed to himself: and he feels that his science will enable him to find an answer to them. By a singular coincidence, the same, daring exploit is tried almost at the same time, with some priority indeed, by another young man at Cambridge, Mr. Adams, each ignorant of what the other is doing, and each succeeding by his own independent processes of investigation. But let us return to Paris. I will not endeavor to explain to you the steps of the calculation: you will probably be satisfied by my assuring you that they are most intricate and laborious. But the work is done: the results are beginning to appear, and at last M. Leverrier is able to say, with the confidence of consummate skill, ‘Yes: I have found it! There is such a planet. Human eye has never yet looked on it, with the true appreciation of its nature: but it has been walking its appointed round from immemorial time: here is an account of its mass; this is the direction in which it is moving; this is the point where, at this moment, if you will look for it, you will find it.’ All this the young astronomer, who himself has not yet seen this new world, except upon the paper of his elaborate calculations, dares to announce to a friend at Berlin, better furnished than himself with the means of 229

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making the actual observation. A new celestial atlas is then in course of publication in Prussia; and, by a happy chance, the sheet has just issued from the press which exhibits that portion of the skies in which Leverrier has placed his unseen planet. This is eagerly compared with an old map; and, almost exactly in the spot fixed on by the young Frenchman, a star is marked, not noted in the older map. The telescope is instantly turned to it and the discovery is complete; the planet is there! Surely, it is not without reason that one of our poets has said— “An undevout astronomer is mad!” and, when he uttered that sentiment I believe that his mind was not more filled with the thought of the Almighty power by which these worlds, scattered through infinite space, are bound to follow the laws which their creator has imposed on them, than with the reflection that the same God who made this mighty universe, made also the intellect of man; instilled into him the wish, and endowed him with the power, to look with intelligent admiration on his Maker’s works. I know not how others may feel; but, for my part, I can hardly conceive any other study better calculated to lead to serious and improving thought. What am I, in the midst of these marvellous works, which I am permitted to observe and partly to understand? Why am I here? What is the fittest and best use I can make of those powers, of which I feel myself to be possessed, while my own consciousness, not less than my helplessness and insignificance among these majestic wonders, the mere contemplation of which almost appals and overpowers my imagination, is sufficient proof that I have them not of my own will; and, if so, that I shall probably be made responsible for their being rightly employed to him who gave them. If these evidences are worth anything it is only to mathematicians that they can appear in their full force. Others indeed may receive and repeat at second hand whatever they please to believe of them, but the conviction which belongs to the perception of demonstrated truth must be wanting. “It is in this spirit I would have the study of mathematics pursued in our Colleges. First, I should wish to see them cultivated, in their abstract form, as far as is necessary to furnish rules and exercises in the art of reasoning: for which purpose I may say, by the way, that on the whole, I consider objective geometrical processes, as far as they can go, much more useful than dealing with the more compendious and more powerful formulas of algebraical analysis; and secondly, I would have the mathematical knowledge, so acquired, brought to bear upon the physical sciences, which together make up a knowledge of the material world by which we are surrounded: and the more complete is the view we thus obtain of its wondrous and consistent structure, of the obvious adaptation of means to an end, and of the excellent perfection of the means employed, the more constrained shall we become to feel and utter not only the old maxim that knowledge is power, but also that knowledge is humility; that knowledge is awe; that knowledge is adoration! 230

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“I miss among you the intelligent countenance of one who last year was counted among the brightest ornaments of your College, and whose premature death, in the blossom of his youth, has excited the regret alike of his teachers and his class-fellows, poor Ombica Churn Ghose! I saw his eye lighten last year, when from this chair I exhorted you to exert yourselves to maintain the honor of your College, and assuredly I reckoned that he would not have failed to do his part. He has been taken from us; it has pleased God that the promise of his early years, should not ripen to bear its mature fruits; but though he is dead, his name and memory live among us. I noticed with melancholy pleasure the monumental tablet your kindly recollection of your late companion has placed on the walls of your College, and by which, while seeking to record his merits, you have also done honor to yourselves. Look on it not merely as a memorial of departed worth, but as a pledge that you will endeavour to take him for an example; that you, who have known how to appreciate his intellectual pre-eminence and his moral excellence, will seek to emulate his industry, his docility, his virtuous disposition; when you feel tempted to act in any way of which you know that he would have been ashamed, pause and reflect, that his eulogium be not turned to your condemnation. “And you, Omesh Chunder Dutt, whom I have so often had occasion to mark out for praise, be assured of this that not even in that moment, which you probably thought the proudest in your life, when from this place I hailed you as the first scholar of your year throughout Bengal, not even then did I look on you with so kindly a feeling or so hearty a desire to serve you, as when I heard of your affectionate kindness to your dying friend and competitor; when I learned how carefully you had tended him in his malignant disorder, undeterred by the terror of contagion, which is often found powerful enough to break through stronger natural ties than those which bound you to your departed friend. I doubt not that your own approving conscience has already amply rewarded you: for it is in the plan of the All-wise contriver of the world that every sincere act of kindness to a fellow creature carries with it its own peculiar inimitable joy: but it is also my pleasing right to tell you that your behaviour in this matter has not been unobserved, and that by it you have raised yourself higher in the good opinion of those, whose good opinion I believe you are desirous of deserving. May such examples multiply among us! May we have many such students as Ombica Churn Ghose! May your conduct one toward another be so marked with brotherly love, that it shall cease to call for particular notice or special commendation. Let these be the fruits of knowledge, and who shall then venture to say that a blessing is not upon the tree.” After Babu Ram Lochun Ghose, the Principal Sudder Ameen of Kishnaghur, had addressed the assembly in Bengali, Mr. Bethune resumed— “I am extremely sorry that I have not been able to understand one word of what my friend Ram Lochun Ghose has been saying; the more so, because I am informed that he has been earnestly and eloquently addressing you on a subject 231

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in which you are probably aware that I feel deeply interested, and which is of the highest importance to the happiness of every one present. “The education of your females is the next great step to be taken in the regeneration of the Hindu character, and it is a consolatory reflection that while many social reforms of which you stand greatly in need are thought to be opposed to the doctrines of your religion and customs, it is generally admitted by every learned native who has examined the question that there is no such obstacle in the way of your consenting to receive this great blessing. The practical difficulty which still in a great degree obstructs the progress of the good work is the seclusion in which you have for a long time been accustomed to think it necessary to confine your women. “If I were addressing an assembly of Europeans only, I should content myself with observing that this custom is unreasonable: among Hindus I know that whatever arguments are brought forward to show that it is so will derive additional claims on your attention from the fact that it is an unreasonable novelty. Your old records seem to point out that it was not the ancient usage of your race: a common theory derives its origin from the customs of your Mahomedan conquerors, when it is likely enough that, partly from a courtly affection of imitating what you found in vogue among those who were in the possession of power and consideration, partly from a real dread of the excesses in which a licentious and unscrupulous soldiery might indulge, you adopted these new habits which are now received as national among you. Both reasons have passed away, and with them should disappear their consequences, if it were not so much more easy to adopt pernicious prejudices than to get rid of them again. But the work is begun: it cannot stop now: the race of educated men whom we are training up will not much longer bear to have imposed on them mere slavish objects of sensual desire, but will seek, in the mothers of their children, for rational, well-educated, well-informed companions, the intelligent partners of their joys and sorrows, their truest friends and most faithful advisers. Your modern ethical writers teach that the nature of women is so depraved that it is only by material restraints that they are kept from seeking out and following evil: our wiser belief is that in all the elements of virtue the female character is far superior to the male; and that whatever there is of evil common to all human nature, is best combatted, not by the vain obstacles of bolts and bars, but by laying the foundation of a virtuous life in the early inculcation of sound morality, and by teaching women to respect themselves by showing that by us also they are held in honour. Were it only for selfish considerations, you ought to educate your women. Now mark me! I do not rely on these. For her own sake and in her own right, I claim for woman her proper place in the scale of created beings. God has given her an intellect, a heart and feelings like your own, and these were not given in vain. You think your neighbours the Chinese a barbarous people, because they cripple the feet of their women. How is it that you dare to cripple their minds? But also, for your own sakes you should do it, and for the sake of your children. I am not yet so old as to have forgotten 232

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the time when I sat on the school benches. I too can recollect some youthful triumphs, and the remembrance is still strong within me how incomplete they seemed until I had her sympathy and approval, to please whom was the strongest inducement I then knew for exertion. “Human nature is the same throughout the world, and we may confidently rely on what it teaches us. The history of every time shows the important influence that the female sex is capable of exercising, for good or for evil, on the destinies of a nation; and those stand highest in the annals of civilization in which they have been held in the highest honour, and the greatest pains taken to secure that the weight of their power should be found exerting itself on the right side. And of this you cannot be sure if you will not train them to wisdom and virtue, as you would train those who are to be influenced by them. “The work is now begun, it will not stop; it is like a rock which may have rested long time motionless on the summit of a mountain: but, if once set in motion, though casual obstacles may obstruct its path, may determine its course in this direction or in that, it yet gathers increased force with each succeeding interval of time, and hastens irresistibly onward to its final destination. I may not live to see this desirable goal attained: but, judging from all I have witnessed of the deep feeling which is beginning to prevail on this matter, it is my firm belief that another generation will not pass away before it will be universally conceded, that whoever neglects the education of his daughter disgraces himself, and is guilty of a gross offence against her, against his own happiness, and the happiness of society.” “MY YOUNG FRIENDS,—If you have derived any satisfaction from meeting me here again on this occasion, I must tell you frankly that it is Speech at Dacca. a pleasure which you have fairly and honorably earned for yourselves: for there were so many obstacles in the way of my leaving Calcutta this year, that I had nearly abandoned the intention I had at first entertained of revisiting Dacca. It was, however, strongly represented to me that you had derived great encouragement from the visit of the deputation last year; and it was feared that you might be equally disheartened if it were not repeated. “Being sensible that I had all but promised that I would return, and feeling that you had done all in your power to deserve whatever mark of my approbation it was in my power to give you, I determined to disregard all considerations of personal inconvenience; and, even at this late season of the year, to come and tell you with my own lips how well pleased I have been with your exertions during the past session. I congratulate you heartily on the result of the examination, and I assure you that what I predicted two years ago is already fully come to pass, and that the students of the Hindu College now keep an anxious eye on your progress, and are conscious that they must exert themselves, if they wish to keep their place in front of you. “At the same time you must not be too much elated by the appearance which the printed list shows. Owing to a combination of circumstances, an unusual number of the best students quitted the Hindu College this year before the examination, 233

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leaving only two in the first class. Of these, as you are aware, Sreenath Doss heads the comparative list, and has gained for his College and for himself the honour of giving his name to the year 1850, Sreenath Doss’ year: and it is due to the other, Kally Prosunno Dutt, that it should be known here, as I explained lately in the Town Hall of Calcutta, that he was for a long time absent through illness from the classes. Feeling that he was not able to do himself justice, he came privately to me shortly before the examination, and begged to know if he might be allowed to absent himself altogether from it.

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APPENDIX A. SCHOLARSHIP QUESTIONS. SENIOR SCHOLARSHIPS, 1844. L I T E R AT U R E . PROSE. Paraphrase, explain, and illustrate by examples, as fully as you can, the two following aphorisms of Lord Bacon: “Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since ignorance of the cause, frustrates the effect. For nature is only subdued by submission; and that which in contemplative philosophy corresponds with the cause, in practice becomes the rule.” “Man, whilst operating, can only move natural bodies to and from one another; nature, internally, performs the rest.” The value of a complete answer is 20. POETRY. Far from the sun and summer gale, In thy green lap1 was Nature’s darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon stray’d, To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretched forth his little arms and smil’d. 235

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“This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.” Nor second He, that rode sublime Upon the seraph wings of ecstasy, The secrets of th’ abyss to spy, He passed the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night. Behold, where Dryden’s less presumptuous car Wide o’er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of etherial race, With necks in thunder cloth’d and long-resounding pace. Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed fancy, hov’ring o’er, Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! ’tis heard no more ——. Oh! Lyre divine, what daring spirit Wakes thee now? Though he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion That the Theban eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the muses ray, With orient hues unborrow’d of the sun: Yet shall he mount and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far—but far above the great. The value of a complete answer to each question is marked at the end of each. 1. Who is it that the Poet describes as Nature’s darling? Shew how the speech which Nature makes to him applies to the person in question . . . . . . . . 6 2. “Nor second he.” Explain the meaning of these words, and shew who is the person intended, by applying to him in detail the description which follows ...........................................................9

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3. What are the “two coursers of etherial race,” and how are they connected with Dryden? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. “Hark his hands the lyre explore.” To what does this allude?. . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5. “What daring spirit wakes thee now?” Who is here meant? Who is the Theban eagle, and why is the person in question compared to him? and generally how does the description apply to him? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 VIVA VOCE—LITERATURE QUESTIONS. But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon’s height Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll? Visions of glory spare my aching sight! Ye unborn ages crowd not on my soul! No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail, All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia’s issue, hail! Girt with many a Baron bold Sublime their starry fronts they rear; And gorgeous dames and statesmen old In bearded majesty appear. In the midst a form divine! Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line; Her lion port, her awe commanding face, Attemper’d sweet to virgin grace. What strings symphonious tremble in the air, What strains of vocal transport round her play! Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear! They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. Bright rapture calls, and, soaring as she sings, Waves in the eye of heaven her many color’d wings. The verse ardorn again Fierce war and faithful love, And truth severe by fairy fiction dressed. In buskin’d measures move Pale grief, and pleasing pain, With horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. A voice, as of the cherub choir, Gales from blooming Eden bear; And distant warblings lessen on my ear, That lost in long futurity expire. 1. What are the solemn scenes and visions of glory of which the Poet speaks? ...............................................................2

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2. Why does lie cease to bewail within, and who are the genuine kings he bids hail, and why does he call them Britannia’s issue? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. Who is the form divine? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4. What is meant by the strings symphonious and the strains of vocal transport? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

ANSWERS DELIVERED BY THE SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATES OF THE HINDOO COLLEGE AT THE RECENT EXAMINATION. LITERATURE. PROSE. I. It is an old and wise saying, that “knowledge is power.” For without the aid of knowledge, we can scarcely accomplish anything. Hence Bacon observes that knowledge and human power are synonymous. A doctor may possess an incredible degree of force, but, at the same time, he may not have the power of curing a patient. That is, he may not be acquainted with the cause of the patient’s disease. So it appears from this, that power is the same as an acquaintance with causes and their effects; which, in other words, is nothing more but knowledge. Again; it is said, that it was by the power of the Sicilian philosopher, that the Roman galleys were burnt. What was this power? It was not the muscular strength of Archimedes, but his acquaintance with the cause and effects of burning mirrors; which means (as already said) his knowledge. Bacon next goes on to say, “for nature is only subdued by submission,” that is, the more we submit to nature, the more we subdue her. For the more we submit to her, the more are we acquainted with her secrets, and can therefore more easily overcome her. “And that which in contemplative philosophy corresponds with the cause, in practice becomes the rule,” This means, that what we find by contemplation to agree with the cause, is in practice reduced into the rule. II. Man while he operates, can do nothing more but move natural bodies to and from one another. That is, he either brings them together or separates them. This is all the power he possesses. What happens after man has moved the natural bodies to one another, or from one another, is performed by the internal operations of nature. As for instance: a man may bring together the two colors, yellow and blue, but it is beyond his ability to produce the green by their mixture. That must be done entirely by the internal operation of nature. In the same way, a person may apply fire to a magazine of gunpowder; but the explosion which follows is entirely owing to the secret workings of nature. Man has, by experience and observation, acquired the knowledge of the facts, that yellow mixed with blue will produce green, and that gunpowder will burst on fire being set to it. But the effects in either case must be performed by nature. Thus, in all cases wherein man is operating, he 238

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does nothing more but move natural bodies to one another or from one another; the effect of which is internally performed by nature. POETRY. I. The poet in describing the Progress of Poesy from Mount Parnassus, has already travelled through Greece and Italy, and then arrived in England, whose poets he is reciting. By “Nature’s darling” is meant the sweet bard of Avon, the immortal Shakspeare. The pencil he received from his mother, he has used with the greatest success. For he has described the beauties of nature with great force and precision. Again; it is said, that Nature presented her darling child with “two golden keys.” About the first she says “This can unlock the gates of joy;” and regarding the second, she says, “Of honor that and thrilling fears; Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.”

The first therefore appears to be comedy, and the latter tragedy: in which both branches of the drama, Shakspeare has excelled all the modern, and I believe almost all the ancient dramatists. For none has so successfully lifted the curtain of the human heart as “sweetest Shakspeare, fancy’s airy child.” II. “Nor second He.” This means that the person whom the poet is about to describe, is not inferior to him of whom he has just before spoken. This “He” is, assuredly, the Author of Paradise Lost. It was the enterprising genius of Milton that dared to soar beyond the limits of time and place, to fly into the regions of eternity, and behold the dazzling glory of the Creator. The descriptions he has given of the angels, of the sapphire pavement, of the Heavens, and, particularly, of the ineffable glory which encircles the throne of the Almighty, are apt to make a person believe that the Author was an eye-witness of them. In one part of the Paradise Lost, Milton has said, that the beams which emanate from the throne of God are so bright and luminous, that the angels cannot gaze at him, but cover their eyes with their wings. Hence Gray has drawn this beautiful inference that, as Milton had gazed upon the luminous throne of the Omnipotent, his eyes were dazzled, and he thereby became blind, which was a fact. III. Not answered. IV. “Hark his hands the lyre explore.” This alludes to the celebrated Ode of Dryden on Alexander’s Feast, He therein introduces Timotheus, who entertained Alexander with his charming songs, and who had the skill to “bid alternate passions rise and fall.” This Ode of Dryden’s is one of the best musical pieces extant in the English language. The power he has evinced in completing it is admirable; and hence the remark of Pope, What Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

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English poets, has yet been obliged to yield the superiority to the latter. This celebrated Ode of Dryden yet stands unrivalled in its kind; and it is not astonishing that Gray should draw to it his reader’s attention. V. “What daring spirit wakes thee now?” By this daring spirit the Author means himself. It is customary for Authors to speak rather low of themselves. Gray here calls himself daring, because he, a person of not very high abilities, dares to wake the lyre of Dryden. Pope somewhere, in the like manner, says regarding himself, Oh! may one spark of your celestial fire, The last, the meanest of your sons inspire!

This is nothing more but an attempt of the poets to bring themselves out artfully; as is here evident, in the case of Gray. The Theban eagle is Pindar; and as he was a lyric poet, and as Gray is writing an Ode, so he compares himself with the Theban bard. WOMES CHUNDER DUTT. ESSAY On the infinity of the natural productions of the Universe, and the effects resulting from science as applied to those productions. When we survey Nature, either in her animal, mineral, or vegetable kingdom, we find her abounding in productions of every variety. They seem to be without an end, and their source appears inexhaustible. True it is, that much of the productions of Nature has been discovered by man: but what innumerable number of them yet remain unexplored! Man, from the very commencement of his existence, has been discovering the productions of Nature, and though he has been engaged in that pursuit for about six thousand years, yet he cannot boast that he has found them out all. There yet remain, concealed, to him in the bowels of the earth, the bosom of the deep, the hearts of forests, the recesses of mountains, and the regions above, numberless productions of Nature which futurity shall acquaint him with. The experience of the past enables us to draw the inference that man, the more he searches for these productions, the more of them he shall find. He may, and, no doubt, he will, for ever go on with his discoveries; but still at no time he shall have the pride to exclaim, that nothing of the productions of Nature is unknown to him. These circumstances, when contemplated with due attention, carry our minds from “nature up to Nature’s God”—to that Being of infinite wisdom, the Creator of these endless productions; and make us look upon him with awe and respect. A question now arises, that with what intention did God create these endless productions of Nature? Surely, nothing was formed in vain. Every thing in Nature

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has its peculiar use; the luxuriant vine, as well as the downy grass—the stately elephant, as well as the meanest reptile—the precious gold, as well as the basest metal—the brightest luminary, as well as the faintest star, possess some qualities or other. Man has been endowed by God with reason; and it is his duty to discover the qualities of the various productions of Nature, and make them, if possible, subservient to his own purposes. And so he has converted various productions to his service. In fact, from the very beginning of the creation, man had to make use of the natural productions; and gradually as he has gained greater experience, and acquired more knowledge, he has been more benefited by means of their application to those productions. A savage cannot turn the productions of Nature so much to his advantage, as a man who knows how to apply science to them. The houses that we live in, the clothes that we put on, the food that we eat, and, in short, all those things that we enjoy, are nothing more but the productions of Nature, made to serve us by the application of our knowledge. Whatever we do, we do with the natural productions; or, in other words, the sphere of our operations is entirely confined within the productions of nature, and cannot be extended beyond them. By the application of science to the productions of Nature, man has performed wonderful things. By applying science to the heavenly bodies, that is by the aid of Astronomy, what glorious achievements have been made! The boundless expanse of the ocean, which was before thought impossible to steer through, has been circumnavigated. Astronomy has given an impulse to navigation, and thereby been the promoter of commerce. Natural Philosophy furnishes us with several examples, as to the effects of the application of science to the productions of Nature. We therein find, that man has even made the elements subservient to his desires. The water, the air, the fire, are all ready to obey his commands. He can make steam perform the most incredible things, he can produce fire when he chooses, and magnify objects at his will. And how are all these things brought about, but by the application of science to the natural productions. We may here as well borrow an example from the science of medicine. Poison is one of the most offensive substances in nature. A single grain of it is sufficient to kill a man. But how wonderful have been its effects by the application of science to it! A most dangerous thing has been transformed into a medicine of great efficacy and utility. That the very smell of which would deprive a man of his life, now saves him from the hand of death. Such are the effects of the application of science to the natural productions. From the examples given above, it will appear, that the benefits conferred on man by means of that application of science are manifold, and that we can by making a proper application of science to the productions of Nature turn those productions (which are infinite in their number) to our own advantage. To conclude, therefore: in short, the application of science to the productions of Nature renders men more

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comfortable, enables them to lead an easier life, and has a tendency to enlarge the sphere of their information. WOMES CHUNDER DUTT. HISTORY. 1. In my humble opinion the battles of Marathon, Arbela, Zama Actium, Constantinople, and Waterloo had the greatest influence over the destiny of the world. At Marathon the cause of liberty obtained a complete triumph over despotism; the bravery of a few thousand Greek patriots, commanded by Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristides, completely baffled all the attempts of Darius, the Persian Emperor, to subjugate Greece; and this battle alone raised Greece to the highest pitch of glory. The battle of Arbela decided the fate of Persia: the great Emathian Conqueror defeated Darius, the Persian King, although the latter had about seven hundred thousand soldiers, while the former had only sixty thousand men. The victory which the Romans, under Scipio, obtained over the Carthagenians at Zama, virtually annihilated the power of Carthage, and Rome became the first power in the world, and Hannibal, the greatest General of antiquity, was completely defeated. The seafight off Actium decided the ********************************************

APPENDIX C. REVISED AND AMENDED RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE MEDICAL COLLEGE. STIPENDIARY STUDENTS. SECTION I.

1. In conformity with the provisions of General Order dated 28th January 1835, the number of students admitted on the foundation shall be limited to fifty, except in the cases provided for in Section 5, on Robertson Scholarships. 2. All such students shall receive a monthly stipend of Co.’s Rupees eight, during the period allowed for completing their studies, and obtaining the certificate of qualification. 3. Stipendiary students voluntarily leaving the College before presenting themselves for final examination, will be required to refund the total amount received by them, from the date of their registration up to the period of their resignation. 4. The stipend shall be drawn in a monthly contingent bill by the College Treasurer, and paid regularly to the student; subject only to the stoppages specified 242

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in Section 4, regarding fines for irregularity of attendance and absence without leave. 5. No one shall be admitted as a stipendiary student under the full age of sixteen years, or above that of twenty—on any account whatever. 6. Every applicant for admission shall bring a letter of recommendation from some respectable person, certifying that he is of good character and worthy of admission to the privilege of studying medicine. 7. At the termination of each annual examination for the certificate of qualification, a general examination shall be held in the College, of all candidates who may be deemed eligible to compete for the existing vacancies in the stipendiary class. The Secretary to the College shall post up in the Theatre, and otherwise make known to all whom it may concern, through the medium of the Government, Bengali and Urdu Gazettes, a notice of such examination, at least one fortnight prior to its occurrence. 8. The candidates must present themselves before the Secretary to the College three days prior to the day of examination, with a view to their being identified as the persons really desiring admission. 9. All candidates will be expected to possess a thorough knowledge of English, so as to be able to read, write, and enunciate it with fluency and facility. They must be able to analyze a passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Robertson’s Histories, or works of a similar classical standard—be acquainted with the elements of Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Natural Philosophy,—and bring certificates from the Head Masters of the schools in which they have studied, expressly stating that they possess the information required, and are capable of undergoing the ordeal proposed. The preference, in selection, will always be given to those who possess the greatest amount of information in the abovementioned branches of education. 10. On his admission to the College, each student shall be furnished with a ticket by the Secretary, specifying his name and date of appointment. 11. Every student shall at the termination of each session, undergo an examination by the College Council, with a view to ascertain the progress made during the past year, and in case he should have been idle and appear to the examiners unlikely to turn out well, that his name may be struck out of the list of stipendiary students, and his place filled up at the ensuing examination of candidates for admission. 12. Every student shall on all occasions conduct himself with propriety and decorum; attend to and obey all orders which may be issued by the Council of Education and College Council; be regular in his attendance at roll call, and those lectures which he will be directed to attend. Any infraction of the above rules will be reported to the Council of Education for such punishment as that body may deem necessary, and in cases of contumacy or persistance in malpractices, for expulsion from the College. 13. The period during which stipends shall be allowed to students, to enable them to go through the course of study required to obtain the certificate of qualification, is fixed at five years, after which time the name of any student who shall have failed to pass shall be struck off the rolls. 243

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14. No student shall be permitted to present himself for final examination, until he shall have completed five sessions of study in the College,—when lie will be required to produce certificates of attendance upon all the courses of lecture, specified in Section 8; and likewise of having, during that period, performed the duties of clinical clerk and dresser, for not less than eighteen months, collectively. 15. Every student at the termination of each course of lectures, shall be furnished with a certificate, signed by the Professor, countersigned by the Secretary to the College, numbered and registered, specifying his attendance upon the course, according to the following form:

MEDICAL COLLEGE OF BENGAL. Entered

No.

of

18

I hereby Certify that of attended my Lectures on 18

delivered at this College, from 18

to

comprising

lectures Professor. Secretary.

16. No student shall be allowed to pass his final examination, without producing these certificates for the information of the examiners and assessors. 17. The annual examinations shall commence on the 15th of March, and continue until the 15th of April of each year; the general examinations being conducted by the College Council, on days alternating with those of the final examination, which will be conducted by the examiners and assessors appointed by Government. 18. The vacation shall commence on the 15th of April of each year, and continue until the 15th of June, the whole of the College, with the exception of the Hospital and Out-door Dispensary, being closed during that period. 19. Every student on leaving the College and passing the required examination, shall be presented with a diploma, engrossed on parchment, in English, Persian, and Bengalee, of which the following is the form and wording in English. It shall be signed by the Examiners, Assessors, Professors of the College, President of the Council of Education, and Secretary to Government.

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MEDICAL COLLEGE OF BENGAL. INSTITUTED IN THE YEAR OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA,

1835, CORRESPONDING TO THE BENGAL ERA,

1242. We, the undersigned, having fully and carefully examined —————— of —————— , in March 184—, do hereby certify that he possesses an intimate knowledge of Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Materia Medica, Practical Pharmacy and Botany; and that he is sufficiently versed in the principles and practice of Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery, to qualify him for holding public medical employment, or for commencing independent practice. We have further received satisfactory proofs of his diligence and good conduct, during his education at the Medical College of Bengal. 20. Every student to whom the above diploma shall have been granted, shall be styled “GRADUATE IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY OF THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF BENGAL.”

FREE STUDENTS. SECTION II.

1. The number of students wishing to obtain a complete medical education at their own expense, shall be unlimited. 2. No person shall be considered eligible to study as a free student, until he has been subjected to the examination prescribed in para. 8, Section 1, for foundation pupils, and his capacity for studying with any prospect of ultimate success, fully ascertained by the examiners. 3. The free students shall be subject to the same rules and regulations as the other pupils of the College, in all matters of discipline. 4. With regard to regularity of attendance—as this cannot be enforced by means of fines, any free students who may be absent without sufficient cause, more than twenty-four times during each session of ten months, shall be deprived of the privilege of contending for the prizes and other rewards bestowed at the end of the session. 5. Diplomas and certificates of qualification bestowed on the free students, shall be the same as those granted to Stipendiary pupils, at the annual examination. 245

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6. The leave of absence on private affairs, or unavoidable detention from College by sickness and other causes of a like nature, shall be subject to the rules laid down in Section 3.

ATTENDANCE. SECTION III.

1. With a view to ascertain the presence of the students, each Professor shall, at every lecture, call over the roll of those bound to attend his class, in accordance with the regulations contained in Section 8, of these rules. These rolls shall be forwarded to the Secretary’s office at the end of every month, for the purpose of being recorded, and submitted to the Council of Education. 2. Any student found to be absent, from whatever cause, shall be fined by the College Council, the sums specified in the next section of rules, ordered by Government and the Council of Education, to be adopted in all their Institutions. 3. Two gold circlets of merit having been granted annually, shall be bestowed upon the two students who, in addition to other qualifications, shall have been most regular in their attendance, as ascertained by the monthly list of attendance, compiled from the Professors’ roll call. 4. In the case of any student living at a great distance from the College, who may be unable to present himself at the exact time for calling the roll, or if he can account satisfactorily for his detention beyond the regulated time, on application and explanation to the Secretary, his name shall be entered as present, on a list kept for the purpose, which list shall be consulted in making out the monthly register of attendance. 5. The monthly register shall be prepared and given to the Secretary to the Council of Education, on the last Saturday of each month, at the meeting held in the Medical College. It shall be accompanied by a column of remarks, accounting for or explaining any thing requiring notice in the register. 6. All students reporting themselves sick, if living within reasonable distance, shall be entitled to attendance from one of the Sub-assistant Surgeons attached to the College, who will be furnished with a palanquin to enable him to perform this duty, and who shall report the nature of the disease, its duration, &c. to the Secretary. No student’s name is to be returned in the sick report, unless accompanied by such certificate. This duty to be performed in rotation for the space of one week, by the Sub-assistant Surgeons employed as teachers in the College, or in charge of the Out-door Dispensary and Female Hospital, 7. In the event of a Hindoo student requiring leave of absence for any of the observances enjoined by his religion, such leave is only to be granted on the presentation of a certificate from the Native Demonstrator, stating its necessity, and the period which should be allowed—subject however, to the deduction of pay, specified in the next section. 246

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8. The native holidays to be granted to the students are to be the same as those allowed in the Hindoo College and Mudrussa respectively. The Christian holidays to be given, are Good Friday, Christmas-day, New-year’s day and Her Majesty’s Birth-day, The College shall be closed every Sunday, except for hospital attendance.

RULES For leave of absence and travelling and acting allowances to Principals, Professors, Masters, &c. of the Government Colleges and Schools, passed by the Deputy Governor of Bengal, on the 28th February, 1844. SECTION IV.

1. The Council of Education may grant leave of absence without deduction from salary, during the authorized vacations, and it shall not be necessary to report the same to Government. 2. In addition to the above, the Council of Education will on good cause being shewn for the indulgence, grant leave of absence on private affairs for not more than three months, but no salary will be drawn for the period of such absence. 3. The Council of Education will grant leave of absence on medical certificate, for one year to any place within the limits of the East India Company’s Charter, one half of the absentee’s salary being deducted for the first six months, and the whole far the remainder. 4. No leave will be granted under Rule 3, until after the lapse of three years from the expiry of previous leave under that Rule. 5. If the period of leave granted under Rule 3 be less than one year, the Council of Education will extend the same to the full period allowed by the rule, on the production of a medical certificate, shewing the necessity for such extension. 6. Absence without leave, will subject the absentee to loss of appointment. 7. No person appointed to a situation in the Education Department, shall draw the salary of his appointment for any period prior to the date of his joining it. 8. A person holding a situation at one station in the Education Department, appointed to one of equal or higher value at another, will draw the salary of his former situation from the date on which he may relinquish it, until the date of his joining his new appointment, provided he does not exceed the time allowed for joining, prescribed by the following rule, in which case no salary will be passed to him for such period in excess. 9. The time allowed for joining an appointment is to be calculated at the rate of ten miles a day, (Sundays excepted) together with a week to prepare for the journey. 10. A person officiating temporarily in any situation, on the occurrence of a vacancy or during the absence of the real incumbent will, if he hold no other appointment, draw one-half the salary of such situation; and if he hold any other 247

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situation of less value, he will receive half the fixed salary of his own appointment, together with half the fixed salary of that in which he officiates. 11. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th of these rules shall be considered applicable to the holders of Senior and Junior Scholarships, and to the stipendiary students of the Medical College.

ROBERTSON SCHOLARSHIPS. SECTION V.

1. A suitable residence having been provided at the College for the Secretary, to enable him to discharge such of his duties as can only be performed by his presence on the spot, he shall be required to reside on the premises. 2. In order to carry out fully the views entertained and recommended on the subject of up-country students, residences within the College compound shall be found for those pupils who may be sent from the Upper Provinces, to prosecute their studies at the Medical College. During this period and the probationary time they may be required to attend at the Hindoo or any other College or School deemed advisable, they shall be placed under the immediate charge and control of the Secretary to the Medical College. 3. The payment of their stipends or scholarships, the regulation of their personal comforts, their keeping proper hours, and leaving the College at such times as may be requisite for the prosecution of their studies elsewhere; together with other minor matters of a like nature, shall be entrusted to the same officer, subject to the orders of the Council of Education. 4. No boy shall on any account be admitted as a student of the College, under the age of 16, or above that of 20 years of age; and any candidates for admission from the Upper Provinces, who may not be found qualified at the expiration of such probationary period, as will bring them beyond the prescribed age, shall be rejected altogether, and returned to the places from which they came. Likewise their Scholarship allowances shall cease, at and from such time as they may be found disqualified for admission to the Medical College. 5. The stipends of all students who may obtain Robertson Scholarships, with a view to study the medical profession in Calcutta, should be fixed at ten rupees per month, tenable for four years; in addition to which, they shall receive the usual College allowance, when admitted as stipendiary students, viz. eight Rupees per mensem. 6. They shall be subject to the same fines and penalties for absence and nonattendance at Lecture, as are enforced in the cases of all the other stipendiary students of the College, according to the provisions of Section 4. 7. With a view to ascertain the respective attainments in general literature and English, of the various candidates in the different Colleges of the N. W. Provinces, they shall be examined by the authorities of their own College, according to the standard fixed in para. 8, Section 1st, of these Regulations, and the result reported 248

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for the decision of the Council of Education, with a descriptive roll of the age, caste, parentage, general character, and attainments of the several candidates. 8. The probationary period of study in Calcutta, of those who may be selected by the Council of Education, shall not be extended beyond two years. If within that time they be found duly qualified, they shall be admitted to the College, as vacancies may occur, or at the expiration of the above period, whether or not there be any vacancy. In such event they shall be permitted to draw their original stipends of 10 Rs. per mensem for the full period of four years from its first grant, but if found disqualified at the end of the two years, they shall be struck off the list of candidates, and their stipends cease from that date. 9. All students shall be sent down within six months of their election and if possible in charge of some competent person who shall take care of them, until they are placed under that of the Secretary to the Medical College.

CEYLON STUDENTS. SECTION VI.

1. The students from Ceylon shall reside in a building designed for the purpose, situated within the College compound, and be amenable to the general discipline of the Institution. 2. They shall on no account, without special leave, be absent from the College after evening gun-fire, when their presence shall be ascertained by a roll to be called by the Apothecary or Staff Sergeant. 3. They shall be formed into a mess, to which every Ceylon student shall belong, and which shall be superintended, and occasionally visited, by the Secretary to the Institution. 4. Their mess accounts, servants’ wages, &c., shall be paid from the Secretary’s Office, and not on any account be permitted to exceed the Government allowance. 5. The students shall at all times appear properly dressed at meals and lecture, be quiet and orderly in their demeanour, and obey all orders which they may receive from the College Council, and Council of Education. 6. Their attendance at roll call and on lectures, their performance of the duties of clinical clerk and dresser, with all other college duties, shall be subject to the same rules and regulations, as for other students. 7. No friends of the pupils shall be allowed within the College Compound after 9 p. m., nor shall noise of any description be permitted at any time, which is improper and likely to disturb the patients in the Hospital, end other persons residing within the College Compound. 8. Any visitors found guilty of creating disturbances shall at once be expelled from the compound and not admitted again, and any pupil convicted of introducing persons of bad character and conduct, shall be reported to the Council of Education for such punishment as may be deemed deserved, for a practice which is so prejudicial to good order and discipline. 249

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9. No person shall be allowed to sit about the door of the house, or on the roads of the compound. 10. No parties of any kind shall be allowed, without special permission being obtained, and the names and residences of all the guests being furnished to the Secretary, as well as the names of the persons inviting them, as a guarantee for their propriety of conduct, and to ensure their punishment in case of infringement of the rules of the College. 11. The Secretary to the College is armed with full power to enforce these regulations—and the House Surgeon and Staff Sergeant are ordered to report to him any breach of the rules, and at once to carry into effect any instructions he may find it necessary to issue in consequence. 12. Unless prevented by sickness, or hospital duties, they shall all attend divine service, at least once every Sunday; and in every other respect they shall be on the same footing as the free and stipendiary students of the College.

MILITARY CLASS. SECTION VII.

I. The Military Class attached to the Medical College shall consist of one hundred students, on the pay of five rupees per month. II. In all other respects the school shall be constituted in accordance with the provisions detailed in General Orders by the Right Honorable the President in Council, dated Fort William, 12th August, 1839.—Government having resolved in the General Department to sanction the formation of a Secondary School in connection with the Medical College of Calcutta, for the instruction of Native Doctors for the military and civil branches of the Service, the following rules relating to admission to the school and to the terms of service which have been established by the Honorable the President in Council, are published for general information, and will take effect from the 1st of October 1839: 1. The school will be thrown open for the admission of any persons desirous of acquiring medical knowledge, as well as for the instruction of those who enter the Institution, under the engagements and terms of service hereinafter specified. 2. To the first of these classes of persons the subjoined rules do not apply, it being understood that such persons resort to the Institution, in order to qualify themselves for eventually undertaking private practice in the medical profession. 3. The qualifications required of these students at the time of admission are, that they shall be able to read and write the Hindoostanee language in the Devanagree or Persian character, their capability being certified by any Interpreter to a native regiment, and further ascertained by examination before the examiners of the College of Fort William: on receipt of the reports of the examiners, the Council of the Medical College will select such as possess the certificates, restricting admission to the number of students above specified. 250

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4. Hindoos and Mahomedans are equally admissible when duly qualified, on the sole condition that they be of respectable character; where qualifications are equal, a preference will be shewn to the sons or near relatives of native officers, and other respectable persons in the service of Government: candidates from the province of Assam and Arracan will be specially considered. 5. The students are to be regularly enlisted as soldiers, and to be subject to the articles of war for the government of the native army. 6. Students are admissible into the Institution at from 16 to 20 years of age; and upon their admission they are to enter into an engagement to serve the Government as Native Doctors, as vacancies may occur for a period of not less than seven years, from the time of their leaving the Institution in that capacity, unless prevented serving that period by physical inability, proved before a Medical Committee, and certified accordingly. After a service of seven years they may demand their discharge in time of peace. 7. From the date of admission into the Institution the students will receive diet money at the public charge, at the rate of (5) five Co.’s Rupees each pcr mensem, to be continued to them during the period of their abode at the Institution, and to be drawn in monthly abstract by the Secretary to the Medical College. 8. It will at all times be in the power of the Council of the Medical College to discharge any individual student, on being satisfied that from dullness, idleness, negligence or misconduct, he is not likely to profit by the instruction given at the Institution, or to become properly qualified for the exercise of the duties for which he is designed. 9. The students will be required before they obtain admission into the service as Native Doctors, to pass an examination before the Professors of the Medical College; upon whose report of their qualification for the public service, made through the College Council to the Medical Board, the students will be appointed to the situation of Native Doctors on the occurrence of vacancies, in the same manner as Native Doctors have hitherto been appointed. 10. The pay of Native Doctors on appointment to the service is fixed at (20) twenty Co.’s Rupees a month, in garrison or at a civil station, and (25) twentyfive Co.’s Rupees a month in the field; of which sums (5) five Rupees are to be considered as batta, and deducted when on leave of absence from corps or stations. 11. Although the engagement of Native Doctors to serve in that capacity does not extend beyond seven years, yet in the event of such individual continuing to serve, his allowances will after seven years be advanced to (25) twenty-five Co.’s Rupees in garrison or at a civil station, and (30) thirty Rupees in the field, provided the Medical Officer under whom such Native Doctor may be serving at the time, grant a certificate that the general character and professional conduct of the individual deserve this indulgence. The certificate to be countersigned by the Superintending Surgeon of the Division or Circle. 12. Pensions will be granted to Native Doctors at the following rates and under the conditions of service therein specified. A Native Doctor who from wounds or 251

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injuries received on service shall become no longer fit to serve, will be entitled at any period less than fifteen years to an invalid pension of twelve rupees per mensem; after fifteen years to one-half of his field pay if in the military, and of his garrison pay if in the civil branch of the service; after twenty-two years to the whole of his pay, provided that in every case the inability of a Native Doctor to serve is occasioned by wounds or injuries so received be duly certified by the usual Medical Committee for Invaliding. 13. A Native Doctor, if invalided under ordinary circumstances of inability to perform his duties, will be entitled at the expiration of fifteen years to a pensionary provision of ten rupees per month, and after twenty-two years to one-half of his field pay, agreeably to the branch of the service in which he is employed. 14. Native Doctors attached to Civil Stations are liable to serve with the Army when so directed in General Orders, and the same advantage in every respect will thereupon be extended to them when thus serving, as to Native Doctors attached to Corps. The foregoing rules are applicable only to those Native Doctors, who may be educated at the Secondary School of the Calcutta Medical College. III. The general management and supervision of the internal economy of the School shall be entrusted to the Staff Sergeant employed for the purpose, who shall call the roll at 9 A. M. and 9 P. M., daily inspect the quarters to see that they are kept in a proper state, and immediately report all irregularities, breaches of discipline or cases of illness to the Secretary, under whose immediate orders he is placed. To assist him in his duties, four of the senior and best conducted students shall be appointed Naicks, each to take charge of a division of the School and maintain order and discipline in it. IV. The period during which every student will be expected to qualify himself for the public service is four years, but if any should be previously found fit to be transferred to the subordinate Medical Department, it shall at all times be in the power of the College Council to recommend them for that purpose. V. Every student absent without leave shall be fined by the College Council a sum of two annas and six pie for each such absence, unless he can satisfactorily account for the same, and no student is to be reported sick unless he can produce a properly authenticated certificate of the same. VI. At the termination of every academic session, an examination of all the students in the Military Class shall be held by the College Council. Those who may be found to have been idle, inattentive, and to have made no progress, to be expelled, and the best student of each year’s standing to be rewarded with a small prize and a badge of merit. VII. The final examination for admission to the service shall be conducted by the College Council, in Hindustani, each Professor examining in his own department. The native teachers shall be present during such examinations, if necessary, to interpret in cases of difficulty or misapprehension.

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VIII. All qualified students shall be reported without delay to the Council of Education, and shall be immediately made over to the Medical Board, through the Secretary to Government in the Military Department, in accordance with the orders of Government upon the subject, in letter No. 309, dated 20th January, 1843, from the Officiating Secretary to the Government of India, Military Department, quoted in the margin for readier reference. IX. Every passed Native Doctor shall be furnished with a diploma according to the form sanctioned by the Council of Education, engrossed on parchment, written in three languages, English, Persian and Urdu, and sealed with the College seal, as follows: Para. 4. “The Hon’ble the President in Council, in order to ohviate all future occasions of misunderstanding in regard to the above class of men, considers it desirable whenever students of the College have been duly examined and found qualified as “Native Doctors, that they be reported by the Secretary, to the Military Department, through which they will be regularly admitted into the service in General Orders, and placed at the entire disposal of the Medical Board, for employment in the Military or Civil Department, as may be most urgently required.”

Note 1 The lap of Albion.

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It must not be forgotten either that we govern in India, not one homogeneous nation, but a large assemblage of very different nations. The Bengali race might, even in the highest stage of civilisation, desire to be governed by a Bengali rather than by a British prince. The same may be said of the Tamil, of the Mahratta, of the Hindi, of the Mogul, of the Seikh races. But if the Bengalis were as equal to the most advanced European nation as education can make them, there is not the shadow of a reason for supposing that would wish to take the chance of an imperial Seikh of Mogul government proving more disinterested and philanthropic than an imperial British government. We have no need to practise the maxim divide et impera, so much celebrated by those who cultivate the lower wisdom. The people of India are already divided into unsympathising castes, bands, and nations. Political wisdom, as well as moral duty, recommends us, by means of the highest British education, to unite them into one British empire. The class that we are creating, as we approach towards this great object,—the class imbued with European letters, from whom Lord Ellenborough apprehends so much danger,—will be for many generations wholly dependent upon us, much more so than any of the separate and antagonistic classes which we found already existing; and they will exceed all those other classes in their enlightened perception of their true position, still more than in the degree of dependence which characterises it. They know that, if we were voluntarily to retire from India, they would instantly be subjugated by fierce and unlettered warriors. And if we 254

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cannot create in them the feeling of imperial loyalty long before they have ceased to have the feeling that their sole security is in our support, great nation as we may be, and famous throughout the world for skill in self-government, we shall have proved ourselves essentially unfitted for the sublimer function of imperial dominion. This lettered class will be the genuine product of the Indo-British empire. They are only now beginning to exist, and we are in time to apply forethought to the purpose of making them what, as British patriots in the highest sense of the term, we should desire to see them. I have already said that, in imitating the examples of antiquity, we must do so critically, and not implicitly. Both Alexander the Great and the Romans seem to have considered complete assimilation of races as the ideal point of perfection to be aimed at. The difference between them was, that Alexander thought his Greeks might find something worthy of imitation in the Asiatic nations whom he had made their fellow-citizens; while the Romans, except in the case of Greece itself (the author of their own close, I had almost said the servile, imitation of the Greek authors by the Latin authors, and the multitude of words borrowed by them, combined with the IndoGermanic family likeness, have placed Latin literature in such a position of subordination as well as of affinity to Greek literature, that I venture to treat it, for my present purpose, as one portion of the Greek development. We have, then, before us the cases of ancient Greece and of modern Europe, and we observe that, in each, diversity in unity was the main characteristic. Every Æolic or Attic writer felt, every English or French writer feels, himself to be a member of two communities, a smaller and a larger. Hence a double emulation, an ambition to earn distinction for himself among his countrymen, and an ambition to earn distinction for his country among the kindred and rival nations. In both cases, the most conspicuous, and, indeed, most essential bond of unity was a common language. In the Greek literary world, not only did one language pervade the whole, but it was also the one organ, diversified slightly by its dialects, employed for the expression of thought and feeling. From this cause, among others, Greek literature, however transcendent its beauty, is far inferior in variety to that which it has helped to evoke from the nations whose collective name is Christendom. We find existing in our Indian empire nations speaking Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Singhalese; and these are, happily, not dialects, but separate, though cognate, languages, bearing to each other nearly the same relation as the languages of Christendom bear to each other. There is a large infusion of Sanskrit in them all at the present day, and European scholars at first supposed them to be all derived from that stock. But more accurate investigations have led to the opinion that only the northern languages of India are the offspring of Sanskrit, as the Romanesque languages of Europe are of Latin, while the numerous Sanskrit words which now enrich the vocabularies of Southern India, like the Latin words so abundant in the Teutonic speech of Europe, are mere additions made to pre-existing languages, by 255

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borrowing from that venerable source. Sir Erskine Perry, who has consulted the authorities, and upon whom I rely, sums up as follows: “As a general conclusion, therefore, we may say that the whole of India may be divided between two classes of language:—the language of the intruding Arians, or Sanskritoid, in the north; and the language of a civilised race in the south of India, represented by its most cultivated branch, Tamil; just as the greater and more civilised part of Europe may be divided between two distinct families of language, the Teutonic and the Romanesque.” Thus Sanskrit was to India before the Mahommedan conquest, in a great measure what Latin was to Europe before the two great intellectual movements,— the reformation of religion, and the revival of learning. But the system of Menou, pervading the whole of Hindoo life, confined the study of the sacred language to the sacred caste. And this is, no doubt, one of the essential causes which has checked the civilisation of the Hindoos. The Roman Catholic Church intrusted its sacred functions and taught its sacred language to every person whom it thought morally and intellectually competent to receive them, totally disregarding purity of blood and dignity of social position. In so acting, it probably sapped the foundations of its own exclusive dominion; but it deserves, for the large good which it intended, if not for the larger good of which it has been the unwilling instrument, the gratitude of those who have at heart the progress of their race, Menou and his Brahmans were perhaps wiser in their generation. But I must not suffer myself to be drawn into a tempting disquisition. My business, in this rapid sketch, is only to point out a remarkable difference between the masters of the general language in India and in Europe, while both exercised unmolested dominion. The Mahommedan conquest greatly deranged the Hindoo system in this, as in other respects. It introduced Arabic as its own sacred language, and Persian as its language of literature and business. By a large infusion of these languages into Hindi, it created Hindustani, which, as the most convenient medium of communication between the conquerors and their subjects, became, and is now, the most widely diffused of the living Indian languages. This was the state of things down to the year 1833; and I think that if the attention of Parliament had then been called to the subject, there is no doubt that English would have been fixed upon as the language through which the several nations belonging to our Anglo-Indian system should communicate with each other, should receive the knowledge of Europe, and should preserve as much unity as is compatible with the wholesome rivalry of nation with nation. For English is the language which, while it binds together the Indian races, will also bind them to Great Britain; and English contains also such master-pieces in the several kinds of composition, and such a fund of useful and ornamental knowledge, that the two rival languages, Sanskrit and Arabic, 256

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must have shown transcendent claims of some other kind, before Parliament could have been induced to give them the preference. Nor could Parliament have failed to perceive, if it had undertaken to decide the question in 1833, that to give the natives a complete English education was the surest way of putting them in real and practical possession of the privilege of eligibility to all offices in their own country, which it was conferring upon them by law in the 87th section of the Statute. The question was not decided, indeed was not considered, in Parliament; but happily there were men in India competent from their official position to decide it, and, from their sagacity and enlarged views, to decide it correctly. This was done eighteen years ago by Lord William Bentinck and Mr. Macaulay. In the early part of the year 1835, they made a radical change in the system which had been up to that time pursued by the Committee of Public Instruction, or Council of Education, as it was afterwards called. The revival of Sanskrit and Arabic learning had been the principal object of the committee before that epoch, though the number of members who disapproved of that plan had gradually become as great, I believe, or nearly so, as that of its adherents. The study of Sanskrit and that of Arabic are very fit objects to be pursued in India for certain special purposes. The study of Sanskrit, in particular, as a means of enriching the vernacular languages, and as a means of throwing light upon the movements of the human race before the commencement of history (though, in this latter inquiry, Benares and Calcutta will hardly emulate the fame of Bonn or of Paris), is, in my judgment, well deserving of encouragement. But it seems to me impossible that any impartial mind should prefer either of these languages to English, as the general basis of an imperial scheme of education for British India. Lord William Bentinck and Mr. Macaulay decided in favour of the English language; and the natives of India owe them everlasting gratitude for the decision. The following minute, for the publication of which I have received the authority of its distinguished author, may be considered as the immediate cause of the resolution of government which settled this great question. “As it seems to be the opinion of some of the gentlemen who compose the Committee of Public Instruction, that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British Parliament in 1813, and as, if that opinion be correct, a legislative act will be necessary to warrant a change, I have thought it right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adtruth, but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a board for wasting public money, for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank; for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology; for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an encumbrance and a blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that, when they have received it, they must either starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturally desirous to decline all

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share in the responsibility of a body which, unless it alters its whole mode of proceeding, I must consider not merely as useless, but as positively noxious. “T. B. MACAULAY. “February 2nd, 1835. “I give my entire concurrence to the sentiments expressed in this minute. “W. C. BENTINCK.”

It should be remembered, that Mr. Macaulay was considering Sanskrit literature in the minute just quoted only with reference to the very small advantage which the present inhabitants of India could derive from the study of it, as compared with the study of English literature, and not with reference to the evidence it affords of scientific and æsthetic power in the Sanskrit authors. Considering it in this latter point of view, I should say, judging from translations and descriptions, that its epics, dramas, and mathematical treatises establish beyond question that the writers, whose unborrowed and spontaneous products they are, belonged to a very highlygifted race. But that consideration does not in the least affect the conclusion at which Mr. Macaulay arrived, and which immediately afterwards assumed a practical shape in the following Resolution of Government, dated 7th of March, 1835. ‘‘The Governor-General of India in council has attentively considered the two letters from the secretary to the committee, dated the 21st and 22nd January last, and the papers referred to in them. ‘‘2nd. — His Lordship in council is of opinion that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science amongst the natives of India, and that all the funds appropriated for the purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone. “3rd. — But it is not the intention of his Lordship in council to abolish any college or school of native learning, while the native population shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the advantages which it affords; and his Lordship in council directs that all the existing professors and students at all the institutions under the superintendence of the committee shall continue to receive their stipends. But his Lordship in council decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto prevailed, of supporting the students during the period of their education. He conceives that the only effect of such a system can be, to give artificial encouragement to branches of learning which, in the natural course of things, would be superseded by more useful studies; and he directs that no stipend shall be given to any student who may hereafter enter at any of these institutions, and that when any professor of Oriental learning shall vacate his situation, the to be taken from the Arabic, as ours are taken from the Greek.” The claims of the Arabic, we see, are much inferior to those of the Sanskrit. All the tongues spoken in the Indian peninsula might be enriched from the latter source. Hindustani alone, or Urdoo, which is the most polished Hindustani, could derive any benefit from the former. Now Hindustani is no genuine Indian 258

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language, nor even a genuine member of the Indo-Germanic family. It is a hybrid dialect begotten by a Semitic intruder upon one of the daughters of the Indo-Germanic Sanskrit; and I am by no means sure that Hindi, which furnished the IndoGermanic element of Hindustani, is not better entitled than Hindustani itself to be taught as the vernacular language in the future University of Agra. I am not, however, competent to pronounce a decision upon this question, and I will assume, for the sake of argument, that the preference is to be given to Hindustani. I cannot think that Dr. Sprenger has shown any sufficient reason why Arabic should be taught for the purpose of supplying scientific terms to Hindustani, and thus making it diverge from all the other languages of the country in the very point in which uniformity, and not diversity, is the desirable thing. In the University of Calcutta (if my petition should be heard) there would be taught English and Bengali; in the University of Madras, English and Tamil; in the University of Bombay, English and Marathi; in the University of Colombo, English and Singhalese. Surely in the University of Agra English and Hindustani should be taught, unless much stronger arguments can be urged for substituting Arabic in the place of English than Dr. Sprenger has adduced. The case of the tyroid cartilage, selected, we may presume, as one of the strongest, appears to me a very trifling obstacle. Let a student at Agra pronounce the word tyroid as he may, his pronunciation of it will not differ more from ours, than our pronunciation of the multitudinous vocabulary which European science has borrowed from Greek, differs from that of our French, German, or Italian competitors, without any sensible detriment to the sciences, or the languages concerned. If it really is impossible to write English in Arabic characters, the legitimate consequence is that Arabic characters must be disused, and some other substituted. Hindustani is written by the Hindoos in Nagree characters, with which, I presume, there is no difficulty in writing English words. As to the distortion of Champagne into Simpkin, it is like the distortion of feuille morte and quelque chose into philomot and kickshaws, in our common English speech. Notwithstanding these ludicrous corruptions, we know very well how to naturalise French words with no more alteration than is necessary to make them consistent parts of English discourse. The concessions which Dr. Sprenger is obliged to make respecting the terminology of botany will probably be regarded as decisive of the whole question in the mind of any one who has not, like him, become enamoured of the beauties of Arabic through the profound and successful study of that difficult language. If any one should desire further information on this subject, I would recommend to him the perusal of Sir Charles Trevelyan’s work on the Education of the People of India. The book has probably contributed much to the triumph of correct principles; but the ardent zeal and untiring perseverance of the author, exerted when those principles had few advocates in India, must be reckoned among the most efficacious causes of the great change which I have been describing. The next great step towards a complete system of public instruction was the institution of scholarships, for which the natives of India are indebted to Lord 259

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Auckland, and Sir Edward Ryan, who succeeded Mr. Macaulay as President of the Committee. The resolution of March 1835, besides deciding the question between the English language on the one hand, and the Sanskrit and Arabic languages on the other, abolished (regard being had to existing interests) the system of stipends, which had previously been carried to a great extent in the colleges devoted to Oriental learning, and had been introduced into those in which the English language was the principal medium of instruction. The number of students receiving stipends in the year 1835 was 855; the amount received by them was 3119 rupees, that is to say, upwards of 300l., the School to which he belongs, does not consider competent to attain the requisite standard. “FRED. J. MOUAT, M. D., “Secretary to the Council of Education. “October, 1850.”

These two capital steps, then, had already been taken when I succeeded to the chair of the Council of Education. The English language had been established as the medium for the communication of knowledge to the natives of India, and the institution of scholarships had furnished inducement to the students to remain in our colleges up to the commencement of manhood, not in idleness like the former receivers of stipends, but with unabated efforts for continual improvement. I had done what I could to assist Mr. Macaulay and Sir Edward Ryan in carrying into effect their wise and beneficent measures; and from the time when I became President of the Council of Education till my departure from India, I went on steadily and zealously endeavouring, with the cordial support of Lord Hardinge, to bring to perfection the system bequeathed to me by them. My views, however, for the future of British India, gradually enlarged themselves; and the possibility opened itself to me of doing for the Indian nations what Rome did for her provinces, and, at the same time, of inviting and assisting the Indian nations to do for themselves what the independent Hellenic tribes, and the independent nations of Christendom, had done for themselves, without help or direction from any pervading and controlling authority. The Greeks composed, in their own vernacular language, from the very beginning, and never, indeed, composed in any thing else. The still unrivalled Homeric poems were the first fruits of their mental activity, and they attained a perfection which no other people has attained. The Universities of modern Europe neglected and despised the vernacular tongues of their several countries, which, in comparison with the polished languages of classical antiquity, seemed unworthy the consideration of learned men. A long period of darkness, even after learning came to be systematically encouraged by scholastic honours and scholastic emoluments, was the consequence partly of this, and partly of their inevitable devotion to inept and barren studies. For the people of Christendom in the middle ages did not know that grand secret of perpetual 260

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activity and perpetual progress, the systematic interrogation of nature; inculcated afterwards with such brilliant success by the spirit-stirring exhortations of Bacon, and the fruitful practice of Galileo. We can teach this secret to the students in our Indian colleges; and we can teach them to study English as Latin and Greek have been studied, since the revival of learning, in the Universities of Christendom, and at the same time to cultivate their own vernacular tongues as the Hellenic tribes cultivated theirs. As I reflected upon these things it seemed to me to be the clear duty of Great Britain to India to establish Universities, as many in number as the vernacular languages which may be found deserving of cultivation: Universities fostering the study of English as the vehicle of useful and ornamental knowledge, and as exhibiting models of composition in all kinds: Universities giving, each of them, the most ample encouragement to the improvement of some one vernacular tongue, and to the production in that tongue of compositions, not servilely copied from the English models, but bearing to the mind of each Indian people the same sort of relation as those models bear to the English mind: Universities teaching, through their subordinate colleges, all established truths, and the methods by which new truths may be discovered and established: Universities sending forth into the world young men far advanced in all the various branches of study, and who have received, as the reward of their proficiency, and as a certificate of it to the public, the authentic and conspicuous mark of a scholastic degree. By the establishment of such Universities, it seemed to be probable, almost certain, that we might call forth much more effectually than Rome could call forth, with its Romanising system, much more rapidly than Greece and Christendom, in the absence of fostering and directing authority, could develop for themselves, whatever there may be of moral and intellectual excellence, of aesthetic and scientific capacity, in the vast and various populations of our Indian empire. The mention of scientific capacity is not in any respect out of place (notwithstanding the rigorous unity of science) in connection with the encouragement of the peculiar and characteristic qualities inherent in different races of mankind; first, because an aesthetic element enters largely into works of science: secondly, because, although truth, when once discovered and proved, be one and the same for all races; and although we cannot adhere to both Ptolemy and Copernicus, or to the chemistry of phlogiston and the chemistry which has supplanted it, as we may adhere to both Shakspeare and Racine; yet the peculiar qualities of the several races of mankind, as well as the diversities of the soil, climate, and country they dwell in, are of great account in the discovery and establishment of truths not hitherto known and accepted. I am almost afraid that the grandeur of the prospect thus opened may induce Parliament to suppose that it cannot be realised without an expenditure too great to be contemplated with reference to the financial position of India. But it will appear upon examination that this is not so. I freely admit that I wish to see a large addition made to the sum now devoted to public instruction in India. But the establishment of Universities does not necessarily involve any such addition. 261

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The University of Calcutta, as proposed by the Council of Education while I was its President, did not necessarily involve any new expense. The same instruction would be given, by the same professors and masters, in the same buildings, after the establishment of such a University, as now. I acknowledge, however, that this University of Calcutta was, in my own view, only the beginning of a much larger project, requiring for its completion the establishment of a University at Agra, at Madras, at Bombay, and at Colombo. It was not possible for me to leave Ceylon out of consideration in this project, although it is not under the government of the East India Company; for Ceylon is the only seat of the Singhalese race, and its northern parts are inhabited by a large, intelligent, and thriving Tamil population, for whom a Tamil branch of the Colombo University might be a better provision than the University of Madras. I have no reason to suppose that the Colonial Office will be found less desirous to improve the Asiatic people who are placed under its care than the Indian home authorities. As a law reformer I have had much experience of both departments, and of the two I have found the Colonial Office much more ready to listen to my suggestions, much less blind to the defects of existing systems, and much less timid in adopting remedies for them. Four Universities on the continent of India would be necessary completely to accomplish my project, but that number cannot be considered excessive with reference to a population which is said to amount to one hundred and twenty millions. I shall be quite contented, however, if I now obtain a University of Calcutta, with an admission of the principle that the natives, whose moral and intellectual merits that University certifies to the public by conferring its degrees upon them, shall not be excluded in fact, any more than in law, from the offices hitherto filled by covenanted servants of the East India Company. The proposition for a University of Calcutta was approved by the government of India, and sent home to the Court of Directors. The answer we received, if my memory does not deceive me, was, that our proposition was premature. I do not know in what sense that answer can be considered a correct one. If the true object of Great Britain in regard to her Asiatic subjects is such as I have described it to be, then I venture to request Parliament to believe, at my peril, that the proposition for a University at Calcutta is not premature. It is a point on which I hold myself competent to pronounce a decision. I was, as I have said, for twelve years a member of the Council of Education, and for five years President of it. From the time of the establishment of scholarships by Sir Edward Ryan till my return to England, I always set the questions in English literature, moral philosophy, and political economy, at the annual examinations; compared the answers of the candidates, and estimated their relative merit. I have probably conversed with native students more than any other man, except the professors and masters in the colleges and schools. I have repeatedly been asked by students, who had left college, for advice as to the prosecution of their studies. With all deference, therefore, to the superior position of the home authorities, I cannot think that their opinion on this particular point is entitled to more weight than my own. 262

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On the other hand, if the true object of Great Britain, in regard to her Asiatic subjects, is to prevent them from rising above the Hindoo and Mahommedan semibarbarism in which we found them, or to give them so much European education as will fit them for the offices held by uncovenanted servants, and to cut them off from the moral and intellectual training which would fit them for the offices held by covenanted servants, then the establishment of a University at Calcutta is not premature; but is, and will for ever continue to be, inexpedient and mischievous. I could do no more, while in India, towards the institution of this much-desired University, than urge the government of India to recommend it to the home authorities; but my position seemed to enable me, without appeal to any higher power, to exhort with effect the students of our colleges to turn their attention to the improvement of their own language and the instruction of their own countrymen. A favourable opportunity of doing this presented itself by the publication of a new edition of Bacon’s Novum Organum, as translated by Dr. Peter Shaw, with the object of making it a class-book. Mr. Kerr, the principal of the Hindoo College, undertook to edit the book and to add such notes as might increase its fitness for that particular purpose. Mr. Kerr having requested from me something in the nature of a preliminary discourse, I complied with his wish, and seized the occasion of opening to the students of our colleges a view of their own future position as the instructors of their race, carrying the assurance of reality as being reflected from actual experience, yet grand and vivid enough to stimulate vehemently the generous ambition of young and ardent minds.My discourse was as follows:— “From the President of the Council of Education to the Students under its Superintendence. “THIS translation of Bacon’s Novum Organum, which has been reprinted and illustrated with notes by Mr. Kerr, the Principal of the Hindoo College, comes forth under happy auspices. “For, while it was in preparation, the Resolution of Government, dated 10th October, 1844, was published to the world. “It is to Sir Henry Hardinge that you owe the public and solemn announcement of the great principle, that ‘In every possible case a preference shall be given, in the selection of candidates for public employment, to those who have been educated in the Institutions established for the instruction of the people, as well by the Government as by private individuals and societies, and especially to those who have distinguished themselves therein by a more than ordinary degree of merit and attainment.’ “Be thankful for the respect thus shown for learning, and evince your gratitude by redoubled exertions, the rather that you are indebted to the Governor-General, received a much larger infusion of new blood than the Italians, awakened from their torpor, not earlier, but much later, we have sufficient ground to conclude that the Roman element, which bore in Italy so much larger a proportion than elsewhere to the barbaric, had not become incapable of sending forth vigorous shoots when a stimulus was applied to it wholly different from that to which it had grown insensible. 263

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Now thus it may be too, and thus it probably is, with the people of India. I can see nothing in the history of the human race, or in the known laws of the human mind, that should forbid us to expect from the inhabitants of that vast region (barren as they have become of works after the Sanskrit type) a fertility corresponding in novelty and copiousness to the novelty and the exciting nature of the circumstances that now surround them. A highly organised race, a language capable with due culture of expressing all that is graceful and lofty in human thought, together with free access to works of the highest art expressed in another language, and embodying forms of thought such as to suggest to the new candidates for fame the ambition of producing, not servile copies, but corresponding manifestations of a new and different energy; these seem to me to be the conditions of a new intellectual development. And when these coexist, I am no believer in the doctrine that exhaustion of the race can make their combination abortive. The publication of my address to the students produced an immediate application from the October, 1844, has not, as far as I can learn, been consistently and zealously acted upon. Something like a cry of monopoly has been raised on the subject, as if that odious name could be justly applied to a plan which merely proposes, in the selection of persons for official employment, to give a preference to those who are best qualified. Must we have some judges ignorant of jurisprudence, and some surgeons ignorant of anatomy, in order to escape the imputation of creating a monopoly in favour of the men who have mastered these sciences? No one will say so. If, then, European training is necessary to qualify a native for the just exercise of power over his fellow-men, a native who has had that training ought always, other things being equal, to be preferred. I have said nothing yet upon the disputed question of religious instruction in the government colleges. My own opinion is, that a government of Christians, undertaking to rule a multitude of nations professing the Hindoo, Boodhist, and Mahommedan creeds, is strictly bound, as between its subjects and itself, not to assume the truth or falsehood of any religion. I can find, after much reflection, no other principle fit to be consistently acted upon throughout. Acting upon this principle the government can recognise, as legitimate enterprises, attempts to convert any of its subjects from one faith to another, when carried on by missionaries having themselves no connection with the state. But it cannot teach Christianity in its own colleges, as part of its general system of imperial education. If it should be said, that the missionary interest do not ask the government to permit the truth of Christianity to be assumed, but only to be proved, in its colleges; the answer is, that government could not permit one of its own lecturers to prove the truth of Christianity, without assuming itself the truth of the thing to be proved. No one will contend that government should set up a chair of Mahommedan theology in the Hindoo College; yet, if it should set up there a chair of Christian theology, the desired distinction could only be drawn by assuming the truth of the Gospel, and the falsehood of the Koran. But though we cannot, as a government, teach Christian theology, we can, and we do, teach a literature imbued with Christian morality. And, in this, the natives 264

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of India have a great advantage over us Europeans when we were emerging from semi-barbarism. They have Englishmen of the nineteenth century for their instructors, and English classics for their text-books. The store of wise and great thoughts which we derived from Greece and Rome was, indeed, rich and copious; but our Asiatic fellow-subjects get from us that same store, refined, elevated, and enlarged by the inventive genius of our race and the purifying influences of our national religion. It is a curious paradox that, setting aside the ceremonies of religion, and setting aside direct theological teaching, the public instruction, which touches the heart and moulds the character of the Christian youth of England, is heathen; while the public instruction, which performs these scarcely less than sacred offices for the heathen youth of India, is Christian. As regards the affairs of this world only, it is not quite clear that a studious youth at the Hindoo College, whose mind has been for many years occupied with thoughts derived from Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, Adam Smith, Arnold, may not have in him more of the moral spirit of Christianity, than a young Englishman at Oxford, whose habitual reflections are suggested by Homer, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Tacitus. Mr. Foster, in his Essay on the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion, speaks thus of the Iliad: “If such works do really impart their own genuine spirit to the mind of an admiring reader, in proportion to the degree in which he admires, and if this spirit is totally hostile to that of Christianity, and if Christianity ought really and in good faith to be the supreme regent of all moral feeling, then it is evident that the Iliad, and all books which combine the same tendency with great poetical excellence, are among the most mischievous things on earth. There is but little satisfaction, certainly, in illustrating the operation of evils without proposing any adequate method of contending with them. But, in the present case, I really do not see what a serious observer of the character of mankind can offer. To wish that the works of Homer and some other great authors of antiquity should cease to be read, is just as vain as to wish that they had never been written.” The moralist, we see, only checks his rising wish that Homer should cease to be read, from a con-a young and plastic mind, may be taken as a type of the difference between classical literature and English literature generally. What we are teaching, then, in our Indian colleges, what we shall teach with much more effect when, by the institution of Universities, the appropriate distinctions of learning are added to the stimulants now in existence, is fitted to make the rising generation of India what they should be in all the relations of life, public and private. And it is only such men that I desire to see gradually advanced to the higher offices in their own country. It is no wish of mine, however, to direct the ambition of the natives solely to official distinction; but you cannot exclude men from administering the affairs of their country without stigmatising and discouraging them. It has been seen that, in addressing these students eight years ago, I said to them, “Do not imagine that the sole or the main use of a liberal education is to fit yourselves for the public service; or, rather, do not imagine that the public can only be served by the performance of duties in the offices of government.” I am quite ready to repeat that admonition. I strongly desire to see the native youth 265

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distinguish themselves in all honourable ways: but I more strongly desire that our colleges should send forth zemindars capable of improving their own estates and the condition of their ryots; natural philosophers capable of collecting and utilising the vast store of undiscovered facts contained in the soil, climate, and productions of their country; moral philosophers capable of studying the peculiarities of the Indian races, and of directing them, by eloquent exhortation, to virtue and happiness; than that these colleges should be nurseries of eminent judges and collectors.

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COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

Edited by Pramod K. Nayar Volume II Commentaries, Reports, Policy Documents

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Pramod K. Nayar; individual owners retain copyright in their own material. The right of Pramod K. Nayar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-7655-2 (set) eISBN: 978-1-351-21216-8 (set) ISBN: 978-0-8153-8081-8 (Volume II) eISBN: 978-1-351-21204-5 (Volume II) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Publisher’s Note References within each chapter are as they appear in the original complete work

CONTENTS

VOLUME II

COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, POLICY DOCUMENTS

1 ‘Wood’s Educational Despatch, 19 July 1854’, in J. A. Richey, Selections from Educational Records Part 2 1840–1859 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922), 365–393

1

2 ‘Letter, 10th March 1854, from the Council of Education to the Government of Bengal’, in J. A. Richey, Selections from Educational Records Part 2 1840–1859 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922), 119–125

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3 Christian Education for India in the Mother Tongue: A Statement on the Formation of a Christian Vernacular Education Society (London: William Nichols, 1855), 3–41

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4 ‘Vernacular Publications and Literacy’, in Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government (Calcutta: John Gray, General Printing Department, 1859), xix–xx

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5 Martha Weitbrecht, extracts from The Women of India and Christian Work in the Zenana (London: James Nisbet, 1875), 55–66, 110–114, 129–134

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6 ‘The Sarah Tucker Institution, Tinnevely, South India’, Indian Female Evangelist (Jan–July 1878), 9–16

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7 ‘Difficulties of Zenana Teaching’, Indian Female Evangelist (Oct 1878), 154–159

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CONTENTS

8 James Johnston, extract from Our Educational Policy in India (Edinburgh: John Maclaren and Son, 1880), 37–57

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9 ‘Recommendations’, in Report of the Indian Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1883), 311–312, 590–602, 604–618

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10 Extracts from Report of the Indian Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1883), 480–491, 494–517, 524–549

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11 Extracts from Report of the Bombay Provincial Committee (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1884), 71–83, 156–162, 165–167

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12 Extracts from Papers Relating to Technical Education in India 1886–1904 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1906), 1–4, 29–34, 50–54, 83–85, 116–117, 131–133, 246–249, 251–253

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13 William Lee-Warner, extract from The Citizen of India (London: Macmillan, 1900), 162–177

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14 Report of the Indian Universities Commission (Simla: Government Central Printing Office, 1902), 16, 27–29, 51–52, 63–69, 81–84

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15 J. G. Covernton, extracts from Vernacular Reading Books in the Bombay Presidency (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906), 1–3, 23–26, 44–49, 80–81

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16 Leonard Alston, extract from Education and Citizenship in India (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1910), 144–195

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1 ‘WOOD’S EDUCATIONAL DESPATCH, 19 JULY 1854’, IN J. A. RICHEY, SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART 2 1840–1859 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1922), 365–393

(126) Despatch from the Court of Directors of the East India Company, to the Governor General of India in Council,— (No. 49, dated the 19th July 1854). It appears to us that the present time, when by an Act of the Imperial Legislature the responsible trust of the Government of India has again been placed in our hands, is peculiarly suitable for the review of the progress which has already been made, the supply of existing deficiencies, and the adoption of such improvements as may be best calculated to secure the ultimate benefit of the people committed to our charge. 2. Among many subjects of importance, none can have a stronger claim to our attention than that of education. It is one of our most sacred duties to be the means, as far as in us lies, of conferring upon the natives of India those vast moral and material blessings which flow from the general diffusion of useful knowledge, and which India may, under Providence, derive from her connexion with England. For although British influence has already in many remarkable instances, been applied with great energy and success to uproot demoralising practices and even crimes of a deeper dye, which for ages had prevailed among the natives of India, the good results of those efforts must, in order to be permanent, possess the further sanction of a general sympathy in the native mind which the advance of education alone can secure. 3. We have moreover, always looked upon the encouragement of education as peculiarly important, because calculated “not only to produce a higher degree of intellectual fitness, but to raise the moral charPublic letter to Bengal, 5th acter of those who partake of its advantages, and September 1827. so to supply you with servants to whose probity you may with increased confidence commit offices of trust” in India, where the 1

(126) Despatch of 1854.

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 (126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

well-being of the people is so intimately connected with the truthfulness and ability of officers of every grade in all departments of the State. 4. Nor, while the character of England is deeply concerned in the success of our efforts for the promotion of education, are her material interests altogether unaffected by the advance of European knowledge in India; this knowledge will teach the natives of India the marvellous results of the employment of labor and capital, rouse them to emulate us in the development of the vast resources of their country guide them in their efforts and gradually, but certainly, confer upon them all the advantages which accompany the healthy increase of wealth and commerce; and, at the same time, secure to us a larger and more certain supply of many articles necessary for our manufactures and extensively consumed by all classes of our population, as well as an almost inexhaustible demand for the produce of British labor. 5. We have from time to time given careful attention and encouragement to the efforts which have hitherto been made for the spread of education, and we have watched with deep interest the practical results of the various systems by which those efforts have been directed. The periodical reports of the different Councils and Boards of Education, together with other official communications upon the same subject have put us in possession of full information as to those educational establishments which are under the direct control of Government; while the evidence taken before the Committees of both Houses of Parliament upon Indian affairs has given us the advantage of similar information with respect to exertions made for this purpose by persons unconnected with Government, and has also enabled us to profit by a knowledge of the views of those who are best able to arrive at sound conclusions upon the question of education generally. 6. Aided, therefore, by ample experience of the past and the most competent advice for the future we are now in a position to decide on the mode in which the assistance of Government should be afforded to the more extended and systematic promotion of general education in India, and on the measures which should at once be adopted to that end. 7. Before proceeding further, we must emphatically declare that the education which we desire to see extended in India is that which has for its object the diffusion of the improved arts, science, philosophy and literature of Europe; in short of European knowledge. 8. The systems of science and philosophy which form the learning of the East abound with grave errors, and eastern literature is at best very deficient as regards all modern discovery and improvements; Asiatic learning, therefore, however widely diffused, would but little advance our object. We do not wish to diminish the opportunities which are now afforded in special institutions for the study of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian literature, or for the cultivation of those languages which may be called the classical languages of India. An acquaintance with the works contained in them is valuable for historical and antiquarian purposes, and a knowledge of the languages themselves is required in the study of Hindoo and Mahomedan law, and is also of great importance for the critical cultivation and improvement of the vernacular languages of India. 2

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9. We are not unaware of the success of many distinguished oriental scholars in their praiseworthy endeavours to ingraft upon portions of Hindoo philosophy the germs of sounder morals and of more advanced science; and we are far from underrating the good effect which has thus been produced upon the learned classes of India, who pay hereditary veneration to those ancient languages, and whose assistance in the spread of education is so valuable, from the honourable and influential position which they occupy among their fellow-countrymen. But such attempts, although they may usefully co-operate, can only be considered as auxiliaries, and would be a very inadequate foundation for any general schemes of Indian education. 10. We have also received most satisfactory evidence of the high attainments in English literature and European science which have been acquired of late years by some of the natives of India. But this success has been confined to but a small number of persons; and we are desirous of extending far more widely the means of acquiring general European knowledge of a less high order, but of such a character, as may be practically useful to the people of India in their different spheres of life. To attain this end it is necessary, for the reasons which we have given above that they should be made familiar with the works of European authors, and with the results of the thought and labour of Europeans on the subjects of every description upon which knowledge is to be imparted to them; and to extend the means of imparting this knowledge must be the object of any general system of education. 11. We have next to consider the manner in which our object is to be effected, and this leads us to the question of the medium through which knowledge is to be conveyed to the people of India. It has hitherto been necessary, owing to the want of translations or adaptations of European works in the vernacular languages of India and to the very imperfect shape in which European knowledge is to be found in any works in the learned languages of the East, for those who desired to obtain a liberal education to begin by the mastery of the English language as a key to the literature of Europe, and a knowledge of English will always be essential to those natives of India who aspire to a high order of education. 12. In some parts of India, more especially in the immediate vicinity of the presidency towns, where persons who possess a knowledge of English are preferred to others in many employments, public as well as private, a very moderate proficiency in the English language is often looked upon by those who attend school instruction as the end and object of their education rather than as a necessary step to the improvement of their general knowledge. We do not deny the value in many respects of the mere faculty of speaking and writing English, but we fear that a tendency has been created in these districts unduly to neglect the study of the vernacular languages. 13. It is neither our aim nor desire to substitute the English language for the vernacular dialects of the country. We have always been most sensible of the importance of the use of the languages which alone are understood by the great mass of the population. These languages, and not English, have been put by us in the place of Persian in the administration of justice and in the intercourse between the officers of Government and the people. It is indispensible, therefore, that, in any 3

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

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general system of education, the study of them should be assiduously attended to, and any acquaintance with improved European knowledge which is to be communicated to the great mass of the people—whose circumstances prevent them from acquiring a high order of education, and who cannot be expected to overcome the difficulties of a foreign language—can only be conveyed to them through one or other of those vernacular languages. 14. In any general system of education, the English language should be taught where there is a demand for it; but such instruction should always be combined with a careful attention to the study of the vernacular language of the district, and with such general instruction as can be conveyed through that language; and while the English language continues to be made use of as by far the most perfect medium for the education of those persons who have acquired a sufficient knowledge of it to receive general instruction through it, the vernacular languages must be employed to teach the far larger classes who are ignorant of, or imperfectly acquainted with English. This can only be done effectually through the instrumentality of masters and professors, who may, by themselves, knowing English and thus having full access to the latest improvements in knowledge of every kind, impart to their fellow-country-men through the medium of their mother tongue, the information which they have thus obtained. At the same time, and as the importance of the vernacular languages becomes more appreciated, the vernacular literatures of India, will be gradually enriched by translations of European books or by the original compositions of men whose minds have been imbued with the spirit of European advancement, so that European knowledge may gradually be placed in this manner within the reach of all classes of the people. We look, therefore, to the English language and to the vernacular languages of India together as the media for the diffusion of European knowledge, and it is our desire to see them cultivated together in all schools in India of a sufficiently high class to maintain a school-master possessing the requisite qualifications. 15. We proceed now to the machinery which we propose to establish for the superintendence and direction of education. This has hitherto been exercised in our presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay by Boards and Councils of Education, composed of European and native gentlemen, who have devoted themselves to this duty with no other remuneration than the consciousness of assisting the progress of learning and civilization, and, at the same time with an earnestness and ability which must command the gratitude of the people of India, and which will entitle some honoured names amongst them to a high place among the benefactors of India and the human race. 16. The Lieutenant-Governor of Agra has, since the separation of the educational institutions of the North-Western Provinces from those of Bengal, taken up himself the task of their management; and we cannot allow this opportunity to pass without the observation that, in this, as in all other branches of his administration, Mr. Thomason displayed that accurate knowledge of the condition and requirements of the people under his charge, and that clear and ready perception of the practical measures best suited for their welfare, which make his death a loss 4

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to India, which we deplore the more deeply as we fear that his unremitting exertions tended to shorten his career of usefulness. 17. We desire to express to the present Boards and Councils of Education our sincere thanks for the manner in which they have exercised their functions, and we still hope to have the assistance of the gentlemen composing them in furtherance of a most important part of our present plan; but having determined upon a very considerable extension of the general scope of our efforts, involving the simultaneous employment of different agencies, some of which are now wholly neglected, and others but imperfectly taken advantage of by Government, we are of opinion that it is advisable to place the superintendence and direction of education upon a more systematic footing, and we have, therefore, determined to create an Educational Department as a portion of the machinery of our Governments in the several presidencies of India. We accordingly propose that an officer shall be appointed for each presidency and lieutenant-governorship who shall be specially charged with the management of the business connected with the education, and be immediately responsible to Government for its conduct. 18. An adequate system of inspection will also, for the future, become an essential part of our educational system; and we desire that a sufficient number of qualified inspectors be appointed, who will periodically report upon the state of those colleges and schools which are now supported and managed by Government as well as of such as will hereafter be brought under Government inspection by the measures that we propose to adopt. They will conduct, or assist at, the examination of the scholars of these institutions, and generally, by their advice, aid the managers and school-masters in conducting colleges and schools of every description throughout the country. They will necessarily be of different classes, and may possess different degrees of acquirement, according to the higher or lower character of the institutions which they will be employed to visit; but we need hardly say that, even for the proper inspection of the lower schools, and with a view to their effectual improvement, the greatest care will be necessary to select persons of high character and fitting judgment for such employment. A proper staff of clerks and other officers will, moreover, be required for the Educational Departments. 19. Reports of the proceedings of the inspectors should be made periodically and these, again, should be embodied in the annual reports of the heads of the Educational Departments, which should be transmitted to us, together with statistical returns (to be drawn up in similar forms in all parts of India), and other information of a general character relating to education. 20. We shall send copies of this despatch to the Governments of Fort St. George and of Bombay, and direct them at once to make provisional arrangements for the superintendence and inspection of education in their respective presidencies. Such arrangements as they make will be reported to you for sanction. You will take similar measures in communication with the Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal and of Agra, and you will also provide in such manner as may seem advisable for the wants of the non-regulation provinces in this respect. We desire that your 5

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

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proceedings in this matter may be reported to us with as little delay as possible, and we are prepared to approve of such an expenditure as you may deem necessary for this purpose. 21. In the selection of the heads of the Educational Departments, the inspectors and other officers, it will be of the greatest importance to secure the services of persons who are not only best able, from their character, position and acquirements, to carry our objects into effect, but who may command the confidence of the natives of India. It may, perhaps be advisable that the first heads of the Educational Department, as well as some of the inspectors, should be members of our Civil Service, as such appointments in the first instance would tend to raise the estimation in which these officers will be held, and to show the importance we attach to the subject of education, and also, as amongst them you will probably find the persons best qualified for the performance of the duty. But we desire that neither these offices, nor any others connected with education, shall be considered as necessarily to be filled by members of that service, to the exclusion of others, Europeans or Natives, who may be better fitted for them; and that, in any case, the scale for their remuneration shall be so fixed as publicly to recognise the important duties they will have to perform. 22. We now proceed to sketch out the general scheme of the measures which we propose to adopt. We have endeavoured to avail ourselves of the knowledge which has been gained from the various experiments which have been made in different parts of India for the encouragement of education; and we hope, by the more general adoption of those plans which have been carried into successful execution in particular districts, as well as by the introduction of other measures which appear to be wanting, to establish such a system as will prove generally applicable throughout India, and thus to impart to the educational efforts of our different presidencies a greater degree of uniformity and method than at present exists. 23. We are fully aware that no general scheme would be applicable in all its details to the present condition of all portions of our Indian territories, differing so widely as they do, one from another, in many important particulars. It is difficult, moreover, for those who do not possess a recent and practical acquaintance with particular districts, to appreciate the importance which should be attached to the feelings and influences which prevail in each; and we have, therefore, preferred confining ourselves to describing generally what we wish to see done, leaving to you, in communication with the several Local Governments, to modify particular measures so far as may be required, in order to adapt them to different parts of India. 24. Some years ago, we declined to accede to a proposal made by the Council of Education, and transmitted to us with the recommendation of your Government, for the institution of an University in Calcutta. The rapid spread of a liberal education among the natives of India since that time, the high attainments shown by the native candidates for Government scholarships, and by native students in private institutions, the success of the medical colleges, and the requirements of an increasing European and Anglo-Indian population, have led us to the conclusion that the time is now arrived for the establishment of universities in India, 6

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which may encourage a regular and liberal course of education by conferring academical degrees as evidences of attainments in the different branches of art and science, and by adding marks of honour for those who may desire to compete for honorary distinction. 25. The Council of Education, in the proposal to which we have alluded, took the London University as their model; and we agree with them that the form, government and functions of that University (copies of whose charters and regulations we enclose for your reference) are the best adapted to the wants of India, and may be followed with advantage, although some variation will be necessary in points of detail. 26. The Universities in India will accordingly consist of a Chancellor, ViceChancellor and Fellows, who will constitute a Senate. The Senates will have the management of the funds of the universities, and frame regulations for your approval, under which periodical examinations may be held in the different branches of art and science by examiners selected from their own body, or nominated by them. 27. The function of the universities will be to confer degrees upon such persons as, having been entered as candidates according to the rules which may be fixed in this respect, and having produced from any of the “affiliated institutions” which will be enumerated on the foundation of the universities, or be from time to time added to them by Government, certificates of conduct, and of having pursued a regular course of study for a given time, shall have also passed at the universities such an examination as may be required of them. It may be advisable to dispense with the attendance required at the London University for the Matriculation examination, and to substitute some mode of entrance examination which may secure a certain amount of knowledge in the candidates for degrees without making their attendance at the universities necessary, previous to the final examination. 28. The examinations for degrees will not include any subjects connected with religious belief; and affiliated institutions will be under the management of persons of every variety of religious persuasion. As in England, various institutions in immediate connexion with the Church of England, the Presbyterian College at Caermarthen, the Roman Catholic College at Oscott, the Wesleyan College at Sheffield, the Baptist College at Bristol, and the Countess of Huntingdon’s College at Cheshunt, are among the institutions from which the London University is empowered to receive certificates for degrees; so in India, institutions conducted by all denominations of Christians, Hindoos, Mahommedans, Parsees, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, or any other religious persuasions, may be affiliated to the universities, if they are found to afford the requisite course of study, and can be depended upon for the certificates of conduct which will be required. 29. The detailed regulations for the examination for degrees should be framed with a due regard for all classes of the affiliated institutions; and we will only observe upon this subject that the standard for common degrees will require to be fixed with very great judgment. There are many persons who well deserve the distinction of an academical degree, as the recognition of a liberal education, 7

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

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who could not hope to obtain it if the examination was as difficult as that for the senior Government scholarships; and the standard required should be such as to command respect without discouraging the efforts of deserving students, which would be a great obstacle to the success of the universities. In the competitions for honors, which as in the London University, will follow the examinations for degrees, care should be taken to maintain such a standard as will afford a guarantee for high ability and valuable attainments,—the subjects for examination being so selected as to include the best portions of the different schemes of study pursued at the affiliated institutions. 30. It will be advisable to institute, in connection with the universities, professorships for the purposes of the delivery of lectures in various branches of learning, for the acquisition of which, at any rate in an advanced degree, facilities do not now exist in other institutions in India. Law is the most important of these subjects; and it will be for you to consider whether, as was proposed in the plan of the Council of Education to which we have before referred, the attendance, upon certain lectures, and the attainment of a degree in law, may not, for the future, be made a qualification for vakeels and moonsifs, instead of, or in addition to, the present system of examination, which must, however, be continued in places not within easy reach of an university. 31. Civil engineering is another subject of importance, the advantages of which, as a profession, are gradually becoming known to the natives of India; and while we are inclined to believe that instruction of a practical nature, such as is given at the Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee, is far more useful than any lectures could possibly be, professorships of civil engineering might, perhaps, be attached to the universities and degrees in civil engineering be included in their general scheme. 32. Other branches of useful learning may suggest themselves to you, in which it might be advisable that lectures should be read, and special degrees given; and it would greatly encourage the cultivation of the vernacular languages of India that professorships should be founded for those languages, and perhaps also for Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian. A knowledge of the Sanskrit language, the root of the vernaculars of the greater part of India, is more especially necessary, to those who are engaged in the work of the composition in those languages; while Arabic, through Persian, is one of the component parts of the Urdu language, which extends over so large a part of Hindoostan, and is, we are informed, capable of considerable development. The grammar of these languages, and their application to the improvement of the spoken languages of the country, are the points to which the attention of those professors should be mainly directed; and there will be an ample field for their labors unconnected with any instruction in the tenets of the Hindoo or Mahomedan religions. We should refuse to sanction any such teaching, as directly opposed to the principles of religious neutrality to which we have always adhered. 33. We desire that you take into your consideration the institution of universities at Calcutta and Bombay, upon the general principles which we have now 8

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explained to you, and report to us upon the best method of procedure, with a view to their incorporation by Acts of the Legislative Council of India. The offices of Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor will naturally be filled by persons of high stations, who have shown an interest in the cause of education; and it is in connexion with the universities that we propose to avail ourselves of the services of the existing Council of Education at Calcutta and Board of Education at Bombay. We wish to place these gentlemen in a position which will not only mark our sense of the exertions which they have made in furtherance of education but will give it the benefit of their past experience of the subject. We propose, therefore, that the Council of Education at Calcutta and the Board of Education at Bombay, with some additional members to be named by the Government, shall constitute the Senate of the University at each of those presidencies. 34. The additional members should be so selected as to give to all those who represent the different systems of education which will be carried on in the affiliated institutions—including natives of India of all religious persuasions, who possess the confidence of the native communities—a fair voice in the Senates. We are led to make those remarks, as we observe that the plan of the Council of Education, in 1845, for the constitution of the Senate of the proposed Calcutta University, was not sufficiently comprehensive. 35. We shall be ready to sanction the creation of an university at Madras or in any part of India, where a sufficient number of institutions exist, from which properly qualified candidates for degrees could be supplied; it being in our opinion advisable that the great centres of European Government and civilisation in India should possess universities similar in character to those which will now be founded as soon as the extension of a liberal education shows that their establishment would be of advantage to the native communities. 36. Having provided for the general superintendence of education and for the institution of universities, not so much to be in themselves places of instruction as to test the value of the education obtained elsewhere, we proceed to consider first, the different classes of colleges and schools, which should be maintained in simultaneous operation, in order to place within the reach of all classes of the natives of India the means of obtaining improved knowledge suited to their several conditions of life; and secondly, the manner in which the most effectual aid may be rendered by Government to each class of educational institutions. 37. The candidates for university degrees will, as we have already explained, be supplied by colleges affiliated to the universities. These will comprise all such institutions as are capable of supplying a sufficiently high order of instruction in the different branches of art and science in which university degrees will be accorded. The Hindoo, Hooghly, Dacca, Kishnaghur and Berhampur Government Anglo-Vernacular Colleges, the Sanskrit College, the Mahomedan Madrassas, and the Medical College, in Bengal; the Elphinstone Institution, the Poonah College, and the Grant Medical College in Bombay; the Delhi, Agra, Benares, Bareilly and Thomason Colleges in the North-Western Provinces; Seminaries such as the Oriental Seminary in Calcutta, which have been established by highly educated 9

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

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natives, a class of places of instruction which we are glad to learn is daily increasing in number and efficiency; those, which, like the Parental Academy, are conducted by East Indians; Bishop’s College, the General Assembly’s Institution, Dr. Duff’s College, the Baptist College at Serampore, and other Institutions under the superintendence of different religious bodies and Missionary Societies, will, at once, supply a considerable number of educational establishments worthy of being affiliated to the universities, and of occupying the highest place in the scale of general instruction. 38. The affiliated institutions will be periodically visited by Government inspectors; and a spirit of honorable rivalry, tending to preserve their efficiency will be promoted by this, as well as by the competition of their most distinguished students for university honors. Scholarships should be attached to them, to be held by the best students of lower schools; and their schemes of education should provide, in the anglo-vernacular colleges for a careful cultivation of the vernacular languages; and, in the Oriental colleges, for sufficient instruction in the English and vernacular languages, so as to render the studies of each most available for that general diffusion of European knowledge which is the main object of education in India. 39. It is to this class of institutions that the attention of Government has hitherto been principally directed, and they absorb the greater part of the public funds which are now applied to educational purposes. The wise abandonment of the early views with respect to native education, which erroneously pointed to the classical languages of the East as the media for imparting European knowledge, together with the small amount of pecuniary aid which, in the then financial condition of India, was at your command, has led, we think, to too exclusive a direction of the efforts of Government towards providing the means of acquiring a very high degree of education for a small number of natives of India, drawn, for the most part, from what we should here call the higher classes. 40. It is well that every opportunity should have been given to those classes for the acquisition of a liberal European education, the effects of which may be expected slowly to pervade the rest of their fellow-countrymen, and to raise, in the end, the educational tone of the whole country. We are, therefore, far from underrating the importance, or the success, of the efforts which have been made in this direction; but the higher classes are both able and willing in many cases to bear a considerable part at least of the cost of their education; and it is abundantly evident that, in some parts of India no artificial stimulus is any longer required in order to create a demand for such an education as is conveyed in the Government anglo-vernacular colleges. We have, by the establishment and support of these colleges, pointed out the manner in which a liberal education is to be obtained, and assisted them to a very considerable extent from the public funds. In addition to this, we are now prepared to give, by sanctioning the establishment of universities, full development to the highest course of education to which the natives of India, or of any other country, can aspire; and besides, by the division of university degrees and distinctions into different branches, the exertions of highly educated men will be directed to the studies which are necessary to success 10

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in the various active professions of life. We shall, therefore, have done as much as a Government can do to place the benefits of education plainly and practically before the higher classes in India. 41. Our attention should now be directed to a consideration, if possible, still more important, and one which has been hitherto, we are bound to admit, too much neglected, namely, how useful and practical knowledge, suited to every station in life, may be best conveyed to the great mass of the people, who are utterly incapable of obtaining any education worthy of the name by their own unaided efforts, and we desire to see the active measures of Government more especially directed, for the future, to this object, for the attainment of which we are ready to sanction a considerable increase of expenditure. 42. Schools—whose object should be not to train highly a few youths, but to provide more opportunities than now exist for the acquisition of such an improved education as will make those who possess it more useful members of society in every condition of life—should exist in every district in India. These schools should be subject to constant and careful inspection; and their pupils might be encouraged by scholarships being instituted at other institutions which would be tenable at rewards for merit by the best of their number. 43. We include in this class of institutions those which, like the zillah schools of Bengal, the district Government anglo-vernacular schools of Bombay, and such as have been established by the Raja of Burdwan and other native gentlemen in different parts of India, use the English language as the chief medium of instruction; as well as others of an inferior order, such as the tehseelee schools in the North-Western Provinces, and the Government vernacular schools in the Bombay presidency, whose object is, however, imperfectly it has been as yet carried out, to convey the highest class of instruction which can now be taught through the medium of the vernacular languages. 44. We include these anglo-vernacular and vernacular schools in the same class, because we are unwilling to maintain the broad line of separation which at present exists between schools in which the media for imparting instruction differ. The knowledge conveyed is no doubt, at the present time, much higher in the anglo-vernacular than in the vernacular schools; but the difference will become less marked, and the latter more efficient, as the gradual enrichment of the vernacular languages in works of education allows their schemes of study to be enlarged, and as a more numerous class of school-masters is raised up, able to impart a superior education. 45. It is indispensable, in order fully and efficiently to carry out our views as to these schools, that their masters should possess a knowledge of English in order to acquire, and of the vernaculars so as readily to convey, useful knowledge to their pupils; but we are aware that it is impossible to obtain at present the services of a sufficient number of persons so qualified, and that such a class must be gradually collected and trained in the manner to which we shall hereafter allude. In the meantime, you must make the best use which is possible of such instruments as are now at your command. 11

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

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46. Lastly, what have been termed indigenous schools should, by wise encouragement, such as has been given under the system organised by Mr. Thomason in the North-Western Provinces, and which has been carried out in eight districts under the able direction of Mr. H. S. Reid in an eminently practical manner, and with great promise of satisfactory results, be made capable of imparting correct elementary knowledge to the great mass of the people. The most promising pupils of these schools might be rewarded by scholarships in places of education of a superior order. 47. Such a system as this, placed in all its degrees under efficient inspection, beginning with the humblest elementary instruction, and ending with the university test of a liberal education, the best students in each class of schools being encouraged by the aid afforded them towards obtaining a superior education as the reward of merit, by means of such a system of scholarships as we shall have to describe, would, we firmly believe, impart life and energy to education in India and lead to a gradual, but steady extension of its benefits to all classes of the people. 48. When we consider the vast population of British India, and the sums which are now expended upon educational efforts, which, however successful in themselves, have reached but an insignificant number of those who are of a proper age to receive school instruction, we cannot but be impressed with the almost insuperable difficulties which would attend such an extension of the present system of education by means of colleges and schools entirely supported at the cost of Government as might be hoped to supply, in any reasonable time, so gigantic a deficiency and to provide adequate means for setting on foot such a system as we have described and desire to see established. 49. Nor it is necessary that we should depend entirely upon the direct efforts of Government. We are glad to recognise an increased desire on the part of the native population not only in the neighbourhood of the great centre of European civilisation, but also, in remoter districts, for the means of obtaining a better education; and we have evidence in many instances of their readiness to give a practical proof of their anxiety in this respect by coming forward with liberal pecuniary contributions. Throughout all ages, learned Hindoos and Mahomedans have devoted themselves to teaching with little other remuneration than a bare subsistence; and munificent bequests have not frequently been made for the permanent endowment of educational institutions. 50. At the same time, in so far as the noble exertions of societies of Christians of all denominations to guide the natives of India in the way of religious truth, and to instruct uncivilised races, such as those found in Assam, in the Cossya, Garrow and Rajmehal Hills, and in various districts of Central and Southern India (who are in the lowest condition of ignorance, and are either wholly without a religion, or are the slaves of a degrading and barbarous superstition), have been accompanied, in their educational establishments, by the diffusion of improved knowledge, they have largely contributed to the spread of that education which it is our object to promote. 12

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51. The consideration of the impossibility of Government alone doing all that must be done in order to provide adequate means for the education of the natives of India, and of the ready assistance which may be derived from efforts which have hitherto received but little encouragement from the State, has led us to the natural conclusion that the most effectual method of providing for the wants of India in this respect will be to combine with the agency of the Government the aid which may be derived from the exertions and liberality of the educated and wealthy natives of India and of other benevolent persons. 52. We have, therefore, resolved to adopt in India the system of grants-in-aid which has been carried out in this country with very great success; and we confidently anticipate, by thus drawing support from local resources in addition to contributions from the State, a far more rapid progress of education than would follow a mere increase of expenditure by the Government; while it possesses the additional advantage of fostering a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes, which is of itself of no mean importance to the well-being of a nation. 53. The system of grants-in-aid, which we propose to establish in India will be based on an entire abstinence from interference with the religious instruction conveyed in the school assisted. Aid will be given (so far as the requirements of each particular district, as compared with others, and the funds at the disposal of Government, may render it possible) to all schools which impart a good secular education, provided that they are under adequate local management (by the term “local management” we understand one or more persons, such as private patrons, voluntary subscribers, or the trustees of endowments, who will undertake the general superintendence of the school, and be answerable for its permanence for some given time); and provided also that their managers consent that the schools shall be subject to Government inspection, and agree to any conditions which may be laid down for the regulation of such grants. 54. It has been found by experience, in this and in other countries, that not only an entirely gratuitous education valued far less by those who receive it than one for which some payment, however small, is made, but that the payment induces a more regular attendance and greater exertion on the part of the pupils; and, for this reason, as well as because school fees themselves, insignificant as they may be in each individual instance, will in the aggregate, when applied to the support of a better class of masters, become of very considerable importance, we desire that grants-in-aid shall, as a general principle, be made to such schools only (with the exception of normal schools) as require some fee, however small, from their scholars. 55. Careful considerations will be required in framing rules for the administration of the grants; and the same course should be adopted in India which has been pursued, with obvious advantage by the Committee of Council here, namely, to appropriate the grants to specific objects, and not (except, perhaps, in the case of normal schools) to apply them in the form of simple contributions in aid of the general expenses of a school. The augmentation of the salaries of the head teachers, and the supply of junior teachers, will probably be found in India, as 13

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

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with us, to be the most important objects to which the grants can ordinarily be appropriated. The foundation, or assistance in the foundation, of scholarships for candidates from lower schools, will also be a proper object for the application of grants-in-aid. In some cases, again, assistance towards erecting or repairing a school, or the provision of an adequate supply of school-books, may be required; but the appropriation of the grant in each particular instance should be regulated by the peculiar circumstances of each school and district. 56. The amount and continuance of the assistance given will depend upon the periodical reports of inspectors, who will be selected with special reference to their possessing the confidence of the native communities. In their periodical inspections no notice whatsoever should be taken by them of religious doctrines which may be taught in any school; and their duty should be strictly confined to ascertaining whether the secular knowledge conveyed is such as to entitle it to consideration in the distribution of the sum which will be applied to grants-in-aid. They should also assist in the establishment of schools by their advice, wherever they may have opportunities of doing so. 57. We confide the practical adaptation of the general principles we have laid down as to grants-in-aid to your discretion, aided by the educational departments of the different presidencies. In carrying into effect our views, which apply alike to all schools and institutions, whether male or female, anglo-vernacular or vernacular, it is of the greatest importance that the conditions under which schools will be assisted should be clearly and publicly placed before the natives of India. For this purpose Government notifications should be drawn up and promulgated in the different vernacular languages. It may be advisable distinctly to assert in them the principle of perfect religious neutrality on which the grants will be awarded; and care should be taken to avoid holding out expectations which from any cause may be liable to disappointment. 58. There will be little difficulty in the application of this system of grantsin-aid to the higher order of places of instruction in India in which English is at present the medium of education. 59. Grants-in-aid will also at once give assistance to all such anglo-vernacular and vernacular schools as impart a good elementary education; but we fear that the number of this class of schools is at present inconsiderable, and that such as are in existence require great improvement. 60. A more minute and constant local supervision than would accompany the general system of grants-in-aid will be necessary in order to raise the character of the “indigenous schools,” which are, at present, not only very inefficient in quality, but of exceedingly precarious duration, as is amply shown by the statistics collected by Mr. Adam in Bengal and Behar, and from the very important information we have received of late years from the North-Western Provinces. In organising such a system, we cannot do better than to refer you to the manner in which the operations of Mr. Reid have been conducted in the North-Western Provinces, and to the instructions given by him to the zillah and pergunnah visitors, and contained in the appendix to his first report. 14

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61. We desire to see local management under Government inspection and assisted by grants-in-aid taken advantage of wherever it is possible to do so, and that no Government colleges or schools shall be founded, for the future, in any district where a sufficient number of institutions exists, capable, with assistance from the State, of supplying the local demand for education; but, in order fully to carry out the views we have expressed with regard to the adequate provision of schools throughout the country, it will probably be necessary, for some years, to supply the wants of particular parts of India by the establishment, temporary support, and management of places of education of every class in districts where there is little or no prospect of adequate local efforts being made for this purpose, but where, nevertheless, they are urgently required. 62. We look forward to the time when any general system of education entirely provided by Government may be discontinued, with the gradual advance of the system of grants-in-aid, and when many of the existing Government institutions, especially those of the higher order, may be safely closed, or transferred to the management of local bodies under the control of, and aided by, the State. But it is far from our wish to check the spread of education in the slightest degree by the abandonment of a single school to probable decay; and we therefore entirely confide in your discretion, and in that of the different authorities, while keeping this object steadily in view, to act with caution, and to be guided by special reference to the particular circumstances which affect the demand for education in different parts of India. 63. The system of free and stipendiary scholarships, to which we have already more than once referred as a connecting link between the different grades of educational institutions, will require some reviMinute, November 24th 1839, sion and extension in carrying out our enlarged paragraphs 32 and 33. educational plans. We wish to see the object proposed by Lord Auckland, in 1839, “of connecting the zillah schools with the central colleges by attaching to the latter scholarships to which the best scholars of the former might be eligible,” more fully carried out; and also, as the measures we now propose assume an organised form, that the same system may be adopted with regard to schools of a lower description, and that the best pupils of the inferior schools shall be provided for by means of scholarships in schools of a higher order, so that superior talent in every class may receive that encouragement and development which it deserves. The amount of the stipendiary scholarships should be fixed at such a sum as may be considered sufficient for the maintenance of the holders of them at colleges or schools to which they are attached and which may often be at a distance from the home of the students. We think it desirable that this system of scholarships should be carried out, not only in connexion with those places of education which are under the immediate superintendence of the State, but in all educational institutions which will now be brought into our general system. 64. We are, at the same time, of opinion that the expenditure upon existing Government scholarships, other than those to which we have referred, which amounts 15

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to a considerable sum, should be gradually reduced, with the requisite regard for the claims of the present holders of them. The encouragement of young men of ability, but of slender means, to pursue their studies, is no doubt both useful and benevolent, and we have no wish to interfere with the private endowments which have been devoted to so laudable an object, or to withdraw the additions which may have been made by us to any such endowments. But the funds at the disposal of Government are limited, and we doubt the expediency of applying them to the encouragement of the acquisition of learning by means of stipends which not only far exceed the cost of the maintenance of the student, but in many cases are above what he could reasonably expect to gain on entering the public service, or any of the active professions of life. 65. We shall, however, offer encouragement to education which will tend to more practical results than those scholarships. By giving to persons who possess an aptness for teaching, as well as the requisite standard of acquirements, and who are willing to devote themselves to the profession of school-master, moderate monthly allowances for their support during the time which it may be requisite for them to pass in normal schools, or classes, in order to acquire the necessary training, we shall assist many deserving students to qualify themselves for a career of practical usefulness, and one which will secure them an honorable competence through life. We are also of opinion that admission to places of instruction, which like the Medical and Engineering Colleges, are maintained by the State for the purpose of educating persons for special employment under Government, might be made the rewards of industry and ability, and thus supply a practical encouragement to general education, similar to that which will be afforded by the educational service. 66. The establishment of universities will offer considerable further inducements for the attainment of high proficiency, and thus supply the place of the present senior scholarships, with this additional advantage, that a greater number of subjects, in which distinction can be gained, will be offered to the choice of students than can be comprised in one uniform examination for a scholarship, and that their studies will thus be practically directed into channels which will aid them in the different professions of life which they may afterwards adopt. 67. In England, when systematic attempts began to be made for the improvement of education, one of the chief defects was found to be the insufficient number of qualified school-masters and the imperfect method of teaching which prevailed. This led to the foundation of normal and model schools for the training of masters and the exemplification of the best methods for the organisation, discipline and instruction of elementary schools. This deficiency has been the more palpably felt in India, as the difficulty of finding persons properly educated for the work of tuition is greater; and we desire to see the establishment with as little delay as possible, of training schools and classes for masters in each presidency in India. It will probably be found that some of the existing institutions may be adapted, wholly or partially, to this purpose, with less difficulty than would attend the establishment of entirely new schools. 16

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68. We cannot do better than refer you to the plan which has been adopted in Great Britain for this object, and which appears to us to be capable of easy adaptation to India. It mainly consists, as you will perceive on reference to the minutes of the Committee of Council, copies of which we enclose, in the selection and stipend of pupil-teachers (awarding a small payment to the masters of the schools in which they are employed for their instruction out of the school hours); their ultimate removal, if they prove worthy, to normal schools; the issue to them of certificates on the completion of their training in those normal schools; and in securing to them a sufficient salary when they are afterwards employed as school-masters. This system should be carried out in India, both in the Government colleges and schools, and by means of grants-in-aid in all institutions which are brought under Government inspection. The amount of the stipends to pupil-teachers and students at normal schools should be fixed with great care. The former should receive moderate allowances rather above the sums which they would earn if they left school, and the stipends to the latter should be regulated by the same principle which we have laid down with respect to scholarships. 69. You will be called upon, in carrying these measures into effect, to take into consideration the position and prospects of the numerous classes of natives of India who are ready to undertake the important duty of educating their fellowcountrymen. The late extension of the pension regulations of 1831 to the educational service may require to be adopted to the revised regulations in this respect; and our wish is that the profession of school-master may, for the future, afford inducements to the natives of India such as are held out in other branches of the public service. The provision of such a class of school-masters as we wish to see must be a work of time, and in encouraging the “indigenous schools,” our present aim should be to improve the teachers whom we find in possession, and to take care not to provoke the hostility of this class of persons, whose influence is so great over the minds of the lower classes, by superseding them where it is possible to avoid it. They should, moreover, be encouraged to attend the normal schools and classes which may hereafter be instituted for this class of teachers. 70. Equal in importance to the training of school-masters is the provision of vernacular school-books, which shall provide European information to be the object of study in the lower classes of schools. Something has, no doubt, been done of late years towards this end, but more still remains to be done; and we believe that deficiencies might be readily and speedily supplied by the adoption of a course recommended by Mr. M. Elphinstone in 1825, namely—“That the best translations of particular books, or the best elementary treatises in specified languages, should be advertised for and liberally rewarded. 71. The aim should be, in compilations and original compositions (to quote from one of Mr. Adam’s valuable reports upon the state of education in Bengal), “not to translate European works into the words and idioms of the native languages, but so to combine the substance of European knowledge with native forms of thought and sentiment as to render the school-books useful and attractive.” We also refer with pleasure upon this point to some valuable observations 17

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Report, 1850–1851, paragraphs by Mr. Reid, in his report which we have quoted before, more especially as regards instruction 2983–08.

in geography. It is obvious that the local peculiarities of different parts of India render it necessary that the class books in each should be especially adapted to the feelings, sympathies and history of the people; and we will only further remark upon this subject that the Oriental Colleges, besides generally tending, as we have before observed, to the enrichment of the vernacular languages, may, we think, be made of great use in the translation of scientific works into those languages, as has already been done to some extent in the Delhi, Benares and Poonah Colleges. 72. We have always been of opinion that the spread of education in India will produce a greater efficiency in all branches of administration by enabling you to obtain the services of intelligent and trustworthy persons in every department of Government; and, on the other hand, we believe that the numerous vacancies of different kinds which have constantly to be filled up, may afford a great stimulus to education. The first object must be to select persons properly qualified to fill these situations; secondary to this is the consideration how far they may be so distributed as to encourage popular education. 73. The resolutions of our Governor-General in Council of the 10th of October, 1844 gave a general preference to well-educated over uneducated men in the admissions to the public service. We perceive with much satisfaction from returns which we have recently received of the persons appointed since that year in the Revenue Department of Bengal, as well as from the educational reports from different parts of India, that a very considerable number of educated men have been employed under Government of late years; and we understand that it is often not so much the want of Government employment as the want of properly qualified persons to be employed by Government, which is felt at the present time in many parts of India. 74. We shall not enter upon the causes which, as we foresaw, have led to the failure of that part of the resolutions which provided for the annual submission to Government of lists of meritorious students. It is sufficient for our present purpose to observe that no more than 46 persons have been gazetted in Bengal up to this time, all of whom were students in the GovernLetter of the 6th April, 1852, with returns in Revenue Depart- ment colleges. In the last year for which we have returns (1852), only two persons were so distinment, Bengal. guished; and we can readily believe, with the Secretary to the Board of Revenue in Bengal, that young men, who have passed difficult examinations in the highest branches of philosophy and mathematics, are naturally disinclined to accept such employment as persons who intend to make the public service their profession must necessarily commence with. 75. The necessity for any such lists will be done away with by the establishment of universities, as the acquisition of a degree, and still more the attainment of university distinctions, will bring highly educated young men under the notice of Government. The resolutions in question will, therefore, require revision so as 18

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to adapt them practically to carry out our views upon this subject. What we desire is that, where the other qualifications of the candidates for appointments under Government are equal a person who has received a good education irrespective of the place or manner in which it may have been acquired, should be preferred to one who has not; and that, even in lower situations, a man who can read and write be preferred to one who cannot, if he is equally eligible in other respects. 76. We also approve of the institution of examinations where practicable, to be simply and entirely tests of the fitness of candidates for the special duties of the various departments in which they are seeking employment, as has been the case in the Bombay presidency. We confidently commit the encouragement of educated, in preference to uneducated, men to the different officers who are responsible for their selection; and we cannot interfere by any further regulations to fetter their free choice in a matter of which they bear the sole responsibility. 77. We are sanguine enough to believe that some effect has already been produced by the improved education of the public service of India. The ability and integrity of a large and increasing number of the native judges, to whom the greater part of the civil jurisdiction in India is now committed, and the high estimation in which many among them are held by their fellow-countrymen, is, in our opinion, much to be attributed to the progress of education among these officers, and to their adoption along with it of that high moral tone which pervades the general literature of Europe. Nor is it among the higher officers alone that we have direct evidence of the advantage which the public derives from the employment of educated men. We quote from the last report Report on Public Instruction, of the Dacca College with particular satisfaction, Bengal, 1851–1854, page 72. as we are aware that much of the happiness of the people of India depends upon honesty of the officers of Police:—“The best possible evidence has been furnished,” say the local committee, “that some of the exstudents of the College of Dacca have completely succeeded in the arduous office of darogah.” Krishna Chunder Dutt, employed as a darogah under the Magistrate of Howrah, in particular, is recommended for promotion, as having gained the respect and applause of all classes, who, though they may not practise, yet know how to admire, real honesty and integrity of purpose. 78. But however large the number of appointments under Government may be, the views of the natives of India should be directed to the far wider and more important sphere of usefulness and advantage which a liberal education lays open to them; and such practical benefits arising from improved knowledge should be constantly impressed upon them by those who know their feelings and have influence or authority to advise or direct their efforts. We refer, as an example in this respect, with mingled pleasure and regret, to the eloquent addresses delivered by the late Mr. Bethune, when President of the Council of education, to the students of the Kishnaghur and Dacca Colleges. 79. There are some other points connected with the general subject of education in India upon which we will now briefly remark. We have always regarded with special interest those educational institutions which have been directed towards 19

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training up the natives of India to particular professions, both with a view to their useful employment in the public service, and to enable them to pursue active profitable occupations in life. The medical colleges in different parts of India have proved that in despite of difficulties which appeared at first sight to be insurmountable, the highest attainments in medicine and surgery are within the reach of educated natives of India: we shall be ready to aid in the establishment and support of such places of instruction as the medical colleges of Calcutta and Bombay in other parts of India. We have already alluded to the manner in which students should be supplied to those colleges as well as to those for the training of civil engineers. 80. The success of the Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee has shown that, for the purpose of training up persons capable of carrying out the great works which are in progress under Government throughout India, and to qualify the natives of India for the exercise of a profession which, now that the system of railways and public works is being rapidly extended, will afford an opening for a very large number of persons, it is expedient that similar places for practical instruction in civil engineering should be established in other parts of India, and especially in the presidency of Madras, where works of irrigation are so essential, not only to the prosperity of the country, but to the very existence of the people in times of drought and scarcity. The subject has been prominently brought under your notice in the recent reports of the Public Works Commissioners for the different presidencies, and we trust that immediate measures will be taken to supply a deficiency which is, at present but too apparent. 81. We may notice in connexion with these two classes of institutions of an essentially practical character, the schools of industry and design, which have been set on foot from time to time in different parts of India. We have lately received a very encouraging report of that established by Dr. Hunter in Madras, and we have also been informed that Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, with his accustomed munificence, has offered to lay out a very considerable sum upon a like school in Bombay. Such institutions as these will, in the end be self-supporting; but we are ready to assist in their establishment by grants-in-aid for the supply of models, and other assistance which they may advantageously derive from the increased attention which has been paid of late years to such subjects in this country. We enclose you the copy of a report which we have received from Mr. Redgrave upon the progress of the Madras school, which may prove of great value in guiding the efforts of the promoters of any similar institutions which may hereafter be established in India.We have also perceived with satisfaction that the attention of the Council of Education in Calcutta has been lately directed to the subject of attaching to each zillah school Report on Public Instruction, the means of teaching practical agriculture; for Bengal, 1851–1852, Appendix, there is, as Dr. Mouat most truly observes “no page clxxi. single advantage that could be afforded to the vast rural population of India that would equal the introduction of an improved system of agriculture.” 20

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82. The increasing desire of the Mahomedan population to acquire European knowledge has given us much satisfaction. We perceive that the Council of Education of Bengal has this subject under consideration and we shall receive with favour any proposition which may appear to you to be likely to supply with the want of so large a portion of the natives of India. 83. The importance of female education in India cannot be over-rated; and we have observed with pleasure the evidence which is now afforded of an increased desire on the part of many of the natives of India to give a good education to their daughters. By this means a far greater proportional impulse is imparted to the educational and moral tone of the people than by the education of men. We have already observed that schools for females are included among those to which grants-in-aid may be given and we cannot refrain Report on Public Instruction, from expressing our cordial sympathy with the Bengal, 1849–1850, page 2. efforts which are being made in this direction. Our Governor-General in Council has declared in a communication to the Government of Bengal that the Government ought to give to native female education in India its frank and cordial support; in this we heartily concur and we especially approve of the bestowal of marks of honor upon such native gentlemen as Rao Bahadur Maghuabhai Karramchand, who devoted Rs. 20,000 to the foundation of two native female schools in Ahmedabad, as by such means our desire for the extension of female education becomes generally known. 84. Considerable misapprehension appears to exist as to our views with respect to religious instruction in the Government institutions. Those institutions were founded for the benefit of the whole population of India; and in order to effect their object, it was and is, indispensible that the education conveyed in them should be exclusively secular. The Bible is, we understand, placed in the libraries of the colleges and schools and the pupils are able freely to consult it. This is as it should be; and, moreover we have no desire to prevent, or discourage, any explanations which the pupils may, of their own free will, ask from the masters upon the subject of the Christian religion provided that such information be given out of school hours. Such instruction being entirely voluntary on both sides, it is necessary, in order to prevent the slightest suspicion of an intention on our part to make use of the influence of Government for the prupose of proselytism, that no notice shall be taken of it by the inspectors in their periodical visits. 85. Having now furnished the sketch that we propose to give of the scheme for the encouragement of education in India, which we desire to see gradually brought into operation, we proceed to make some observations upon the state of education in the several presidencies, and to point out the parts of our general plan which are most deficient in each. 86. In Bengal, education through the medium of the English language, has arrived at a higher point than in any other part of India. We are glad to receive constant evidence of an increasing demand for such an education, and of the readiness of the natives of different districts to exert themselves for the sake of obtaining it. There are now five Government anglo-vernacular colleges; and zillah 21

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C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 (126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

schools have been established in nearly every district. We confidently expect that the introduction of the system of grants in-aid will very largely increase the number of schools of a superior order; and we hope that before long sufficient provision may be found to exist in many parts of the country for the education of the middle and higher classes independent of the Government institutions, which may then be closed as has been already the case in Burdwan, in consequence of the enlightened conduct of the Rajah of Burdwan, or they may be transferred to local management. 87. Very little has, however, been hitherto done in Bengal for the education of the mass of the people, especially for their instruction through the medium of the vernacular languages. A few vernacular schools were founded by Government in 1844, of which only 33 now remain, with 1,400 pupils, and upon their transfer in April 1852, from the charge of the Board of Revenue to that of the Council of Education, it appeared that “they were in a languishing state and had not fulfilled the expectations formed on their establishment.” 88. We have perused, with considerable interest, the report of Mr. Robinson, Inspector of the Assam schools, of which there appeared to be 74, with upwards of 3,000 pupils. Mr. Robinson’s suggestions for the improvement of the system under which they are managed appear to us to be worthy of consideration and to approach very nearly to the principle upon which vernacular education has been encouraged in the North-Western Provinces. We shall be prepared to sanction such measures as you may approve of to carry out Mr. Robinson’s views. 89. But the attention of the Government of Bengal should be seriously directed to the consideration of some plan for the encouragement of indigenous schools and for the education of the lower classes, which, like that of Mr. Thomason in the North-Western Provinces may bring the benefits of education practically before them, and assist and direct their efforts. We are aware that the object held out by the Government of Agra to induce the agricultural classes to improve their education does not exist in Bengal; but we cannot doubt that there may be found other similar solid advantages attending elementary knowledge, which can be plainly and practically made apparent to the understanding and interests of the lower classes of Bengal. 90. We perceive that the scheme of study pursued in the Oriental Colleges of Bengal is under the consideration of the Council of Education and it appears that they are in an unsatisfactory condition. We have already sufficiently indicated our views as to those colleges, and we should be glad to see them placed upon such a footing as may make them of greater practical utility. The points which you have referred to us, in your letter of the 5th of May, relative to the establishment of a Presidency College in Calcutta, will form the subject of a separate communication. 91. In the North-Western Provinces the demand for education is so limited by circumstances fully detailed by the Lieutenant-Governor in one of his early reports, that it will probably be long before private effort will become energetic enough to supply the place of the establishment, support and management by 22

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Government, of places of instruction of the highest grade where there may be a sufficient reason for their institution. 92. At the same time, the system for the promotion of general education throughout the country, by means of the inspection and encouragement of indigenous schools, has laid the foundation of a great advancement in the education of the lower classes. Mr. Thomason ascertained, from statistical information, the lamentable state of ignorance in which the people were sunk, while the registration of land, which is necessary under the revenue settlement of North-Western Provinces, appeared to him to offer the stimulus of a direct interest for the acquisition of so much knowledge, at least of reading and writing, of the simple rules of arithmetic, and of land measurement, as would enable each man to look after his own rights. 93. He therefore organised a system of encouragement of indigenous schools by means of a constant inspection by zillah and purgannah visitors, under the superintendence of a visitor-general; while, at the headquarters of each tahsildar, a school was established for the purpose of teaching “reading and writing the vernacular languages, both Urdu and Hindi accounts, and the mensuration of land.” A school house is provided by Government, and the masters of the tahsili schools receive a small salary, and are further entitled to the tuition fees paid by the pupils, of whom none are educated gratuitously, except “on recommendation given by village school-masters who may be on the visitor’s list.” A certain sum is annually allotted to each zillah for the reward of deserving teachers and scholars; and the attention of the visitor-general was expressly directed to the preparation of elementary school books in the vernacular language, which are sold through the agency of the zillah and the purgannah visitors. We shall be prepared to sanction the gradual extension of some such system as this to the other districts of the Agra presidency, and we have already referred to it as the model by which the efforts of other presidencies for the same object should be guided. 94. In the presidency of Bombay the character of the education conveyed in the anglo-vernacular colleges is almost, if not quite, equal to that in Bengal; and the Elphinstone Institution is an instance of a college conducted in the main upon the principle of grant-in-aid, which we desire to see more extensively carried out Considerable attention has also been paid in Bombay to education through the medium of the vernacular languages. It appears that 216 vernacular schools are under the management of the Board of Education, and that the number of pupils attending them is more than 12,000. There are three inspectors of the district schools, one of whom (Mahadeo Govind Shastri) is a native of India. The schools are reported to be improving, and masters trained in the Government colleges have been recently appointed to some of them with the happiest effect. These results are very creditable to the presidency of Bombay; and we trust that each Government school will now be made a centre from which the indigenous schools of the adjacent districts may be inspected and encouraged. 95. As the new revenue settlement is extended in the Bombay presidency there will, we apprehend, be found an inducement precisely similar to that which has 23

(126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 (126) Despatch of 1854. —contd.

been taken advantage of by Mr. Thomason, to make it the interest of the agricultural classes to acquire so much knowledge as will enable them to check the returns of the village accountants. We have learned with satisfaction that the subject of gradually making some educational qualification necessary to the confirmation of these hereditary officers is under the consideration of the Government of Bombay, and that a practical educational test is now insisted upon for persons employed in many offices under Government. 96. In Madras, where little has yet been done by Government to promote the education of the mass of the people, we can only remark with statisfaction that the educational efforts of Christian missionaries have been more successful among the Tamil population than in any other part of India; and that the presidency of Madras offers a fair field for the adoption of our scheme of education in its integrity by founding Government anglo-vernacular institutions only where no such places of instruction at present exist, which might, by grants-in-aid and other assistance adequately supply the educational wants of the people. We also perceive with satisfaction that Mr. Daniel Elliot, in a recent and most able minute upon the subject of education, has stated that Mr. Thomason’s plan for the encouragement of indigenous schools might readily be introduced into the Madras presidency, where the riotwari settlement offers a similar practical inducement to the people for the acquisition of elementary knowledge. 97. We have now concluded the observations which we think it is necessary to address to you upon the subject of the education of the natives of India. We have declared that our object is to extend European knowledge throughout all classes of the people. We have shown that this object must be effected by means of the English language in the higher branches of institution, and by that of the vernacular languages of India to the great mass of the people. We have directed such a system of general superintendence and inspection by Government to be established as well, if properly carried out, give efficiency and uniformity to your efforts. We propose by the institution of universities to provide the highest test and encouragement of liberal education. By sanctioning grants-in-aid of private efforts, we hope to call to the assistance of Government private exertions and private liberality. The higher classes will now be gradually called upon to depend more upon themselves; and your attention has been more especially directed to the education of the middle and lower classes, both by the establishment of fitting schools for this purpose and by means of a careful encouragement of the native schools which exist, and have existed from time immemorial, in every village, and none of which perhaps cannot, in some degree, be made available to the end we have in view. We have noticed some particular points connected with education, and we have reviewed the condition of the different presidencies in this respect, with a desire to point out what should be imitated, and what is wanting, in each. 98. We have only to add, in conclusion, that we commit this subject to you with a sincere belief that you will cordially co-operate with us in endeavouring to effect the great object we have in hand, and that we desire it should be authoritatively communicated to the principal officers of every district in India, that henceforth 24

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they are to consider it to be an important part of their duty, not only in the social intercourse with the natives of India, which we always learnt with pleasure that they maintain, but also with all the influence of their high position, to aid in the extension of education, and to support the inspectors of schools by every means in their power. 99. We believe that the measures we have determined upon are calculated to extend the benefits of education throughout India; but, at the same time, we must add that we are not sanguine enough to expect any sudden, or even speedy, results to follow from their adoption. To imbue a vast and ignorant population with a general desire for knowledge, and to take advantage of that desire when excited to improve the means for diffusing education amongst them, must be a work of many years; which, by the blessing of Divine Providence, may largely conduce to the moral and intellectual improvement of the mass of the natives of India. 100. As a Government, we can do no more than direct the efforts of the people, and aid them wherever they appear to require most assistance. The result depends more upon them than upon us; and although we are fully aware that the measures we have now adopted will involve in the end a much larger expenditure upon education from the revenues of India, or, in other words, from the taxation of the people of India, than is at present so applied, we are convinced, with Sir Thomas Munro, in words used many years since, that any expense which may be incurred for this object “will be amply re-paid by the improvement of the country; for the general diffusion of knowledge is inseparably followed by more orderly habits, by increasing industry, by a test for the comforts of life, by exertion to acquire them, and by the growing prosperity of the people.” We are, etc., (Signed)

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J. OLIPHANT. E. MACNAGHTEN. C. MILLS. R. ELLICE. T. W. HOBB. W. J. EASTWICK. R. D. MANGLES. J. P. WILLOUGHBY. J. H. ASTELL. F. CURRIE.

(126) Despatch of 1854. —concld.

2 ‘LETTER, 10TH MARCH 1854, FROM THE COUNCIL OF EDUCATION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF BENGAL’, IN J. A. RICHEY, SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART 2 1840–1859 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1922), 119–125

(41) Letter, dated 10th March 1854, from the Council of Education to the Government of Bengal. “I have the honor, by direction of the Council of Education, to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, No. 527, dated 21st OctoPresent: ber 1853, conveying to the Council the views of The Hon’ble Sir J. W. Colvile, the Most Noble the Governor of Bengal upon President. the various questions relating to the Government The Hon’ble F. J. Halliday. C. Allen, Esq. Educational Institutions at Calcutta, submitted J. P. Grant, Esq. by the Council in my letter of the 4th of August Dr. J. Jackson. last, and directing the Council to work out the Baboo Russomoy Dutt. details of the extended plan, whereof the outline ” Ram Gopal Ghose. is drawn in paragraphs 22 to 44 of your letter ” Rama Parasad Roy. under reply, and to submit, in a complete form, Dr. Mouat for final sanction, a scheme framed upon the general design indicated by the Most Noble the Governor.

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“The main feature of the plan is the establishment of a new Presidency College, in a fitting building to be erected for the purpose; and as this part of the project when the question was last before His Lordship was complicated by our then existing relations with the Hindoo College, the Council will first proceed to explain their proceedings connected with the Hindoo College, under the very liberal instructions 26

(41) Letter of 10-31854.

‘LETTER, 10TH MARCH 1854’

of His Lordship upon this head; whereof they are happy to have it in their power to report that the result has been entirely satisfactory.” “The first step taken by the Council was to communicate a copy of your letter to the Hereditary Governors and Managers of the Hindoo Arrangement with the Hindoo College, and to request them to state their views and College Management. wishes upon the terms offered by His Lordship.” “It has been already intimated that the only persons in the Management of the Hindoo College, who had any vested or permanent rights or privileges connected with the Institution, were the Maharaja of Burdwan, and Baboo Prosunno Coomar Tagore and his brother. “The former intimated that, as far as his interests in the College were concerned, he had not the slightest hesitation in at once resigning the entire management of the College on its new footing, and the scholarships now attached to it and hereafter to be created with its funds, wholly into the hands of the Council of Education upon the terms proposed by the Most Noble the Governor of Bengal. “Baboo Prosunno Coomar Tagore, after stating that he was individually opposed to any exclusive system in education or in other matters, resigned his trust in the following terms:— “Although as a trustee and the representative of the surviving co-heir of my late father, one of the principal founders of the Hindoo College, I cannot be a consenting party to revolutionise the College, yet in consideration of many circumstances of importance, I beg leave, with the concurrence of my brother, hereby to transfer all the rights and privileges we possess in the Institution and its funds to the Government, who may in the exercise of sound discretion, remodel the Institution for the benefit of the public at large, in such manner as it may think proper. “Baboo Prosunno Coomar Tagore further expressed a hope that the public spirited conduct of the original founders of the Hindoo College might be placed on permanent record, in” some prominent memorial in the remodelled seminary, by which their names might be associated with the College through every period of its existence, and be embalmed in the grateful recollection of future generations.” “Baboo Russomoy Dutt, an elective member of the management of the Hindoo College, intimated his willingness at once to make over the College unconditionally to the management of the Council of Education, as his opinion had always been that it should be thrown open on equal terms to all classes of the community. “Baboo Ausootosh Dey, another elective member of the Management, deeply regretted the organic change proposed to be introduced into the College, and retired from the Management, as he had no opinion to offer on the subject. “The remaining Native members of the Management expressed no opinion upon the matter; their views, if they entertained any, are Baboo Debendernath Tagore. Baboo Sreekishan Singh. therefore unknown to the Council. “After the receipt of the documents above referred to, while the subject was still under consideration, the Hindoo College Management resigned its functions, and made over the College to the charge of the Council of Education in the following resolution passed on the 11th of January last, being the last meeting of the Hindoo 27

(41) Letter of 10-3-1854. —contd.

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 (41) Letter of 10-3-1854. —contd.

College Management. Baboo Russomoy Dutt brought to the notice of the meeting that Baboo Prosunno Coomar Tagore had intimated, upon receiving notice of the present meeting, that he conceived he had surrendered his place in the Management, when he placed his rights as Hereditary Governor at the disposal of the Government, and did not intend to take any further part in the Management, and that no other Native member of the Management was in the habit of attending the meetings; whereupon, it was, on the suggestion of Baboo Russomoy Dutt, resolved, that the functions of the Hindoo College Management shall henceforth cease, and that the Principal be directed to take charge of the Office, reporting to the Council of Education directly; and it was further resolved by the President and Dr. Mouat, that in reporting this resolution to the Council of Education, the attention of that body be drawn to the long and able services of Baboo Russomoy Dutt, as Secretary and Member of the Hindoo College Management.” “Thus, in relation to the Hindoo College, there only remain to be determined upon, before putting the new plan into operation, first, the future appropriation, in connexion with the new plan, of Hindoo College Scholarships, in such manner as may be most consistent with the known wishes and intentions of the subscribers; and secondly, the perpetuation of the memory of the original founders of the Hindoo College, as proposed by Baboo Prosunno Coomar Tagore. “This last object, in which the Council of Education heartily sympathize with the representations of the founders, will be promoted to a great extent by the perpetuation of the scholarships in the manner about to be suggested, and it will be effected completely, the Council believe, by the erection of a Marble Tablet in a prominent position in the present Hindoo College building, on which should be inscribed a brief history of the origin of the College, with the names of those who aided in its formation. Should any corresponding tablets be erected in the new Presidency College building perhaps the sense felt of the true value of the services done by those Hindoo gentlemen to the cause of education in Bengal, might be expressed becomingly, be recording upon a table in the new building to which all classes will have access, the fact that the way for the foundation of the General Presidency College in 1854, has been first opened by the founders of the Hindoo College in 1816. “The first object will be best effected, in the opinion of the Council, by assigning the scholarships in question to students in the Hindoo School, which the Junior Department of the Hindoo College will become The Hon’ble W. W. Bird. after the closing of the Senior Department of that The Right Hon’ble Sir Edward College; such scholarships to be held at the PresiRyan. dency College, to be of the nature of Bursaries, and Baboo Dwarkanath Tagore. to be so designated. Called by that name, they will not interfere with any general system of scholarships that may be in operation. The special scholarships founded by general subscription in honor of particular individuals, as named in the margin, will retain as Bursaries the names of the gentlemen in whose honor they were founded. Two scholarships, founded by sepcial grants from the Maharaja of Burdwan will retain, as Bursaries, the name of the founder.

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‘LETTER, 10TH MARCH 1854’

“Other scholarships are now given in honor of five donors of large sums to the Hindoo College, to an amount equal to the income arising from what remains of their donations. These scholarships also will retain, as Bursaries, the names of the donors. To these may be added, as a new Maharaja of Burdwan. foundation, Bursaries to the value of Rupees 54 Baboo Gopeemohun Tagore. a month; that being nearly the annual income at Raja Gopeemohan Deb. present rates derived from what remains of the Baboo Joykissen Singh. funds of the Hindoo College, after due reducBaboo Gunganarain Doss. tion on account of the donations of the five great donors above mentioned. These Bursaries may be called, in memory of the Institution by whose funds they are created, Hindoo College Bursaries.

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“All difficulties connected with the Hindoo College having thus, the Council hope, been disposed of in a manner which cannot fail to be satisfactory to all parties, the Council proceed, in compliance with Detailed plan of a Presidency His Lordship’s directions, to submit, in detail, College. the following complete scheme for carrying into execution the new plan of Government Educational Institutions at the Presidency whereof His Lordship has already determined the outlines. “As has been observed, the leading feature of this plan is the establishment, in a suitable edifice to be erected for the purpose, of a General College, to be called ‘the Presidency College;’ to be open to all youths of every caste and creed who pass the highest standard of school education; with which General College the existing Medical College, in all its branches, shall be united; and to which, besides the course of study now taught at the Hindoo College, other Professorships of practical science and art, whose establishment, as His Lordship observes, cannot be long postponed, shall be added; the whole to be arranged so as readily to receive youths from all parts of the Presidency; a College in short, which, when fully developed, shall be an Educational Institution of the highest order, complete in itself, and worthy of the Metropolis of India, and of the British Government. “As this noble plan, for want of any fitting college building, must be in some degree prospective, and as future development is a part of the design, the Council think that the best way of explaining the detailed and complete scheme which they have been required to submit, is to set forth, first, their notion of what this College in its details ought ultimately to be, in order fully to realize His Lordship’s views; next, the arrangements which they think ought to be made now for its first constitution; and lastly, the progressive measures which they deem most likely to ensure its full development hereafter. “It is, the Council believe, of first importance, that the whole College should be in one building. There must be at least two great departments, the Medical Branch, and the General Branch, and to these the Council trust that two other branches will be added as separate departments, namely a School of Law and a 29

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C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 (41) Letter of 10-3-1854. —contd.

School of Civil Engineering. All objects will be best provided for in one building. One building can contain several rooms, comBuilding. mon to all departments of the College, such for examples, as halls, examination rooms, libraries and offices. But besides this, many lectures will be attended by students in various departments. For example the Chemical and Botanical classes are essential parts of a medical course, but they are not essential parts of a General College; and of the Natural Philosophy classes, which are certainly essential parts of a General College, it may, the Council believe, be safely said that as medical student is not fairly trained, who, at least, has not placed in his power to attend such classes conveniently and without loss of time. With regard to students of Civil Engineering, the same may be said of the classes of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Natural History, (not to mention again the Botany and Chemistry classes), which are no less essential to a General College than to a thorough course of Civil Engineering, which, it is hoped, will include, in this College, a fit preparation for the scientific and economic geologist. From such considerations as these, the economy in public money and private time, which consolidation in one building, as well as in one institution, secures, will be obvious.

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“There should be four distinct branches or Departments in the College, into one or other of which every student should enter. In Courses of Study and Diplomas. each branch a distinct course of education should be laid down, for passing successfully through which a distinct diploma should be given. Thus a diploma would be of the nature of a degree in any particular faculty. The four branches should consist of a General, a Medical, a Legal and a Civil Engineering branch. “The term of study should be as follows in each branch:— Years. The General Branch not less than ....................................... 4 ” Medical ” ” ” ” ......................................... 5 ” Legal ” ” ” ” ......................................... 3 ” Civil Engineering not less than .................................. 3 “Diplomas of proficiency should be given to students who have gone through the whole term in any one of these courses, and who have exhibited adequate proficiency at the final examination; and to none others. “The general and medical courses of study should be arranged so as to be suitable for youths who have just thoroughly mastered a school course. The legal and civil engineering courses of study should be so arranged that a student may conveniently quit the general course and enter either of them after he has passed his second year in the general branch; also so that either of them may be conveniently entered by 30

‘LETTER, 10TH MARCH 1854’

any one from the provinces or elsewhere, not previously a student of the Presidency College, who passes a senior scholarship examination, and pays the matriculation fee. There should be nothing to prevent a student who has taken his diploma in the general branch, from entering any one of the special branches, if so minded.

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“Hitherto, of the above branches of Philosophy, sometimes one, sometimes another, and sometimes none has formed part of a year’s course. The propriety of their forming parts of a collegiate course of instruction has been thus, from time to time, practically admitted; but in the infancy of our Educational Institutions, arrangements for teaching them systematically could not be made. This defect, the Council propose to supply in the Presidency College.

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“But the Council venture to ask authority for making at once a step still further Additional Staff recommended in advance, which can be made at comparatively a small cost. at once.

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“In the Calcutta Mudrissa the Council will carry into effect, from the opening of the next Session, all the changes which have Mudrissa. already been communicated to and approved of by the Government. “It is proposed to fix, for the present, the fee that is to be levied from the pupils of the Arabic, Persian, and English Classes, at one Rupee a month. “The Collingah Branch School will be opened to all classes of the community from the 15th of June next, and will be organized Collingah School upon the same scale and plan in all respects as the Colootollah Branch School. “The Council believe that the plan above Conclusion. detailed, if approved, will carry into immediate effect the wishes of His Lordship. I have the honor to be, Sir, Your most obedient Servant, FRED. J. MOUAT, Secretary, Council of Education.

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(41) Letter of 10-3-1854. —concld.

3 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FOR INDIA IN THE MOTHER TONGUE: A STATEMENT ON THE FORMATION OF A CHRISTIAN VERNACULAR EDUCATION SOCIETY (LONDON: WILLIAM NICHOLS, 1855), 3–41

AFTER the proofs of the character of the Hindus brought to view by recent events, it is not to be supposed that any Christian can contentedly resign himself to see the next generation of that numerous people trained up in their old ways. Such a prospect would be not only painful, but dreadful, even to some who could unmoved see the present generation pass away as they are. Yet no provision is made against it. Had we restored all the means of giving young Hindus a Christian training which existed before the outbreak, nine hundred and ninety-seven out of every thousand must still grow up under the unmitigated influence of idolatry. Millions of grandfathers and grandmothers, almost entering upon a future life, are daily teaching their grandchildren, only entering upon this, to offer their first act of worship to serpents and bulls, kites and monkeys, images of frightful deformity, and ideal beings who impersonate the most depraved imaginations of man. The future men, the future mothers of India, are growing up by tens of millions; and if left to the training prepared for them by their own religion, the next generation of British subjects will count far more worshippers of the hideous Siva, than of the holy and redeeming God: for all other classes of her Majesty’s subjects are outnumbered by the Hindus. Philanthropy is of three kinds:—physical, which pities a suffering body; intellectual, which pities a vacant mind; spiritual, which pities a misled and erring soul. To the first we make no appeal, though it is deeply interested in our object; and the second is always included in the last: for he who loves the soul, is most desirous to train and furnish the mind. Before this Christian philanthropy, wherever it exists, in our nation or others, we would place the spectacle of a population nearly as numerous as that of the whole continent of Europe, the children of which, intelligent and teachable as those of any race on earth, are certain, with

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exceptions distressingly rare, to be brought up in dark superstitions, prolific of miseries and gross immorality. Is this to be? By a strange providence, the whole of this multitudinous people are now under the government of England, and have a claim upon us for all the advantages we can confer; though themselves boasting a literature far more ancient than the name of Britain, are not only willing, but generally anxious, to place their children under instruction conducted by Europeans. Even the Brahmans, though the oldest and most exclusive priesthood in existence, claiming a Divine right, conferred in the very act of creation, to be the sole readers of the Veda and teachers of mankind, so far abate their pretensions as freely to send their sons to our schools. To those who have not habituated themselves to consider the vastness of India, it would probably appear a wild assertion, that were half a million zealous teachers placed in that country at once, it would not be more than was necessary to offer an opportunity of Christian education to all its rising youth. Yet this statement would be correct. Even the public returns, confessedly imperfect, give the population of India as one hundred and eighty millions; and if one in six be taken as the proportion within the school-going age, this is thirty millions, or sixty pupils each for half a million of teachers. Every one of these is at this day receiving his or her training for the present life, and that which is to follow; and alas, what a training! Looking at the wonderful opening which the Lord has placed before His church, and at the fearful fact that unless some great and hitherto unattempted movement be made, the overwhelming majority of the Hindus must hereafter be formed to the same courses as in the past; some, who have long desired and prayed for the regeneration of India, have heard, in the shocks of thelate crisis, a call to Christians to unite in some effort to bless that country generally with Christian light. Direct evangelistic labour can best be carried out by the various Missionary Societies, pursuing their own plans, and reinforcing their establishments. It therefore appeared, that the educational enterprise offered the most suitable field for a combined undertaking; and that a Society formed by Christians of different churches, joining hand in hand, in the humble resolve, by the help of their Blessed Head and Master, to forget all things, but the call to train the future millions of India in the knowledge of His glorious Gospel, would form the best and most lasting memorial of the sore chastisements and wondrous deliverances by which Providence has appealed to our nation in recent events. On the distinct understanding, then, that it is a memorial Work, undertaken at the solemn moment when the unfaithfulness of England was so painfully brought to remembrance, and the horrors of a heathen and caste education so strikingly displayed; those into whose hearts the design has been put, would now affectionately call upon their fellow-Christians throughout the land to join in founding a Society, which shall, by God’s blessing, benefit millions yet unborn. They would say, Let it be done while yet the blood of our murdered kinsfolk and of martyred native Christians is scarcely dry; and thus let us repay the heathen by a greater

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effort for the good of their children, and their children’s children, than the people of one land ever made for those of another. In issuing this appeal the Provisional Committee would say a few words as to I. Their Principles and their Plans. II. The present State of Education in India. III. The Insufficiency of all but Christian Education. I. In Principle they simply desire to be Christian. They seek to train Hindu children as a Christian duty; they believe that the highest benefit they can confer on them, is the knowledge of Christian truth; they aim at leading them to understand and seek the great Christian salvation; and they pray for one thing, that God may make the Society’s labours instrumental in bringing them as individuals to lead a Christian life, as communities to form a Christian nation. Less than this they do not aim at, and will not profess. They seek no co-operation among their fellow-countrymen, no access to the Hindus, of which this avowal would deprive them. They will rejoice in the spread of all knowledge, will use their own influence to diffuse sound general education; but their “heart’s desire and prayer to God” is, that they may be honoured as fellow-labourers with Missionaries and others, in extending the kingdom of Christ over the people of India. While they seek not the co-operation of any who cannot enter into this their chief design, they invite, ay, earnestly solicit and entreat, that of all who can. They hope to be joined by Christians of all denominations, who for this end can work together, and pray together. Believing that all their work ought to be carried on in a spirit of prayer, they cannot meet without united supplication. They trust to see persons of great varieties of opinion, and of many branches of the Christian church, brought together for this good work; and in common invocation of the Blessed Trinity, common faith in the one atoning Redeemer and one Holy Spirit, and common labour to spread the glorious Gospel, learning to love one another, and advance Christian union at home. They would also carry out this catholic principle in selecting their agents, and in relating themselves to fellow-labourers. Choosing none of whose true piety, of whose steadfastness in the essentials of Christian truth, they were not persuaded, they would impose no restraints, but would rather leave each man unfettered to teach all he believed and valued, being satisfied that he would teach substantial Christianity, than endeavour to conform all to some general standard to which none would object As to their Plans: they propose to undertake those departments of educational labour which appear to be most open to a new and united body, and most directly conducive to large and pervasive results. Direct instruction in the English language, and also in the vernaculars, forms part of the work of nearly all Missionary Societies, and will continue to do so. With this, therefore, it is not proposed to interfere: they would not supersede one Mission school; although, if blessed in

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their own sphere, they would hope that hereafter they may not only lighten the care of Missionaries as to education, but on many fields, by schools, prepare the way for them; and in all things they look to them as their fellow-helpers. But their present design is not the establishment of schools simply for direct instruction. Institutions for training masters to teach in their mother tongue, and the preparation of Christian books in the various languages of India, are the two great objects they propose. The profession of schoolmaster is honourable in every village; and wherever, one appeared who had the advantages of a training by Europeans, with such books and apparatus as our educational systems can furnish, he would soon establish his claims in preference to untrained competitors. It might be difficult to induce those who had been educated through the medium of English thus to devote themselves to village teaching; but men raised above their neighbours by learning, which they could freely diffuse among them, and which did not offer the bait of public employment or European society, would naturally find both livelihood and respect by teaching. The Missionary and Government schools, the promptings of self-interest, and the energy of their masters, will combine to advance the knowledge of English among the Hindus. It may reasonably be expected to become to them what Greek, Latin, and French united are in Europe,—the language of theological and classic treasures, and of travel and polite life. Its advancement is desirable on many grounds; and good vernacular education will both stimulate a taste for the literature it contains, and train the mind so as to facilitate its acquisition. Experience has proved this in both Irish and Welsh schools. The knowledge of English opens the stores of Christian literature to the native mind; but it is only the use of the vernaculars that will give Christian thought the plastic power of the mother tongues. And mother tongues are the moulding instrument for all communities. No people has ever been Christianized through a foreign language. The miracle of Pentecost indicated for ever the duty of the Christian church to tell her blessed message to “every man in his own tongue wherein he was born.” In Wales the Reformation adopted the mother tongue, in Ireland it trusted to the English; and what a lesson does the difference of result teach! In all the Normal Institutions which the projected Society may be enabled to establish, it will be left to the Local Committee to decide whether the students shall be taught English or not; but the object in view is to supplant the ignorant heathen teacher, in the ordinary schools of India, by one who has had a Christian training; and the corrupting school-books by such as will both give sound knowledge and Christian standards of thought and morals. Those who propose such an undertaking feel its boldness and magnitude. The bare thought of attempting to change the schoolmasters and school-books of a continent is one that the largest minds might long revolve, ever seeing new aspects of solemnity, new consequences and hopes. India has thirteen cultivated languages, and many minor dialects. All of the former must be employed; some of the latter are too important to be overlooked. The work of preparing books for school purposes, and also for a popular literature, in

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thirteen languages, may seem interminable, as indeed at first do all undertakings for such a multitude of human beings as peoples India. Yet great facility exists for translating from one language into another; natives who could not prepare a work being quite capable of rendering one from some other Indian tongue into their own. A good book produced in any one language might, with funds at command, be made the common property of all India, in a comparatively short period. The least that could be ultimately contemplated by such a Society as is now proposed, would be one Normal School, say for one hundred teachers, in each of the thirteen great languages. How inadequate this would be, will appear from the fact that some languages of India are spoken by as many as the French or English in Europe; several by more than the Spanish. Yet, each efficient Normal School will require great outlay for buildings, for a staff of able and well-trained European masters sufficient to provide against failure by illness, for apparatus and incidental expenses. Even thirteen such cannot be raised without an income which, on the present scale of our ideas, would be considered great. When to this is added the work of preparing, printing, and translating books, another large claim for outlay will arise; an outlay which might, with unspeakable advantage to India, be pushed to an immense extent. As a commencement it would be desirable to establish one Normal School in each Presidency; and this object the Provisional Committee would set before the mind of those who are disposed to assist them, as one to be immediately aimed at. With regard to the preparation of books, the existence of the South India School Book Society offers great assistance. Support rendered to it would at once accomplish the object to a certain extent. II. At present, education is found in India under three forms:— NATIVE EDUCATION. GOVERNMENT EDUCATION. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. Native Education, such as it is, is withheld from one half of the population,—all the females. By immemorial usage, the knowledge of letters is denied to every woman, except the unhappy girls who are devoted to the temples and prostitution. This single custom enlists the finest feelings of the women against their own enlightenment, dooms every man in the country to be the son of a miserably ignorant mother, and thus insures a narrow-minded and superstitious posterity. To the women, we must add the whole body of the Outcastes, those who are considered as destitute of Caste, including the wild hill tribes, as well as those found mixed with the ordinary population. These, in all, are probably little less numerous than the people of the British Isles;1 and though a few may manage to obtain some instruction from native sources, the rule that the millions of the Outcastes are utterly untaught is scarcely broken. We may further add the Ryots, the cotter population, who, though possessed of Caste, seldom learn even to read, though

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here and there one may be found who can do so. The educated natives chiefly belong to the three highest classes,—the Priests, Soldiers, and Traders, with some artisans. But a large proportion of the soldiers and traders are without even the elements of education. From these facts it is obvious that, to a large majority of the Hindu people, in offering them the benefits of education, we appear only in the light of benefactors; for those of their own countrymen who held the key of knowledge have, in all past generations, concealed it from them. And even those who can obtain Native Education soon feel that its quality, methods, and apparatus, are very inferior to those of the instruction given by Englishmen. Every native town, and most villages of much importance, have their schools; and at certain points exist superior institutions, conducted by teachers of repute, which may be considered as a kind of colleges. These “indigenous schools,” as they are called by the authorities of the North-West Provinces, form the natural basis for any movement attempting a national education of the Hindus. Class education may be given in central stations, and in foreign tongues; but any effect upon the whole social organization of India must be produced by pervasive and popular instruction, including market towns and rural villages. As to the Quality of Native Education, it generally consists in reading, writing, and some knowledge of arithmetic; but not one educated Hindu in a thousand can read, like a European, as fluently as he would speak. On the contrary, they proceed in a slow recitative, dwelling on the syllables, hesitating, turning back, and repeating. All their learning upon physical subjects (beyond mathematics, which extremely few know) is but a progress into denser and yet denser ignorance. In saying this we assume that false ideas of an object constitute greater ignorance than no idea at all; as, for instance, that a man who had no conception where London was situated, or what was its size, would be less hopelessly ignorant than one who believed, on what he considered unquestionable authority, that it was a fishing village in Malta. So a poor Ryot, who never formed a conception of the size or shape of the earth, is less hopelessly ignorant than a learned Brahman, who believes, on the authority of his sacred books,2 that it is many millions of miles in extent, formed of seven circular continents, like the stripes on a target, each with an ocean to match, which are respectively composed of salt water, toddy, sugar-cane juice, clarified butter, curds, milk, and fresh water. The progress of native learning in morals is analogous to that in physical science; a progress into deeper and deeper darkness. Principles of morality which, when announced in Christendom, carry a holy meaning, are often found in Hindu writings, and supposed by Europeans to have the same force as with ourselves. But the tales and fables by which they are illustrated in native literature, frequently go completely to pervert their intention, and turn them into sanctions of vice. The histories of every god, the pleasures and incidents of heavenly life, many of the

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actions which are brought before the Hindu student with the claims of superhuman sanctity, embody the vilest passions of the human heart, and exaggerate their indulgence. The effect of all this upon the highest order of native mind may, to some extent, be judged from the following passage in a controversial work against Christianity, by Mora Bhatta Dandekara, of Bombay, printed by Dr. Wilson, with his own able “Exposure of Hinduism:”— “Our opponents are accustomed to ask,—When did Krishna perform any good deeds? In his behaviour, say they, there is nothing but sin; not a particle of righteousness is to be found. We answer that this is not the case with him alone. Of all the numerous gods which have sprung from the one God, and yet are no more than one God, (in the same manner as, though there are severally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is but one God,) of all these the procedure resembles a good deal that of Krishna. Krishna’s committing theft with the cowherds, and playing the adulterer with their wives,— Shiva’s spreading death and destruction by his curses, and behaving indecently with Párwatì,—Bramhá’s looking on his own daughter with the eye of a paramour, and making a most filthy disclosure of his lust,—Ráma’s crying out, ‘Sítá, Sítá,’ and embracing the trees in a fit of frenzy,—Paráshara’s cohabiting with a fisherman’s daughter;—such abominable transactions as these, too bad to be even mentioned,—Are these, you will say, what you adduce and place on a level with the good acts of Christ? What merit will accrue to you from listening to the tale that narrates them? and as for purity of heart, not the least of it can be obtained by means of them. As by listening to love-songs lust is inflamed, and by hearing of the feats of Sindia and Holkar the spirit is stirred, so by hearing of the deeds of the gods, formerly referred to, men will only be prompted to wickedness. Regarding this objection we maintain, agreeably to the word of God, that all these deeds are, to many, virtuous actions in the gods that performed them. We maintain farther, that by hearing and speaking of them the ignorance of the imprisoned spirit, and its consequent subjection to passion, are removed, and that thus they have as much power as image-worship itself, to create in the soul pure and virtuous dispositions. These deeds, when narrowly considered, are even far better than those virtuous actions of Christ’s that you mention. To you alone, who view them with an evil eye, they appear vicious actions.”

If Native Education, as to its quality, be poor in a mental, and deleterious in a moral, point of view, it is also verycumbrous in its methods. In some of the languages of India, a boy is considered as doing pretty well who learns his alphabet in three months. In teaching Sanscrit, it is not unusual to make the pupil commit the whole Lexicon to memory; and in other cases great quantities of poetry, the meaning of which he never knows. And these cumbrous methods are aggravated by a miserable apparatus. In the ordinary native school, the boys are seated on a sanded floor, which is the whole school apparatus for the junior classes. They learn by forming letters in the sand with the finger. From this the only advance is to the iron style for a pen, and the cadjan-leaf for paper, or to miserably coarse paper and a reed pen. No printed books, or slates, or maps, or tables in clear type; so that, when the European Teacher appears with his well-adapted apparatus, he is at once felt to have as great an advantage over the 38

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native Master, as, in travelling, the railway has over the palankeen. Of course, in some of the large towns, the natives begin to use our apparatus; but every invention borrowed from us is a confession that our claim to be their instructors is well founded. And even in the villages, so far from the Masters showing the immovable attachment to custom which might be looked for, Missionaries first, and more lately the Government of the North-West Provinces, have found it very easy to introduce into the common village school any improvement, in books and modes of teaching, which the Masters were capable of adopting. In 1838 Mr. Hodson, stationed at Goobbee, in a remote part of the Mysore, took the village Schoolmasters in several places under his direction, giving them three or four rupees a month, and obtaining in return the regular use of the Christian Scriptures and Catechisms, and such other school-books as then existed in the Canarese language, with a right of visiting and inspecting the school at any time; and even of using it as a preaching-place, and bringing all the boys of the advanced classes monthly to the Mission-house, for a joint examination. Subsequently, as we shall hereafter notice, the able and lamented Mr. Thomason, as Lieutenant-Governor of Agra, adopted substantially the same system with the exception of the Christian element. Many such circumstances encourage the belief that, if Christians will, they may supplant all others in training the future generations of India; a conviction which is strengthened by the condition of native literature. Although for many ages poetic works and scientific treatises have existed, they are all written in archaic dialects, and scarcely any of the numerous languages of India have a prose literature in a style “understanded of the people.” In many of those tongues, it has been the appointment of Providence that the translation of the Bible shall be, as in our own mother tongue, the first great work in popular and yet standard prose. The possession of three powers—the printingpress, a familiar style, and sound Western knowledge—places us in a position of advantage, from which we may, if only faithful to our privileges, take into Christian hands the formation of the future schools and household books of all India.

GOVERNMENT EDUCATION. WHEN the British Government in India first moved in respect to Education, it was not with a view to teach the English language, European science, or the Christian religion; but to provide judicial officers, well trained in Hindu and Mohammedan law. The natural effect of its first efforts was to revive the study of the sacred languages of these two religions, and to give fresh vigour to their social code, derived from European sanction and energy. In the year 1823, a Committee of Public Instruction was appointed. Attention continued to be directed to the study of Sanscrit and Arabic, till, “as it was found that, after hiring students to attend the Arabic college, and having translations made for their use at an expense of thirty-two shillings a page, neither students nor 39

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Teachers could understand them, it was proposed to employ the translator as the interpreter of his own writings, at a further expense of three hundred rupees a month.”3 In these schools, as in the former ones, a system was established which, we believe, never had been adopted by any Government in the course of history; namely, that the rulers of the country placed their own religion at a public disadvantage, by formally excluding its sacred books, while its first object in the original schools had been to promote the study of those of Mohammedans and Hindus, thereby exalting the one and discrediting the other. At the same time the institution of Caste was recognised; Sanscrit colleges being devoted to Brahmans, Arabic ones chiefly to Mohammedans, and even the AngloIndian one, called the Hindu College, being denied to all who were not of good Caste. No change took place in this system till 1835, when it was resolved, under the government of Lord William Bentinck, to introduce the English language, and circulate English books, instead of Sanscrit and Arabic. In the schools founded on this system, the claims of Caste were disregarded, and boys of all Castes united in the same classes. Another regulation was considered as a great advance, namely, that the Bible, though shut out from the school course, should be allowed a place on the shelf of the library, in common with Hindu and Mohammedan works.4 This dread of manifesting respect for their own religion had not been uniformly shown by the East India Company; for, as we learn from a pamphlet published in 1813, by Mr. C. S. John, of the Danish Mission at Tranquebar, the Court of Directors, in the days of Swartz, committed itself to the support of free schools under Christian management; ordering “the Honourable Government of Madras to encourage these schools, by granting £100 annually to each which might be established.” An order which was to some extent acted upon; for he adds, “Only a small number were established, for which 500 pagodas per annum were granted by the Honourable Government, which afterwards was increased to 1,000.” In 1849, the policy of excluding Christianity from Government schools received a singular illustration, in a fact stated by the Rev. P. L. Sandberg, formerly Principal of the Church Missionary College at Benares, in a letter to one of the public journals, under date of November 5th, 1857:— “In the year 1849 I was in Calcutta; it so happened that about that time a native gentleman of high Caste, having embraced Christianity by baptism, was dismissed by the authorities from a post of responsibility in the Hindu Government College.”

The Government of Ceylon introduced the Bible into its schools; and the Marquis of Tweeddale, while Governor of Madras, wished to do the same; but the Court of Directors refused its sanction. In 1854, by order of the Home Government, a principle suggested by the Hon. J. F. Thomas, Member of Council at 40

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Madras, in his minute of June 26th, 1851, and afterwards recommended by distinguished witnesses before Parliament in 1853, was adopted. Grants in aid were to be given to any schools which should furnish the required amount of secular instruction, of which the Government would certify itself by regular inspection, leaving the conductors of the schools free to teach whatever religion they might desire to promote, without any interference on the part of the Government Inspector, or even cognizance being taken of it. Such schools, however, as were wholly supported by the Government were to be, as before, strictly non-Christian; the Bible not only being shut out from the course of instruction, but voluntary inquiries on the part of the pupils, as to its sacred contents, being forbidden in school hours. Even the permission of such inquiries out of school is described as if it were, in some sort, a concession.5 Less than a year before the outbreak of the mutinies, a noble Lord, representing the Queen of England, and at the head of his Council, in a formal Government document seemed to place the name of our adorable Redeemer on the same footing as those of Siva and Mohammed: and even that was done with a view of honouring it; for his Lordship was remonstrating against the total exclusion of that sacred name from passages in ordinary school books; a practice to which some Government teachers had resorted, under apprehension of displeasure, should they be accused of admitting anything that savoured of the religion we, as a nation, profess.6 Later still, in the present year, the authorities at Calcutta arranged with Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society to give them grants in aid for schools to be established among the Sonthals, a wild tribe having no more Caste than our Gypsies, and less regarded by the ordinary Hindus than these latter by our nation. By a violent outbreak these poor savages had caused much trouble even to the powerful Government of Lord Dalhousie; and yet the Missionaries had secured their confidence, and a prospect existed of giving them the blessings of Christian education. Yet no sooner did our Home Government learn what had been done in India, than it disallowed the arrangement, and ordered schools to be substituted from which the Bible and Christian books should be excluded. It is said that the local officer, on his own responsibility, refused to carry out this order; but, be that as it may, the Government issued it, as the latest, and let us humbly hope as the last, manifestation of a principle which has nearly all along dictated its course in respect to education.

Extent of Government Education. Government education, however faulty in principle, was projected on so grand a scale in 1854, that with vigorous expansion it would, in the course of years, cover the whole surface of India, vast as that is. Taking the deep and broad foundation of the indigenous village school, and adopting the masters with all their defects, the plan aimed at raising these by public inspection, by new and good school-books, and other apparatus, by some slight pecuniary encouragement, and 41

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by giving their ablest pupils the prize of admission to district schools of a higher order. These again were to be related to superior institutions, and these to colleges affiliated to universities, so that the education of a few in the highest branches of science, instead of being the substitute for national education, as long had been the case, should be only its complement;—not raising up a select order of recondite scholars to puzzle and overawe an ignorant mass, as on the native system, but offering to a generally instructed people competent leaders in higher branches of knowledge, which only a few in any country can master. This great scheme as yet exists chiefly in intention. The only part of India where any systematic effort at general education has been made is in the NorthWest Provinces, and even there only in eight districts. In all other parts of the country, a school, either Government or Missionary, is as rare as a lighthouse on our coast. Well-informed Europeans may often be heard speaking as if much had been done in certain countries of India, because three or four schools exist among three or four millions of people. In many countries, none have ever been established. The total number of scholars in the schools of the North-Western Provinces, which have justly attracted so much attention, is in the District (Tahseelee) Schools, only 4,688; and 49,000 in indigenous village schools under Government supervision. This system has been in operation only since 1851.7 The following fact illustrates the facility with which the natives yield even on the points about which they are most susceptible, when treated with firmness without violence. Caste is a far more tender point than teaching the Bible, yet they forego its claims when the school authorities will not bow to them:— “The fact of a Chumar heading the second Persian class with 280 marks out of 300, the second boy being a Rajpoot, the four next Brahmins, the seventh a Raet, and the eighth a Mussulman, is deserving of note. The admission of the Chumar into the school had been violently opposed. Some Brahmins left in consequence, but the Committee remained firm, while the judicious treatment of the delicate question quieted the objecting parties. A similar case occurred a few months ago at the Budaon School, when the quiet determination of the authorities gained the day.”8

One Normal School has been established at Agra for one hundred Vernacular Teachers. The facility with which we may supplant the old school-books of the country, as well as its popular literature, is strikingly illustrated in the fact that “the number of books annually disposed of will, ere long, be not less than 200,000;”9 and in the year ending April, 1855, no less than 41,179 books were sold, while 12,879 were given away in rewards. The North-Western Provinces contain thirty-five millions of souls; with no less than 231 towns of more than five thousand inhabitants each; and some of as many as 170,000. Of these, the operations of “neither the Government nor Missionaries have yet reached” one-half; for 180 of those populous towns are without any school but what is purely native. Yet this is in the one division of India where alone an attempt at comprehensive education has yet been made. 42

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A remarkable spontaneous movement in favour of female education has been reported as taking place in Agra. Pundit Gopal Singh, a native Visitor of Indigenous Schools, commenced to persuade his neighbours to have their daughters instructed, and met with success which would have been thought incredible. “The establishment of a little school,” says the Pundit, “in which my own daughters and those of my immediate friends and relations attended at first, like a charm dispelled in a great measure the prejudices of ray neighbours, and induced many to send their girls also. This example, and my persuasion and reasoning, have at last succeeded in inducing many respectable inhabitants of other villages to yield.” So rapidly did the movement extend, that while in September fifty schools were reported, attended by twelve hundred girls, in the first week of November two hundred schools had been established, with an attendance of three thousand eight hundred. The pupils are nearly all Hindus belonging to the most respectable families. About one tenth of the pupils are above twenty-one years of age, the rest varying from six to twenty. How far this wonderful and hopeful movement has been impeded by the recent disturbances, we almost fear to imagine; but it is a strong proof that our ideas of the immoveable tenacity of Hindu customs are exaggerated.10

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. CHRISTIAN Education, though less extensive than that of Government, when the indigenous schools are counted, is nearly double what it would be without these; and, considering all its difficulties, devout thankfulness becomes us that it has gained the extent and the results now witnessed. It has to contend not only with the constitutional apathy of the natives, and their natural prejudices, but with gratuitous jealousy, originated by the Government manifestoes about danger to their rights of conscience, and frequently irritated by fresh expressions of this kind. Every time that the Court of Directors has announced that they “cannot consider it either expedient or prudent to introduce any branch of study which can in any way interfere with the religious feelings and opinions of the people,”11 attention is unfavourably directed to the exertions of the Missionaries, and vague fears of concealed designs are excited. In every case in which a school is established where the agents of Government suppress their own religion, and propagate all other doctrines which they believe, whether physical or economical, impressions are made of which we will state one example. “A native gentleman, grateful for recovery from a serious illness, and influenced by the saying of a native teacher, that ‘Jesus Christ was the true One, and came out of God;’ founded and endowed a college at Benares, which bears his own name,—Rajah Jaynarain. This he gave over to the Church Missionary Society. Yet, after long struggling against convictions of the truth of Christianity, he at last said, ‘Had the Christian religion been true, the Company Bahadur, which had, in other respects, benefitted his country, would not have withheld from at least commending this religion to their notice.’”12

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Notwithstanding all this, wherever the three kinds of schools exist side by side,—the Native, the Government, and the Christian,—public favour invariably declares for the last. Even when conversions, and the agitation consequent upon them, scatter the pupils for a while, they soon return in as great numbers as ever; as has been several times witnessed in the institutions of Dr. Duff, Mr. Anderson, and many others. The natives know that the Government school is as alien to all their venerated ideas as the Christian one: while it cannot by illsupported professions of neutrality inspire the same confidence as Missionary frankness, has not the attraction which true Christian zeal exercises even upon those who dread it, and therefore, though studiously adapted to gain the people, stands as a constant proof that the blessing of God is more fruitful than all the policy of man. Yet, much encouragement as the past course of Christian education gives to its supporters, it has only made its beginning; all the pupils in Missionary schools being 78,788,13 or, as we intimated before, less than three in a thousand of those who are of school-going age. The distribution of schools is such that while in Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and some other large cities, several are at work together; in the provinces, hundreds of miles may be travelled without one being found. Tracts as large as Prussia, or even as France, may easily be traced on the map of India, without enclosing a Christian school. Tens of millions of persons who were born British subjects, and are now in middle life, have never had a single hour’s Christian instruction from either Teacher or Preacher. In the best supplied cities the means of giving a Christian education are utterly insufficient; but in the great majority of Indian cities no beginning has yet been made. Christian Education has three leading modes of operation:— DIRECT INSTRUCTION. INSTITUTIONS FOR TRAINING MASTERS. THE PREPARATION OF BOOKS. DIRECT INSTRUCTION is given in English and various vernacular languages, in male and female schools. These range from poor village schools, in which only the simplest elements of knowledge are taught, up to institutions giving a liberal European education. With the Scotch Missionary Societies schools are the principal, and in some cases the only, mode of operations; but with all the English Societies and the Germans they are a secondary, though often a very important, department. One leading Society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, has lately, after many years of experience, and much inquiry, resolved to withdraw altogether from education, that its agents may not be diverted from the one great work of preaching the Gospel. It is not probable that this example will be followed by other Societies; yet it marks a tendency to separate direct evangelistic and educational efforts into two departments, to be prosecuted by distinct agencies. The Church Missionary Society has also called attention to the fact, that as Missions advance, a diminishing proportion of their funds will be bestowed on the education of the 44

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heathen, more being absorbed in the support of Ministers, and the training of Christian children. This important fact is illustrated by the following instance in the history of that Society:— “The Church Missionary Society has educated the largest number of children in India of any Missionary Society. Twenty years ago, it educated 8,000 children, who were mostly heathen. Now it educates 20,000, of whom 7,000 are Christians. But its expenditure on all departments of its Indian Missions has increased during these twenty years, from £16,000 to £55,000. Its Mission expenditure is more than threefold; the number of heathen children under education is not doubled. In other words, as a Mission expands, a less and less proportion of its means is given to heathen schools.”14

Even if Missionary Societies continued in future to give the same proportion of their funds to educate the heathen as in the past, the work must proceed at a rate so slow, as to become distressing when carefully considered. The Mission school must be at or near the Mission station. The latter implies a large outlay of money, and a staff of men; and cannot be rapidly extended on any scale that would cover all India, for centuries to come, even were the resources of every Society doubled. By itinerating journeys the Missionary may spread the influence of his preaching far beyond the bounds of any station; but the school is a permanent establishment, depending on the station. May not means then be found to advance schools faster than it is possible to increase Mission stations? As to NORMAL SCHOOLS for training masters, the fact stated at the outset, that to furnish one Christian teacher for every sixty Hindu boys or girls of school-going age, would require half a million, is sufficient to show that this, department of education is the most important of all. Europeans can never educate India, any more than they can cultivate its fields, or fill its future pulpits. Their calling is to train natives to do this great work for their countrymen; and while direct instruction, which prepares a clerk or merchant, almost terminates in the individual, that which prepares a schoolmaster, who will spend his life in teaching what he has been taught, propagates and multiplies itself a thousandfold. A grander object has seldom presented itself to Christian zeal, than to train a race of teachers who should carry into the towns and villages of India the precious books of Scripture for their chief lessons, and the lights of European knowledge for the accompanying temporal blessing. The only establishment of this character at present existing in India is the Vernacular Training Institution of the Church Missionary Society at Palamcottah, established about three years ago, and already exhibiting most encouraging results.15 In the PREPARATION OF BOOKS a good commencement has been made. The sacred Scriptures, being the foundation of all Christian knowledge, have commanded the first exertions of Missionaries; and now all their inspired pages are rendered into no less than ten of the chief languages, besides portions in twenty-five others. These have been followed by other books, including tracts, theological works, school-books, and works of general information or literary merit. When the Government prepared Sanscrit and Arabic works, they could 45

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not dispose of them; and natives who have printed the most favourite native books for sale, have failed in the enterprise; in some cases, at least. On the other hand, English books of all kinds are eagerly sought by those who know our language; and works by Europeans, or containing European knowledge, in any of the vernacular languages, are not less desired by those who know only their own tongue. One remarkable use has sometimes been made of these, namely, to supplant native books in schools, and that even in places where Missionaries had never been.16 One case occurred in which a Linga Priest, taught by books alone, without intercourse with Missionaries, had formed a school of partially Christianized disciples.17 When the novelty and beauty of the printed book are united with the wonder of a new and pure religion, or of strange science, native curiosity is raised, and the desire to possess it strong. To touch leather is unclean to the natives, because it is part of a dead animal; yet they often beg for “a leather book,” (a bound one,) in preference to another, simply because “it will stand a long time.” During the past year, the Baptist Mission Press at Calcutta printed fourteen million pages; the Wesleyan Mission Press at Bangalore, above eight millions. At Calcutta, and in other parts of India, Book Societies have long been in active operation, with great success; the list of works, translated and original, being far beyond what persons unacquainted with the facts would suppose, ranging from such writers as Paley and Bunyan to familiar tales and little tracts. It may be assumed that, other things being equal, works originally prepared for India will be more valuable than translations, owing to their more familiar illustrations and allusions. The South India School-Book Society has lately been formed, with prospects of great usefulness; under the direction of Mr, Murdoch. Just enough has been done in this department to show that, were the Christians of England awake, they might change the school-books and the popular reading of all India; and two more certain instruments of a great and permanent revolution cannot be imagined, than, by the blessing of God, these would prove. It has been already intimated that schools ought not to wait for Mission stations, but may be pushed on much faster than these can advance; and so books need not wait for schools, but, as less costly and more easily spread, may be made the messengers of the churches to thousands of villages, where the majority of the present adults will be in the grave before the Christian schoolmaster settles, or the Christian preacher passes through.

III. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ALL EXCEPT CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. THE grounds on which the policy of giving a non-Christian Education in India has been vindicated are twofold: prudence, in avoiding offence to the prejudices of the natives; justice, in not using public funds raised from among themselves to convert them from their own religion. As to the former ground, it remains to be proved that the Hindus are ever offended by teaching which they are free to seek or avoid, as they would assuredly be, if placed under compulsion, or threatened 46

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with breach of Caste. The words of Professor H. H. Wilson, used in reference to the motives of the Sepoys in the celebrated Vellore mutiny, are, mutatis mutandis, applicable to the question of schools.18 “It is a great error to suppose that the people of India are so sensitive upon the subject of their religion, either Hindu or Mohammedan, as to suffer no approach of controversy, or to encounter adverse opinions with no other arguments than insurrection and murder . . . . . It was not conversion which the troops dreaded, it was compulsion; it was not the reasoning or the persuasion of the Missionary which they feared, but the arbitrary interposition of authority”19

The belief that fears of popular resistance to the use of the Bible in schools are groundless, is supported by the fact that a statement laid before the Government in 1853, exhibited the following comparison between the two classes of schools:— Christian Mission Schools, 1,668; Scholars, 96,177. Government Schools, 404; ” 25,362.20

In 1834, Mr. Roberts, being at the head of a school supported by the heathen Rajah of Travancore, proposed that the rule which forbade the use of the Bible to all but Christians should be rescinded. The Rajah not only consented, but granted 250 rupees from the public funds, for the purchase of Bibles. The attendance on the Bible Class, being voluntary, was at first small; but gradually increased,— “Till, after a while, not a single dissentient remained: and from that time to the present the Bible has been read in the school by the Brahman, the Sudra, the Chogan, the Mohammedan, the Parsee, the Papist, the Syrian,—in short by all who are able to read it, and that without any objection or murmur of complaint. And not only so: after the Bible came into general use, the Hindu and other native youths began to purchase copies for their own use, which they could therefore take home with them, and read them there as well as at school: thus the sacred Scriptures found their way into houses and palaces to which Missionaries could have no access, and were read in the hearing of the great, the proud, and the hostile perhaps, by their own children.”21

In the city of Mysore, the heathen Rajah adopted a school, conducted by the Wesleyan Missionaries; transferring to it a monthly grant by which he had supported one on the Government or non-Christian principle; and this he gradually increased till it reached £180 a year, beside a good house. Subsequently Sir Mark Cubbon, who ably governs the territories of the Rajah, gradually made grants, first to one and then to a few other Mission Schools, in Bangalore and elsewhere; and so far from the natives evincing any jealousy on this account, they freely sent their children to all, and at Toomcoor built one for the Missionaries by funds raised among themselves. When a return of all the schools in Bangalore which teach English was made, on the report of a native, it proved that the only one in which Brahman youths were found was a Missionary school. After some years 47

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the Missionaries withdrew from the Rajah’s school, and it was carried on upon non-Christian principles; and then the people, so far from manifesting satisfaction, got up a petition to the Society with which the Missionaries were connected, praying that a school for their children might be established; and this was signed in nine languages, by upward of three thousand four hundred persons, avowedly “Hindus, Mussulmans, and all other people.” Mr. Hardey the Missionary, having raised part of the necessary funds in England, called upon the natives to raise 2,000 rupees on their part. A notice in Hindustanee and Canarese was published throughout the city, calling a public meeting in the house of a native gentleman.22 At this many able speeches were delivered, the introduction of the Bible earnestly contested, and, though a rich native offered £400 if it were excluded, it was carried by the declaration of the solitary Missionary, that he would not touch a farthing of their money, without a clear understanding that the school should be conducted as all other Missionary schools; after which 1,200 rupees (£120) were subscribed on the spot. This took place, not in one of our Presidencies, or in a great European station; but in a capital city of the interior, with few resident English, and a native Court. Sir Emerson Tennent, in his work on Christianity in Ceylon, mentions a case in which the Brahmans, having set up a school in opposition to those of the Missionaries, could not make it succeed, and, as a means of doing so, introduced the Bible. Dr. Kessen, now of Paris, gives the following statement respecting Ceylon:— “The reading and explanation of the Scriptures occupies the first hour of the day in every Government school. This is the law—never departed from; but the attendance is entirely optional. And yet so mildly but firmly is the law enforced that during the entire period of my connexion with these schools,—extending over sixteen and a half years, whether as Principal of the three highest Establishments, or as Superintendent, or as member of various Sub-Committees,—not more than three cases have occurred in which parents have objected to the attendance of their children during that first hour. I left in my own Establishments, ten months ago, not only children of every form of Christian faith, but Hindoos, Budhists, Mahometans and Parsees, all heartily reading the word of God, receiving the explanation, and kneeling in prayer to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. “In Ceylon, the question of religious instruction in public schools is most fully and practically solved.”

As to the argument from justice, namely, that it would scarcely be fair to take money raised from the natives and use it in turning them from their own religion; this would prevent us from teaching them European science as well as Christian truth; for it contradicts their sacred books at every turn, and thus at once offends their prejudices, and alienates them from their own religion. Both the argument from fear of offending, and that from scruples as to converting them, bear against all education which destroys the credit of their Shastras: that is, against all instruction in any physical or spiritual truth. And, it may be asked, which is the more obvious offence against their sacred books,—to deny their statements respecting 48

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visible objects, or those respecting unseen mysteries? Which the greater injustice, to employ their money in undermining their ancestral religion, without giving any substitute, any moral basis of character, or in teaching them truths which they admit to be sublime, and precepts which their consciences acknowledge to be “holy, and just, and good?” The advocates for the exclusion of scriptural instruction constantly allege, as one proof of the excellence of their own system, that it must convert the pupils in the long run; thus destroying their own plea, that it is unfair to use schools supported from public revenue for purposes of conversion; and also showing that the plan is a system of conversion, under cover of professed neutrality.23 They justify themselves in teaching what unsettles the belief of the natives on sufficient ground, which is ably stated in the following passage of Sir C. E. Trevelyan, combating the claim that we should teach native learning, and not European science, by arguments which hold equally good against the claim that we should teach physical but not moral truth. “I cannot admit the correctness of the test by which the Oriental party would determine the kind of knowledge to be taught. Is it meant that we are bound to perpetuate the system patronized by our predecessors, merely because it was patronized by them, however little it may be calculated to promote the welfare of the people? If it be so, the English rule would be the greatest curse to India it is possible to conceive. Left to themselves, the inherent rottenness of the native systems must, sooner or later, have brought them to a close. But, according to this view of the subject, the resources of European skill are to be employed in imparting to them a new principle of duration: knowledge is to be used to perpetuate ignorance, civilization to perpetuate barbarism; and the iron strength of the English Government to bind faster still the fetters which have so long confined the native mind. This is a new view of our obligations; and, if it be a just one, it is to be hoped that, in pity to our subjects, we shall neglect this branch of our duties. Fortunately for them, we have not thought it incumbent on us to act on this rule in other departments of administration. We have not adopted in our system barbarous penal enactments, and oppressive modes of collecting the revenue, because they happened to be favourites with our predecessors. The test of what ought to be taught is, truth and utility. Our predecessors consulted the welfare of their subjects to the best of their information; we are bound to do the same by ours. We cannot divest ourselves of this responsibility: the light of European knowledge, and the diffusive spirit of European benevolence, give us advantages which our predecessors did not possess. A new class of Indian scholars is rising under our rule, more numerous and better instructed than those who went before them; and, above all, plans are in progress for enlightening the great body of the people as far as their leisure will permit,—an undertaking which never entered into the imagination of any of the former rulers of India.”24

The principle laid down in the sentence which we have put in italics, that the test of what ought to be taught is truth and utility, and that we are bound “to consult the welfare of our subjects, to the best of our information,” is perfectly sufficient to assure our Government that it is right in teaching what is true and useful, though it destroys all belief in Shastras full of falsehood; yet it does not free it from the charge of disingenuousness in knowingly giving instruction which must produce this effect, if it professes neutrality. 49

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Among Christians, to whom this appeal is addressed, a variety of opinions will exist respecting the duty of Government in India, Some will think that it ought to withdraw from the work of education altogether, and leave it to Missionary Societies; others would deprecate this course, as one by which several great and populous countries must be abandoned, for some generations to come, to a purely heathen education. Some believe it to be wrong for Christians to accept grants in aid for their schools, since they may be obtained by Heathens and Mohammedans for theirs; others believe that the grant-in-aid system, while just to all, gives a great practical advantage to Christianity, and provides virtually for the exclusion of corrupting mythology from native schools coming under its operation, to make way for useful knowledge, necessary to pass Government inspection. Some think that while the teaching of the sacred Scriptures ought, as in Ceylon, to form a stated part of the daily proceeding in every Government school, the attendance on such instruction ought to be left, as there, to the choice of the pupils; and others that, all the claims of justice being met by the grant-in-aid system, on which the natives may, if they choose, have public recognition and support for schools conducted by themselves, the Government ought to require the attendance of all who voluntarily seek education in its schools, at the Bible class, as at any other. But, however differing on these points, all unite in the conviction that if the Government do maintain schools or colleges of its own, it is bound not to exclude from them the word of God. By such a course, wherever it sets up a school, it puts a public slight on the Christian religion, keeps up a show of indifference to it in which the natives cannot believe, engages in a conflict with the Shastras on purely physical ground, and raises questions among the people as to its reasons for attacking their religion with one hand and seeming to repress its own with the other. It moreover trains a number of youths who cannot believe the sacred books of their ancestors,—for they have been proved by their rulers to abound in falsehood on all subjects,— and who do not know the sacred books of their rulers, for they have been kept out of sight; who are therefore either heathen, minus sincerity, or openly without any religion, and in that condition are sent forth to encounter the temptations of life, and often placed by the Government in positions where they must form the medium through which numbers of their countrymen are to judge of its spirit and principles. We may now assume that the state of Native Education appeals loudly to the heart of every Christian; that the results of Government Education prove the exclusion of Christianity to be as mischievous in tendency, as it is wrong in principle; and that the means of existing Societies are utterly inadequate to the work imperatively required to be done. On these grounds the projectors of the present movement earnestly ask for means to carry out the plans they have above explained. They do not flatter themselves with extravagant hopes; and will cheerfully work on a small scale, if such be the appointment of Providence; but they will not conceal from the Christian public, to which they appeal, that for any 50

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vigorous and extended prosecution of their purpose, many thousands annually are needed. What they shall obtain, is in the hands of the All-wise; but in His name they call for large and self-sacrificing gifts. They trust that some of the wealthy and the noble will send their thousands to enlighten and to bless the children of those with whom we have had such a deadly conflict; and that all classes of Christians, according to their ability, will practically bid God speed to this work. A Christian Vernacular Education Society for India, originated while yet the war of the mutineers continued to rage, supported on a scale worthy of England’s wealth and India’s magnitude, and aiming at ultimately giving every child in India a Christian teacher and Christian books, would be a memorial of a crisis that can never be forgotten, on which we may humbly trust that the Lord of all nations would smile.

APPENDIX. NOTE I. “CONSIDERABLE misapprehension appears to exist as to our views with respect to religions instruction in the Government Institutions. Those Institutions were founded for the benefit of the whole population of India; and in order to effect their object it was, and is, indispensable that the education conveyed in them should be exclusively secular. The Bible is, we understand, placed in the libraries of the colleges and schools, and the pupils are able freely to consult it. This is as it should be; and moreover we have no desire to prevent, or to discourage, any explanations which the pupils may, of their own free will, ask from their masters upon the subject of the Christian religion, provided that such information be given out of school hours. Such instruction being entirely voluntary on both sides, it is necessary, in order to prevent the slightest suspicions of an intention on our part to make use of the influence of Government for the purpose of proselytism, that no notice shall be taken of it by the inspectors in their periodical visits.”25

NOTE II. RESOLUTION OF THE BOMBAY GOVERNMENT, DATED JULY

19TH, 1856.

“3. THE Governor in Council has considered it necessary to record these remarks from observing the apparent apprehension of disapproval with which some of the instructors, whose statements are before him, have explained the really unobjectionable mode in which they have proceeded, and the assurance of another that he has been ‘in the habit of omitting all passages in which the name of Christ was mentioned,’ and of only sometimes ‘retaining those in which He was indirectly referred to.’ His Lordship in Council cannot imagine that this course can be acceptable to the intelligent natives of this country, whether Hindoos, Mahomedans, or Parsees; and he cannot consider it necessary or justifiable to omit such passages, or withhold explanations necessary to illustrate their meaning, any more than he does to omit passages referring to Vishnu, Shiva, Mahomed, or Hormuzd.”26

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NOTE III. OPINIONS ON THE TENDENCY OF GOVERNMENT EDUCATION.

“GOVERNMENT now-a-days have made additional provisions for the education of the middling and upper classes of their subjects, but there has, I regret to say, been a sad omission as regards the education of its native army, ever since the days of its first formation. By education I do not mean a course of scholastic training, but some sort of training at least should be imparted to Sepoys, whom, of all others, it is most absolutely requisite to humanize and to bring under the fear of God. For the soldier’s occupation is with arms, his daily business lies with tactics and physical force: so, unless he is taught in some shape the duties he owes to his God, his Sovereign, and to his immediate employers, he becomes, when infuriated, worse than a cannibal, as has been to our shame demonstrated in the recent rebellion.”27

Our next extract is from a memoir, drawn up in 1832 by Mr. R. C. Money, a distinguished member of the Bombay Civil Service, for the Earl of Clare, then Governor of Bombay. Mr. Money says:— “My opinions had not been hastily formed. After several years’ intimate connexion with the principal Society for the Education of the natives of this side of India, and watching the result of the present system of instruction both here and in Bengal, I had, without a doubt on my own mind, come to the conclusion that this system can never make the natives under our rule more moral or better affected towards the British Government . . . . . We have found the natives of India not only in a state of ignorance, but of gross blindness to the most natural principles of justice and truth. And to what are to be imputed all the difficulties which Government experiences in legislating for India? Is it not most ostensibly to the evil character of their subjects? . . . . . . There are now three English papers in India edited solely by young natives under twenty years of age. Many of the editorial articles are penned with the most culpable ignorance of truth, in which the measures and actions of Government are arraigned without a single attempt to explain the good which the Government may have in view, or have tried to carry into effect . . . . . . . In addition to what is here said of the necessity of introducing natural religion into the schools to rectify the morality of the natives, I would say that nothing but making them intimately acquainted, when young, with the pure precepts and doctrines of Christianity, will ever make them well affected towards us as Christian governors . . . . . . . From the several reasons which I have here given, and others which it would be too tedious to produce, I feel convinced that Christian instruction is the only kind of teaching which the British Government can effectually employ in India with any real profitable result.”28

The Rev. C. B. Leupolt, Missionary of the Church Missionary Society at Benares, thus speaks:— “The Government are nourishing vipers in their bosom; and if they should one day be stung by them, they must not be surprised. They educate everywhere a number of young men, and make them acquainted with Greek, Roman, and especially English classics. They expand their minds, and fill their heads with knowledge of every kind. All this is very good; but they leave the heart empty and void. Heavenly wisdom is carefully excluded from these schools. I speak of what I myself have seen and heard. The consequence of this plan is,

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that these young men become proud and haughty, and despise their ignorant parents, as they term them. But more; they despise and hate their ‘English conquerors, foreign rulers, proud tyrants;’ for such are the terms they use. ‘Could Greece,’ they say, ‘resist a Xerxes? What could India not do?’ They demonstrate clearly that the Indians could in one night destroy all the English throughout the length and breadth of the country.”29

The following remarkable testimony of Professor Henderson, dated “31st October, 1843,” was published in a Discourse upon his death, by Dr. Wilson, President of the Bombay Literary Society:— “I must confess to you, that my opinions have of late undergone a complete change. You know I never cordially approved of the Government plan of education; but of late, and I may say exactly in proportion as I myself thought more solemnly on the truths of Christianity, and made them the subject of conversation with educated natives, the more convinced have I become of the evil tendency of the system which has hitherto been pursued, and the necessity of strenuous exertion in opposition to it by all who have at heart the enlargement of the Messiah’s kingdom, or even the tranquillity of India, and the safety of the British Empire. The Government, in fact, does not know what it is doing. No doubt it is breaking down those superstitions, and dispersing those mists, which, by creating weakness and disunion, facilitated the conquest of the country; but, instead of substituting any useful truth, or salutary principles, for the ignorance and false principles which they remove, they are only facilitating the dissemination of the most pernicious errors, and the most demoralizing and revolutionary principles. I have been appalled by discovering the extent to which atheistical and deistical writings, together with disaffection to the British Government and hatred to the British name, have spread, and are spreading, among those who have been educated in Government schools, or are now in the service of Government. The direction of the Government system of education is rapidly falling into the hands of astute Brahmans, whom you know, and who know how to take advantage of such a state of things, and at the same time to strengthen themselves by an alliance with Parsi and Mussulman prejudices; while the European gentlemen who still remain nominally at the head of the system, know nothing of the under-currents which pervade the whole, or consider themselves as bound, either by principle or policy, not to make any exertions in favour of Christian truth; while the professed object of the Government is to give secular instruction only. Now what is required in order to counteract the tendency of such a system? To enlighten the public at home, particularly those who have most influence in East Indian affairs, by laying the real state of the case before them, appears to me to be the first thing required. The whole subject of Government education requires to be reconsidered, and in the spirit of the age. But still I do not think that Government instruction ought ever to be regarded as one of the principal means of Christianizing India. It may be so organized as not to counteract that object, and even to co-operate in a subordinate degree, but the main dependence must always be placed upon faithful, efficient, and zealous Missionaries, European and Native.”

The Marquis of Tweeddale, when Governor of Madras, thus expressed himself, under date, August 24th, 1846:— “Even amongst the more respectable classes employed in the service of Government, we have constant proofs, that in this country it requires a more solid foundation than is to be found in the Hindu or Mahomedan faith, to bear the change which learning operates

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on the mind of those who emerge out of a state of ignorance, and attain those mental acquirements which enlarged education gives, or who are placed by their superior ability in respectable situations in the employ of Government. “The reports and complaints so constantly made to Government against the integrity of the native servants, are sufficient evidence that something is wanting to insure a faithful service from them. There is no doubt that they entertain the greatest respect and confidence in the word and integrity of an Englishman; they admire his character, his probity, and his sense of justice; they acknowledge his superiority over themselves, and they are grateful for the protection their property and persons receive at his hands. “The question naturally arises amongst the natives, and it must be as evident to them as it is to ourselves, that some superior agency is at work, which produces all the good qualities which they may try to imitate, but which few can acquire . . . . . . . “It is the only means I know, of giving to the natives a practical knowledge of the sources from which arise all those high qualities, which they admire so much in the character of those whom Providence has placed to rule over them; and I am satisfied that the object sought by the Government in the general extension of education, the raising up of a body of upright, as well as intelligent, native servants, can only be fully attained, by combining with general knowledge sound moral instruction. I will, also, add my conviction, that any measure or system short of this will fail to secure that general support and co-operation so desirable, if not necessary, to forward the cause of education throughout the Presidency. Nor do I see how native society itself can safely and permanently advance, except upon this basis. I would therefore adopt the rule proposed by the Council, which recognises the Bible as a class-book in the Government schools,—but at the same time leaves it free to the native student to read it or not, as his conscience may dictate, or his parent may desire.”30

The Council of Education at Madras thus speaks, in commenting upon the refusal of the Court of Directors to allow the Bible to be introduced, according to the recommendation of the Marquis of Tweeddale:— “The Council desire respectfully to observe, that it is in their judgment absolutely and morally impossible to impart instruction to Hindoos in the English language and in the sciences of Europe, and at the same time not in any way to interfere with their religious feelings and sentiments. “It appears to them to have been demonstrated by experience, that in setting before the native students the leading facts of History, in communicating the simplest proposition in Astronomy, Geography, or in Physics, the fundamental principles of Hindooism, and of Mahomedanism also to some extent, are of necessity directly contravened, and that an interference with Hindoo and Mahomedan feelings and sentiments is the unavoidable result of a liberal education. Those in India who are engaged in education are perfectly aware that this is the case, and that the instruction now given in the Government schools, while professedly based upon the principle of avoiding all interference, has a tendency nevertheless inevitably to undermine the whole, Hindoo system. “This is no mere theory of the Council of Education. It is a simple fact, abundantly attested by the actual results of the system of education in the other Presidencies, where in numerous instances its effect has been to subvert every feeling of respect for their ancestral faith, and to form what there is every reason to look upon as an increasing class of educated

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natives, unrestrained by the principles of any religious faith; and it is for the Government to consider whether such a system of education can be really and permanently beneficial, and its general introduction at this date into this Presidency, where there is no serious obstacle to the establishment of a better system, expedient or called for.”31

The gentleman to whom this communication was addressed, as Chief Secretary to Government, Mr. J. F. Thomas, gives his own views in an able minute, recommending the grant-in-aid system, since adopted. “25. Education without moral culture is probably as often injurious as beneficial to society; and at all events a system like that at present in force, which to a great degree practically overlooks this point, and which makes little or no provision for this most essential part of education, is so radically defective, that I feel satisfied, that although it may be upheld for a time under special and peculiar influences, it must in the end fail; and I hold that unless it can be shown, that the people of this Presidency are opposed to receiving moral instruction, combined with intellectual, there is no ground for this palpable practical omission in the existing system. “26. The fact is, I firmly believe, that there is no such opposition nor unwillingness on the part of the people in this Presidency; as shown by the hundreds who flock to the schools of Missionaries, where, I might say, the larger proportion of time is given, not merely to moral, but religious instruction. If, then, the people as a whole readily accept this instruction, as they do, in large numbers, it is obvious that there can be no truth in, nor foundation for, the assertion, that they are unwilling to receive moral instruction, even through the Bible, or that this is opposed to their prejudices or feelings. “27. Their acts appear to me to prove that they are willing to receive any measure of moral instruction, if combined with intellectual knowledge; and I see no reason, therefore, why they should not receive it direct from the only source of morals, the Scriptures. All other sources are either fallacious, or so shallow and polluted as to be worth little. “29. It is palpable that all truth, as well in science as in morals, is not in accordance with Hinduism; and Hinduism, if not Mahomedanism, is as certain to be undermined by a liberal education in Western science and literature, as by adding to it the further enlightenment and benefit which would follow by providing for the really moral as well as intellectual culture of the youths taught in the Government Institutions.”32

NOTE IV. VERNACULAR TRAINING INSTITUTION AT PALAMCOTTAH.

THE “Madras Church Missionary Record,” for 1856, contains the following:— “It is interesting to note what appears to be the natural and healthy growth of a Mission. First comes preaching to adults; then the gathering of a few children under instruction; then congregations are formed; the need of helpers then presses; the most pious and energetic of the converts are naturally selected; native agency is thus originated; their imperfections are brought out; when they are once set to work, the Missionary endeavours

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to remedy their defects; and at length it becomes obvious that if he could divide his labour, and commit the training of his native agents to some one specifically devoted to it, he would have more time and energy for his own particular work, and his native assistants also would be made far more effective. Thus, at last, we arrive at some Central Training Establishment. “This appears, we say, to be the theory of the normal and healthy growth of a Mission. It is of course liable to be disturbed in practice by a thousand modifying circumstances. It is so here, for example, from the desire of the natives of India to obtain English Education: but still this does not affect the true theory of Missions; and it is accordingly a mark of an advanced stage in the operations of any Mission when such Training Institutions become a felt necessity. It is a mark of advancement, we say, when they are really wanted, and then alone is there any reasonable prospect of their succeeding. Attempts have been made again and again in different parts of the world to commence such Training Institutions before the Mission, in which they have been originated, was ripe for the experiment, and they have so often failed. No system of manufacturing Native Agents out of unfit materials, however laborious the discipline, will bring forth satisfactory fruits. The agents must come first, and the training of them afterwards; but where the agents are already supplied, suitable but imperfect, then the time is come for Training Institutions. “Till within the last six years, each Missionary was encumbered with the preparation of his own future Catechists, when the Establishment of the Præparandi Institution relieved hands, already too full, of that additional labour; and the successful result of the change is best expressed in the testimony of one of our most experienced Missionaries, that his lowest Reader now is superior to his highest Catechist ten years ago. “It was felt that the time is now come for a similar effort on behalf of the Schoolmasters of the Mission, and that the Village Schools especially needed improvement. We are now thankful to be able to record that such an Institution has been constructed. The Principal is supplied in our Missionary, the Rev. J. B. Rodgers, who for two years conducted the vernacular department of the late Madras Training Institution. He will be assisted by four trained Teachers; and the system of instruction pursued will be mainly that of the Home and Colonial School Society, the system in fact which was substantially originated by Pestalozzi, which has been found so successful wherever it has been introduced into Bengal, combining, as it does, a special adaptation both to the genius of Oriental languages and to the listlessness of the Oriental mind . . . . . . “The brethren have arranged that the Students in the Normal Class shall be for the present fifty unmarried, and ten married; and that thirty boys under twelve or fourteen years of age shall be maintained as boarders, to serve as a nucleus for the Model and Practising School, and to be transferred, when they attain a proper age, to the Normal School, to be trained as Teachers . . . . . . Due notice was given in the last week of April that the Training Institution was prepared to receive students; and on the 1st of May the Normal Class was opened with nearly the full number of students . . . . . . Now that, after two months’ experience, they find that what they looked upon hitherto as mere rote acquirements, are capable of being reduced to scientific principles, and are capable of being taught, too, as sciences on settled principles, they have become really zealous, and manifest a great deal more of esprit de corps than I anticipated. While I rejoice at the professional zeal which they seem to be acquiring, I endeavour to induce them to keep in view also the spirit and the motive they should entertain in imparting instruction . . . . . . “We cannot, however, do without trained Female Teachers. We must have them for our Infant Schools, which form an integral part of our system; and rather, therefore, than do

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without them, I have organized a Woman’s Class, which meets in my house at half-past two and half-past four every afternoon. It was commenced on the 15th of March, and has met without interruption to this date. It is attended by twelve women, eight of whom are wives of Mr. Sargent’s students, and four of them wives of my students. With one or two exceptions, they were all tolerably well informed on Christian doctrine and sacred history when they joined me. “Within the past three months they have made creditable progress in Arithmetic, Geography, Tamil Grammar, and Natural History. Of four of them I have good hope that they will become intelligent Teachers. The remainder will, I trust, in time prove passable. They still continue attending as heretofore at Mr. Sargent’s, where they meet three or four times a week for religious instruction.”

NOTE V. SOUTH INDIA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL-BOOK SOCIETY.

MR. Murdoch, the Secretary of this Society, resigned a situation under the Government in Ceylon, in order to devote himself to the work of really Christian education. He first laboured with success in Kandy; and then, in order to act upon a wider sphere, removed to the Continent, and formed a School-Book Society; the Third Report of which is now issued. The income of the Society has already reached ten thousand rupees. The books published during the year are above sixty-eight thousand, consisting of more than seven millions of pages. The publications comprise:— AN ENGLISH SERIES: A TAMIL SERIES: A CANARESE SERIES: A TELUGU SERIES: A MALAYALIM SERIES. And further: a Quarterly Volume; a Periodical for the Young; Almanacs replacing astrology and mythology by sound information, accompanied by Christian truths; and a special work for Hindu females, written by Mrs. Mullens of Calcutta, and already translated into some of the languages of South India, and in process of translation into others. Libraries of books, both in English and vernacular, are already established in a few places; and the Report says, An effort should be made to establish one hundred congregational libraries before the close of 1858. Colportage of books has also been commenced, and may be indefinitely extended, as means permit. The Report says, “Means should be provided to furnish all the Schools with a sufficient supply of books, making grants to those unable to purchase them. The case has occurred of a veteran Missionary, with one thousand children in his Schools, being obliged to forego the advantage of the books on account of 57

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the expense. The ordinary income of the Society last year, from subscriptions and donations in India, amounted only to 2,731 rupees, which was derived more from the liberality of a few than from the community at large. Exclusive of 160 rupees contributed by native Christians in South Travancore, there were only fifty-three donors to the Society, twenty-one belonging to the Civil Service, and twelve to the Military. Several of the most liberal subscribers have left India during the year; and unless fresh support be obtained, the income, with widening prospects of usefulness, will be considerably reduced. One gift is worthy of special notice. The adults and children belonging to a Negro congregation in the West Indies, under the Rev. A. Thomson, forwarded a noble contribution equivalent to 190 rupees.”

Notes 1. The settled Outcastes, if taken at one in ten of the people, make nearly twenty millions; and the hill and jangle tribes are computed at eight or ten millions. 2. Skanda Purans, quoted by Dr. Wilson, in his “Exposure of Hinduism.” 3. Sir C. E. Trevelyan, in his work on the Education of the People of India, p. 11. 4. Sir Charles Trevelyan’s work, quoted above, gives in interesting account of these changes, in effecting which he took a distinguished part. 5. Appendix, note 1. 6. Appendix, note 2. 7. Papers on the State and Progress of Education in the North-Western Provinces for 1854–5; and General Report for 1854–5. 8. Papers, ut supra, p. 8, par. 4. 9. Ibid., p. 10. 10. We give this statement from the “Friend of India” for November 20th, 1856, which cites Lieutenant Fuller, Inspector of Schools, as authority. The Reports on Education in the North-West Provinces, at the India House, do not come down later than 1855. 11. Selections, ut supra, p. ccliv., par. 5. 12. “The Indian Crisis,” p. 30. 13. “Results of Missionary Labour in India. By the Rev. Joseph Mullens.” Third Edition. 14. “The Indian Crisis,” p. 21. 15. See Appendix, note 4. 16. Arthur’s “Mission to the Mysore.” 17. Mullens’s “Results of Missionary Labours,” &c. 18. Mill’s “History of British India,” by Wilson, vol. vii., p. 140. 19. “The Indian Crisis,” p. 30. 20. “Indian Crisis,” p. 30. 21. Ibid., p. 33. 22. Held April 28th, 1854. “The London Quarterly Review,” No. V., p. 174, contains a report of the chief speeches. 23. Even the old Orientalizing Committee of Instruction spoke in this sense. See Trevelyan, p. 8. 24. Trevelyan, pp. 141, 142. 25. Education Dispatch of 1854, par. 84. 26. Parliamentary Paper. 27. Speech of Babu Duckinarunjun Mookerjee, a native gentleman, not a Christian, at a meeting of the Native British India Association, in Calcutta, on July 25th, as given in the “Bengal Hurkaru” for August 8th.

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28. India Christian Association Occasional Papers, No. I., p. 7. 29. “Recollections of an Indian Missionary. By the Rev. C. B. Leupolt, Missionary of the Church Missionary Society at Benares,” pp. 38, 39. 30. For this Minute, with the answer of the Court of Directors, see Sixth Report of the House of Lords, 1853, pp. 189–192. 31. Selections from the “Records of the Madras Government,” p. cclvi. 32. Selections, ut supra, p. cclxxv., pars. 25–27, 29.

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4 ‘VERNACULAR PUBLICATIONS AND LITERACY’, IN SELECTIONS FROM THE RECORDS OF THE BENGAL GOVERNMENT (CALCUTTA: JOHN GRAY, GENERAL PRINTING DEPARTMENT, 1859), XIX–XX

(The Vernacular Literature Society of Calcutta desirous of encouraging original composition, offered standing prizes of Rupees 200 for any new original works in Bengali, approved by the Society, of not less than 100 printed pages 12mo. when printed, on any of the following subjects, Natural History and Science, Topography and Geography, Commerce and Political Ecomony, Popular and Practical Science, The Industrial Arts, Education, Biography, Didactic fiction. Out of 10 MSS. submitted for prizes, only two obtained it viz.:—The Shushil-upakhyián by Madhu Sudan Mookerjea, a moral tale pointing out the defects and requisites for native girls and the Padmini-upakyean by Ranga Lal Banerjee, a tale of Rajputana in verse—both are admirable models.) As yet little success has attended the above prize plan for the reason that so few English Educated Natives are as yet competent to write idiomatically and forcibly in their own tongue, and those ignorant of English are deficient in ideas, we need as original Bengali Authors men, who to a knowledge of the idioms and popular phraseology of the Bengali add an acquaintance with English to afford them a wide range of information and with Sanscrit to give them the power of polishing their style, and availing themselves of its boundless illustrations and oriental imagery. 21. With respect to translation from the English into Bengali, two things are wanting—to drop many English illustrations unintelligible to a native, substituting for illustrations drawn from the oak, the daisey, &c., ones derived from the rich resources of the Poets of Bengal, and it is in this respect that a knowledge of Sanscrit would be of value to English scholars among natives by furnishing them with a rich stock of oriental images and metaphors, how ample the store is may be seen in Southeys Course of Kehama, Milmans Nali and Damayanit, Griffith’s translations from the Sanscrit, &c. &c. It is owing to Sanscrit being

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already provided with this stock of indigenous imagery that translations from the Sanscrit are so easy and so intelligible, and that the Bible itself comes so home to the feelings of an Oriental.1 The Bengali lanTranslations require adaptation. guage for purposes of illustration contains a rich variety of proverbial sayings; more than 1,200 are in the possession of the Author. A work by Nil Ratna Haldar was printed in 1826, the Bahudarshan, a collection of Proverbs in English, Latin, Bengali, Sanscrit, Persian and Arabic, also in 1830 by the same author, the Kobita Ratnakar, a collection of Proverbs in popular use translated into Bengali and English. Morton’s Collections of 803 Bengali and 70 Sanskrit Proverbs with an English translation is of value in this respect. More recently has appeared in 1856 the Niti Ratna a collection of 248 Ethical Gems from the Sanscrit with a Bengali translation.

Note 1. The Madras Education Board use a very good term for this—exposition i. e., not a slavish adhesion to the letter of the text, not translation.

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5 MARTHA WEITBRECHT, EXTRACTS FROM THE WOMEN OF INDIA AND CHRISTIAN WORK IN THE ZENANA (LONDON: JAMES NISBET, 1875), 55–66, 110–114, 129–134

CHAPTER V. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CHRISTIAN EFFORT ON BEHALF OF HINDU FEMALES. WE will begin our HISTORICAL SKETCH by a reference to the efforts of the Indian Government for female education. Though a benevolent, able, and paternal Government, it long abstained from giving direct encouragement to girls’ schools, while warmly expressing its desire to see female education extend, and giving indirect aid to Christian and native efforts. At length Lord Lawrence, under the advice and influence of Miss Carpenter, ordered the establishment of State training-schools for girls in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, which were by no means successful, and were soon closed, for the plan of a purely secular education has never found real favour with the natives of India. The Government, however, declined to ofund female schools similar to those for boys sustained by the general revenue, perhaps because of the difficulties arising from the peculiar condition of women in India. Lord Dalhousie was the first to give grants of public money to girls’ schools, and to show honour to native gentlemen who founded them. He also sustained the Bethune School from his private purse after the death of the founder, and did all that could be then attempted by the HEAD OF THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT. The missionaries, ever the pioneers in such attempts, were then only feeling their way in boys’ schools, and Government followed. It might now, twenty-five years later, venture to imitate them again, in the girls’ department; but it has not yet acted on this policy, though from time to time expressing its great satisfaction with the advance being made by voluntary workers. A glance at the comparative sums spent on boys’ and girls’ schools, shows a painfully larger amount disbursed from the public treasury for the former than for the latter. 62

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We make this passing reference to Government action in female education, to show the great importance of missionary effort, and to make manifest the large share it has had in producing what has been effected in India. This is acknowledged in a State paper lately printed, which remarks as follows:— “The whole subject of missionary enterprise in India has an important bearing on the intellectual advancement of the people. Their efforts on behalf of female education are seen in the zenana schools, and in the classes which are maintained and instructed in the houses of Hindu gentlemen. “The various lessons which the missionaries inculcate have given to the people at large new ideas; not only on purely religious questions, but on the nature of evil, the obligations of laws, and the motives by which human conduct should be regulated. Insensibly, a higher standard of moral conduct is becoming familiar to the people, especially to the young, which has been set before them, not merely by public teaching, but by the millions of printed books and tracts which are scattered widely through the country. “They consider that the influences of their religious teaching are assisted and increased by the example of the better portions of the English community, by the spread of English literature and English education, by the freedom given to the press, by the high standard, tone, and purpose of Indian legislation, and by the spirit of freedom, benevolence, and justice which pervades the English rule. “And they augur well of the future moral progress of the native population of India, from these signs of solid advance gained within the brief period of two generations. “Without pronouncing an opinion upon the matter, the Government of India cannot but acknowledge the great obligation under which it is laid by the benevolent exertions made by the six hundred missionaries scattered over the country, whose blameless example and self-denying labours are infusing new vigour into the stereotyped life of the great populations placed under English rule, and are preparing them to be in every way better men and better citizens of the great empire in which they dwell.”1 We will now proceed to give a brief and informal sketch of the missionary effort which has been made on behalf of female education, and which has brought about the results here acknowledged by the Indian Government, as far as they refer to the female population of their vast empire. The subject naturally resolves itself into three parts— I. Early and incipient attempts to form day-schools for the humbler class of girls, the only class at first accessible to missionary effort II. The formation of orphanages and free boarding-schools for the daughters of the converts, nearly all of whom were poor people; and, III. The opening gradually made for entrance into the houses of the higher classes, resulting in what is now commonly spoken of as zenana teaching. The honour due to the lady who made the earliest effort in the first department must be given to Mrs Hannah Marshman of Serampur, and is referred to in her biography, which will be found at the close of the volume. She attempted a dayschool for girls as early as 1807, and in due time her example told on her missionary 63

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sisters in Calcutta, Mrs Lawson and Mrs Pearce, wives of Baptist missionaries, to whom must be accorded the honour of commencing female education in Calcutta. In 1819 some young people of East Indian birth, educated and encouraged by these ladies, formed an association called “THE CALCUTTA FEMALE JUVENILE SOCIETY, for the education of native females.” They set to work with youthful zeal, and were not discouraged because during the first year the number of their scholars never exceeded eight; at the end of the second year they had thirty-two; and in three years more they numbered six schools and a hundred and sixty pupils. In December 1821, a year which will ever be memorable in the history of native female education in India (for it was the year of Miss Cooke’s arrival), these juvenile workers held the second anniversary of their Society, which was then publicly recognised by the missionary body as an important one. We will now go back to 1818, in which year was formed THE CALCUTTA SCHOOL SOCIETY, intended to aid in fostering the establishment of schools, and to encourage native gentlemen to attempt to found them spontaneously; for at this time the indigenous Bengali schools only amounted to a hundred and twenty, containing four thousand one hundred and fifty boys, for a population of seven million and fifty thousand natives. Of girls’ schools there were none (the Brahmans and rich men educated their sons at home); and out of forty millions of Hindu females which British India then contained (it is much larger now), not one in a hundred thousand could read. This appalling fact induced the Committee, formed of both natives and Europeans, to apply in 1819 to “THE LONDON BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY,” to select and send out a lady to institute schools for native females, and Mr Ward of Serampur, a Baptist missionary then in England, powerfully seconded their request. The advent of Miss Cooke was the result, and in the biography of Mrs M. A. Wilson, it will be seen how happy was the selection made. The idea was to form a training-school to prepare future teachers, similar to the one which actually came into existence in 1852; but Miss Cooke’s ardent mind preferred immediate action, and the providence of God favoured her desires in a striking way. On the 25th of January 1822, while studying the native language, she visited one of the School Society’s boys’ schools, to observe their pronunciation. The novel sight of a European lady in that part of the native town caused a crowd to collect, among whom was an interesting-looking little girl, who was driven away. Miss Cooke had her recalled, and by an interpreter asked her if she wished to learn. She was told, in reply, that this child had for three months past been daily begging to be admitted to learn to read among the boys, and that, if she would attend next day, twenty girls should be collected. Accordingly, on the following morning (26th January), Miss Cooke, accompanied by a friend who could converse familiarly in Bengali, attended, and found thirteen girls assembled. While she was engaged in speaking to them, some of the mothers stood without, looking in through the lattice-work. On Miss Cooke’s friend turning towards the latter, they drew their upper coverings over their faces. But not discouraged, she moved towards them, saying, “I hope you will be pleased 64

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that your children should be taught; that lady came from Europe solely for the purpose of instructing the children of the natives of this country.” One of them said, “Can she speak our language? Has she been, or is she going to be married?” The reply was, that “in a short time she would be able to speak their language; that she had heard in England that the women of India were not taught to read or write, and that the men alone were allowed to attain to any degree of knowledge; that she therefore felt much sorrow and compassion for their state, and had determined to leave her country, her parents, her friends, and every other advantage, and come there to educate their daughters.” On hearing this, they with one voice cried out (striking their bosoms with their right hands), “Oh, what a pearl of a woman is this!” It was then added, “She has given up greater expectations to come here, and seeks not the riches of this world, but that she may promote your best interests.” “Our children are yours,—we give them to you,” replied two or three of the mothers at once. After a few more questions and answers, they all parted for their respective homes.2 Two days afterwards, on the 28th, a second visit was paid by Miss Cooke and her friend. They only found seven pupils, among whom were two new faces. Some of the mothers again assembled outside. After a while, one of them asked, “What will be the use of learning to our girls, and of what advantage will it be to them?” She was told that “it would enable them to be more useful in their families, increase their knowledge, and gain them respect and affection.” “True,” said one of them, “our husbands now look upon us as little better than brutes.” On which another asked— “And what benefit will you derive from this work?” It was replied, “that the only return wished for, was to promote their best interests and happiness.” “Then,” said the woman, “I suppose this is a holy work in your sight, and will be pleasing in the sight of God.” To which, as they could not understand the higher Christian motives, it was simply answered that “God is always well pleased that we should come and do good to our fellow-creatures.” After some further observations, they parted, the women speaking in terms of the highest approbation of the conduct and replies of the European visitors. This first attempt at female education having thus unexpectedly commenced in one of the schools of the “School Society,” it was the signal for a series of successive institutions. Within a month other two schools were established,—one in a different quarter of the town, and another on the Church of England mission premises,—containing in all between fifty and sixty girls. With unhoped-for rapidity the interest grew. In a few weeks £350 was in hand from benevolent friends, Lord Hastings, then Governor-General, and his wife, heading the subscription. The two schools became ten before the close of the year, and contained two hundred pupils, and this in addition to those of the ladies before referred to. The strong and unreasonable prejudices of the people were gradually overcome, and by June 1823 a general examination of all the schools showed that many of the 65

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girls could actually read some easy books, and do a little needlework. Beyond such incipient attainments it was not then possible to advance, as, on account of early marriages, the girls could seldom remain in attendance over their eighth year. In 1824 the schools having increased to twenty-two, and the pupils to between three and four hundred, a society of European ladies in Calcutta, with the wife of the Governor-General, Lady Amherst, as patroness, formed themselves into a committee, and gave themselves the title of The Ladies’ Society for Native Female Education in Calcutta and its vicinity; and at an examination which followed in December 1825, the schools were spoken of as thirty in number, and the pupils as four hundred. From that time, encouraged by the offer of £2000 from a native nobleman, Rajah Boidenath Roy, the erection of a Central building was decided on, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Lady Amherst May 18th, 1826, in the presence of a large and influential assembly. We will refer our readers to the memoir of Mrs M. A. Wilson for further details, merely remarking that the spell being now broken, and female education publicly allowed to be a possibility—though still confined to the poorest classes—an important victory had been gained, and the friends of missions in other parts of India were not slow to follow the example of Calcutta. None did so at an earlier period, or with more zeal, than Mrs Stevenson, Mrs Margaret Wilson, and their Missionary sisters in Bombay. The result of their efforts is given in a separate chapter. II. The formation of orphanages and free boarding-schools is the next stage of progress to be noted. The latter were begun by the Baptists, many of whose converts lived in places where European missionaries could not reside. It was to the wife of one of their missionaries, Mrs Ellis, who had such a school in early days, that Mrs Wilson provided a trusty superintendent, a rare woman, who had been converted as a child in her day-school, and had been permitted the joy of leading her father and mother to the Saviour. Similar schools were and still are carried on with much encouragement, not only in Bengal, but in India at large. In the memoir of Mrs Mullens it will be seen how zealously she laboured in this department. It was Mrs Wilson who conceived the first idea of an orphanage in Bengal, and hers was begun with a few girls who from time to time fell into her hands, and resided with her in the Central school. Enough is said in detail in her Memoir on her particular orphanage, so we will only add that others gradually followed in various parts of India, as at Burdwan, Banares, Cawnpur, Agra, and other places, which were filled to overflowing in those times of periodical floods and famines which deprived such multitudes of Hindu children of their parents and homes. More than half those so collected succumbed to diseases contracted by their sufferings, but enough remained to enable the missionaries to train suitable wives, who became, in many instances, truly converted women, and have formed a goodly band of teachers and matrons for the ever-increasing openings in schools and private residences. In this and other respects, both orphanages and boarding schools must be regarded as having proved of essential service in the progress of female education and enlightenment. 66

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III. We now come to the third stage of progress, the deep interest in which has been perfectly fascinating, and has aroused the zeal of many hearts, as well as deepened the sympathy and love of Christian ladies at large. In the memoir of Mary Bird, which tells us of her share in the first efforts of female missionaries, incipient efforts in what is now called zenana visitation are alluded to. We have no record of particular incidents, but may well conclude that her labours in this direction were not in vain, and there seems good reason to hope that, even then, some of these poor immured women learned to look to Jesus, and trust Him, as their Saviour, though the fact was concealed in the depths of zenana seclusion. But before the arrival of Mary Bird, an attempt to educate Hindu ladies had been made in a village near Calcutta. The opportunity was given by an enlightened gentleman, the son of Babu Jay Narain Ghosal, who presented some valuable property at Banares to the Church Missionary Society, where a college now exists bearing his name.

CHAPTER XI. THE IGNORANCE AND PREJUDICE OF THE WOMEN. IT is not surprising that ignorance and prejudice hinder and beset our efforts on every side; the real wonder would be if it were otherwise. The poor women themselves have to struggle through every sort of traditional barrier, which would still bind them in chains of ignorance and superstition. Here are some specimens of this phase of the work—“After my first visit to one zenana, the old mother broke every water-vessel in the house, believing I had made them impure; and I understand she has drunk no water since, except what she has herself fetched from the Ganges— the Holy River. The natives are all most particular about water; if I give medicine, they will take it, but not if I put it into water, or into any but their own vessel.” Again—“Some of the women are dreadfully slow, and learn at such a snail’s pace that one is almost tempted to despair. But then, what can be expected of those whose minds have been a barren waste up to the age of thirty or forty? Some, when we begin to teach them, cannot even count above thirty or forty; and one woman, when I showed her the maps, and explained the construction and material of the earth, moon, and stars, gravely asked if the world I came from was made of land or water! Another feared to come near me, asking our native teachers if I were a man or a woman? These being our materials, it would be strange indeed if the heights of knowledge were reached by flying leaps, but not the results we wait in faith for, God’s promises being the assurances of our success.” And again—“One of my favourite houses is closed, the lady being in great anxiety about her little baby. She has already lost four little ones, and I fancy she is afraid lest a Christian’s presence may bring about the loss of this one. In another house this is the openly avowed reason for the lady not learning now, that since she began to learn she has lost her children, and so her husband has forbidden my visits. My heart often aches for these dear women, who have to suffer in sickness, 67

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and bereavements and trials of many kinds, and who have no comfort, no hope, no resting-place, no covert from the storm.” Another missionary writes—“Lately a few of our houses have closed, the friends taking alarm at the interest in Christianity shown by those under instruction. One is the house of a bigoted Mohammedan. His daughter was a very idle girl, a great opium-eater; consequently listless and inert. Half the time one was there, she would either be sleeping or painting her eyelids, doing her hair, &c., so that I had small hope of her making much progress; but her cousin, our other pupil, was a bright, intelligent girl, and I was very sorry to lose her. However, they have each a Bible in their own tongue, and some day God may be pleased to bless its message to some soul within that dark house.” Let us now speak of PROGRESS. For, however dark and sad these pictures may be, the very fact that we can speak of them, that we have made our way inside these prison-houses, is a token of success, and the earnest of better days to these “prisoners of hope.” Let it be remembered, that, wherever our missionaries go, there they carry “the Word,” “the entrance of which giveth light,” and we shall be able to wait with patient hope for a fuller awakening. Meanwhile, such descriptions as the following are cheering:—“In one house there is a family of five ladies—two little girls, and three grown-up women,—and it is most interesting to see this family assembled for their lessons, and the eagerness of them all. They are always prepared, with their books and work laid nicely on the table. It is not usual for them to have tables and chairs; but now, in almost all the zenanas in which we teach, they have civilised their places, and make everything nice and ready for us, and they seem to take a real interest in their learning. They learn verses out of the Bible, and those who can read at all have Bibles of their own, and some of them read it with great delight. “It seems to me that they are beginning to get hold of things by the right end now, and to be finding out that the real difference between us lies not in our skin, but in our religion. They begin to feel there is something higher in religion than merely trying to propitiate the powers of evil. They begin to think, to wonder, and to ask questions; but there are great difficulties in the way still. There are the old ladies in every family—the grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, the whitehaired, venerable-looking personages (old ladies), who sit and look, if they are not blind, and listen, if they are not deaf; and even if they are both blind and deaf, they know that there is something new going on in their families, and some spirit moving about which never moved them in their youth. Their daughters-in-law no longer sit all day long, as was their wont, counting their jewels or combing their hair; there is a rousing up of mind and body which they cannot understand, and the mothers raise a warning finger to tell them to beware! the gods will be displeased; their children will die—their religion, the 68

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ancient religion of their forefathers, will be destroyed—they are going to be made Christians. For many years longer such warnings will be heard from the ancient ladies of every family, and will, no doubt, be listened to with the superstitious respect almost always accorded to these white-headed spirits of the zenanas. But still much progress is made; and even the oldest bigots must be softened in time by the happy, interested faces and busy hands where ignorance and idleness were wont to reign,” Again—“The contrast between those zenanas where female education is progressing, and those who will not have it, is very remarkable. In the one you see the ladies sitting in the sun, with their knees drawn up to the chin, absolutely idle. In the other you go in and find the whole female part of the family with their books and work around; some learning their lessons, mothers and daughters together; some working; others, it may be, reading; those who are able to read well and easily, reading a story-book, such as ‘Faith and Victory,’ ‘The Dairyman’s Daughter,’ and other little books which have been translated into their language; but you seldom find them idle, and they are so much more cheerful and happy, as a rule, than they were in their days of indolence. Some little rays of Christian light have certainly broken in on them, and for this may we not be thankful?” We will now give a Hindu puja or worship scene, and then pass on to a few extracts regarding the work amongst the Mohammedans.

CHAPTER XIII. MEDICAL MISSIONS. CHRISTIAN education has already done much for some of the women of India in various parts of the great Continent, and many a zenana has been opened by means of this key. It has, however, failed to find much entrance into Mohammedan homes, for with laudable exceptions, they do not, as a class, appreciate education like the Hindus, and they are, as a mass, ill-affected towards the British Government, which has supplanted their own. But a plan has been thought of, and is now being carried out, equally adapted to both classes, and therefore valuable politically as well as religiously; and oh! how needed for the relief of bodily sufferings. We notice repeated allusions to sickness in the journals of the zenana teachers, whose pupils are ready to receive with open arms any daughter of the West who comes to assuage her pains and bind up her wounds. Countless mothers and children fall victims to the conceit and ignorance of their female attendants, and of their Hakims, or native doctors. The death-roll among them is enormous; and when a beloved wife or darling child is sick unto death, a medical lady is welcomed as an angel of mercy, and is often successful in bringing relief. Not long ago a missionary was on a preaching-tour among the villages of a remote district in North-West India. He fell ill with fever, and was nursed by his wife, in a small hut on the summit of a lofty hill. The medicines she had with her were blessed to him, and the fever abated. 69

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The tidings spread to the village, and one afternoon a party of Mohammedan women, headed by the wife of the Khan, or chief, climbed the steep ascent, and stood before the “Mem.” On her going to meet them, this lady-chief—tall, dignified, and richly jewelled—stepped forward, holding out a rupee, which the “Mem” touched in token of friendship. After many compliments, she said, “Will not the ‘Mem,’ who has given medicine to her own husband, give some to mine, who has been delirious many days from fever? If she would, he would get well, as her own Sahib is now doing?” She was told of Him who alone has the power to heal, and the lady asked to be allowed to see the sick man; but that could not be permitted, for the villagers feared witchcraft. She then gave the medicine, and the party left. The next morning the wife of the Khan again appeared with a large retinue of women, all veiled. She was come to express her thanks, for her husband was relieved; and now she was all anxiety for the “Mem” to go and see him, and many other sick ones besides. The fear of witchcraft was overcome; most joyfully did the “Mem” comply, and descended the rock, followed by her crowd of visitors. She found the Khan on his charpoy, under a shed in the open air, and around him such a muster of sick and suffering ones as she hardly supposed a village could produce, some ill themselves, others bringing their sick friends. There was a general demand for medicine, which was dealt out to each, and taken on the spot; and when all were served, they were told of the Physician of souls, who could heal both bodily and spiritual disease. Most attentively did they listen, and when the “Mem” ceased, they loaded her with gifts of eggs, vegetables, &c., as presents, which they had refused to sell to her on her arrival, when she needed such supplies very sorely. When she and her husband finally departed, a large company of the villagers went some distance with them, and parted from them with repeated salaams and benedictions. We have given this anecdote as an illustration of the power of medicine in overcoming Mohammedan prejudice; and it shows that while education is one key, a medical mission is another, to unlock closed entrances both in city and village life. Female medical missions are indeed a key to fit every lock; and she who practises the healing art may hope not only to cure, but to Christianise her patients. She will soften bigotry, remove prejudice, dispel ignorance, drive away gloom, and deposit the leaven of the Gospel in numberless hearts and homes. Convinced of the importance of this branch of the work, it has been decided by several of the associations sending out female missionaries, to make it a part of their special object. The Americans have set the example in their own energetic way, and “THE INDIAN NORMAL SCHOOL AND INSTRUCTION SOCIETY” are following in their wake. The American ladies are completely educated, and have taken a medical degree. Their plan is not only to practise themselves, but to form a medical school in some central points, and there to educate native women, many of whom are gifted for such work. “THE INDIAN NORMAL SCHOOL AND INSTRUCTION SOCIETY” are, for the present, just sending ladies who have gained sufficient knowledge to be very useful. The two first were designated to Bombay and Banares. The lady

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for the latter place died suddenly on her voyage out, and the former a few months after her arrival, so that for the present no real work can be alluded to in this branch in connection with the Society.3 An incident from the notebook of a medical missionary will illustrate the value of such work:— “This morning a Brahman suddenly appeared at my door, one of the most popular and affable men of his caste. His lips were quivering with emotion. ‘You are a mother,’ he exclaimed; ‘I have brought my wife, the mother of my six children, for you to save her. She has been gored by a cow, and only you can help us.’ “I went out, and there in a bullock-cart sat the sufferer, her sons beside her, from the youth of sixteen to the babe of two years; the old grandmother and the jewelled daughters trudging tremblingly behind. We led the poor woman gently in; it was a ghastly wound, and she was faint. The silence was broken by the husband asking in agony if I could save her? ‘If God blesses my efforts, and you promise to use no heathen incantations should fever come on, I may do much for her,’ said I, and I dressed the wound. She revived, and they returned home. “In the evening I went to see her, and found her as I had desired she might be, placed on a cot in their most airy room, and doing well. After attending to her, I spoke on leaving to the group around me thus:—‘Here is a woman like me. God has given her children, and given me children. She has had many earthly comforts, and so have I. When I am in trouble, I like to ask Him to help me, and He has, many times. Who can heal this woman so quickly as the great God who made her. I can ask Him to cure her in my own house; but, if you are quite willing, I should like to ask Him here to help us all, that we make no mistakes, and that He will soon restore her.’ “There were four old women listening, and I expected them to demur to this proposal. Wise in their own eyes, they are most tenacious of heathen customs. “The husband was too polite to refuse, and said, ‘Certainly;’ adding to the others, ‘She is going to praise the Lord.’ ‘Let her, let her!’ cried the old women. I fully expected they would go about some household work at once; but the silence was unbroken. It was a rare privilege to invite the Great and Holy One into that home where He had never been asked. As I finished the prayer, and looked at the sufferer, she was steadfastly gazing at me with one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw. “‘I shall trust no one but you,’ she said, with emphasis. “Every evening the cart has been sent for me; and last night, when I said that there was no necessity for my coming again, that nothing could have been more satisfactory than the rapid healing of the wound, the thanks of all were quite oppressive. I told them of Jesus’ miracles, and His readiness to bless every heart loving and trusting Him. The younger ones listened with interest, the wise old women gave civil attention, and the husband looked to me politely and pleasantly, as if I were a harmless enthusiast.”

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Notes 1. These condensed extracts are from the Report of the Secretary of State and Council of India upon THE MORAL AND MATERIAL PROGRESS AND CONDITION OF INDIA. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 28th April 1873. 2. The reader will perceive, from these details, that poor women are not secluded like their richer sisters, but go abroad as occasion requires. 3. The Society for Promoting Female Education, &c., are also taking up this branch of work.

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6 ‘THE SARAH TUCKER INSTITUTION, TINNEVELY, SOUTH INDIA’, INDIAN FEMALE EVANGELIST (JAN–JULY 1878), 9–16

SINCE April 1875 no notice of this valuable institution has appeared in our pages, and we are anxious once more to interest our readers in its continued progress and success. For the advantage of those who have not seen our sketch of its history and origin in the July number 1872 of The Indian Female Evangelist, we may mention that the Sarah Tucker Training Institution for Native Christian Girls was established about fifteen years ago as a suitable memorial of Miss Sarah Tucker (sister of the Rev. J. Tucker, the Church Missionary Society’s Secretary in Madras), who had taken such a deep and active interest in the work of female education in India. The object was to train native Christian girls as schoolmistresses for their countrywomen, and the memorial fund was handed over to the Church Missionary Society, which had cordially approved the plan proposed, and undertaken to adopt and start the institution. Palamcottah, the principal town of the Tinnevelly district, was decided on as a suitable locality, and after various vicissitudes, it was fairly established on its present admirable working system, under the management of the Rev. A. H. and Mrs. Lash in 1868. During these nine years 250 Christian girls have been under their care and training at different times, 90 of whom have already been employed as schoolmistresses, 5 as Bible-women, and 2 in a medical capacity. Eighty-seven of these students have passed the Government Examination for schoolmistresses, and have obtained third-grade certificates, and the interesting report for the year ending March 1877, which has reached our hands, proves that the institution is continuing to fulfil the design of its founders. During the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Lash for two years in England, the students had not come up to their usual standard of attainments, and in 1875 the number that passed in the Government Examinations for schoolmistresses was comparatively small; but the past year has been devoted to recovering their former position, and the results both in the Government Certificate Examinations, and in the two important subjects of Scripture and Training, have been most encouraging. Amongst the visitors during the past year was the Rev. David Fenn (Church Missionary Society Secretary, Madras), and we venture to transcribe his letter on the subject, as giving simple yet valuable testimony to the practical usefulness of the training. 73

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“MY DEAR MR. LASH,—I must not longer delay replying to the last part of your letter, asking me to send you a few lines about my visit to the Sarah Tucker Institution, and my opinion of the teaching I heard given by one of your trained teachers. You know I am not an educationist, and that such things are not at all in my line, still I am very happy to bear my testimony to the intelligence and evident happiness of your pupils, and to the order which prevails in the Institution. You remember that I had one of the Tamil essays prepared by the elder pupils read to me by Sarah Mary. It was on the Lord’s Supper, and struck me as very clear and good. I was glad to see what a large number of Christian girls from the Vellala caste had been attracted to the lower classes of your Institution, for though we all hope and pray that caste may die out in the Christian Church, yet as agents for working among the heathen in your branch (or affiliated) schools, such girls are likely to have more influence. I was also interested in the answers in Scripture in the various classes, and was struck with the attention with which my address was received. But what interested me most of all, and what I felt must make your own heart rejoice most, was the very admirable way in which one of your young trained teachers, I forget her name, gave a lesson from the picture of ‘The Sower’ to a class of very little girls. You remember I asked you to let me see this done, and you arranged that she should give the lesson to her eight or ten little pupils in presence of all the eighty girls, with yourself, Miss Buée, and myself, looking on. However, she did not seem at all put out, but went on with her work, and succeeded in keeping up the attention of the class, and questioning out of them everything she wanted them to learn, never telling them the answer to the question they could not reply to, but substituting some similar question, and then following that up with some others that gradually led up to the point she wanted. She was so lively, so patient, so successful, and so forgetful, apparently, that any one but the little class itself was looking on, that I thought that if you had had no other success of your work than to raise up such a teacher, it was ground for thankfulness to God. May you have many, many such, and may they be endued with fervent love to the Saviour, as well as love of, and power in teaching.—Yours affectionately, “DAVID FENN.”

For many interesting details regarding the Institution and the girls connected with it we would refer our readers to the Report. Fourteen of the students have been employed during the past year as schoolmistresses, one in Tanjore, who is now the head native mistress of “Lady Napier’s Caste Girls’ School” in that town, and giving great satisfaction; and the rest in Tinnevelly. They are often placed in situations of difficulty and temptation after leaving the school, which is a test of their religious convictions and principles, and some instances of earnest and active piety in trying positions have given great cause for rejoicing. With regard to the general spiritual state of the students, the Report says:—“It is perhaps difficult to say much; our native Christian girls appear naturally more impressible, docile, and amiable than English girls of a similar class and age. We have very little trouble with them; they are modest, affectionate, and very anxious to please; they retain for many years a grateful remembrance of any kindness done to them. As a rule, they are also truthful, though this is perhaps their weakest point. Many of our girls have always been so upright and straightforward, that we never dream of doubting their word; among the little girls, however, prevarication is less uncommon. I can only recall one instance of positive untruthfulness among the students 74

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of our training class during the year. We judge of their spiritual condition by their attention to, and love of, their Bible lessons; by the glimpses we get of their inmost thoughts by means of their Bible essays, and their answers to Scripture questions; by their habit of meeting together in little groups for reading God’s Word and prayer; by their love for God’s house, and the services of the sanctuary. In all these particulars many of them give pleasing signs that they are more than nominal Christians. Many of the elder girls are communicants, and appear to value this means of grace.” But it is time we should say something about the branch schools in Tinnevelly in connection with the parent institution, of the establishment of which schools we gave some account in our April number, 1875. They have proved a valuable outlet for the students trained as schoolmistresses, and they continue under the management of the Principal at Palamcottah. Several of them have been opened at the request of some of the leading Brahmins in the various towns, for there is certainly an increasing enlightenment amongst the Hindu community, and a greater demand for education. The males have long valued it for themselves, but there is also encouraging indication that their prejudices against female education are beginning to give way. One of the first established and most important of the branch schools is at Strivaguntum, a fine town about fifteen miles from Palamcottah, where is the mud fort (described in a former number of the Indian Female Evangelist), “where several families reside, whose cruel custom it is to keep their females prisoners for life: they are never allowed to pass outside the walls, until they are carried out to be buried.” There had been much opposition and prejudice to overcome in the establishment of this school, and for a time the attendance was small and fluctuating; but now it is valued by the inhabitants, and the teacher, Edith Anal, was so appreciated, that the Brahmins applied for her to be their teacher, when the school for Brahmin girls was established in Strivaguntum last year. With regard to this school, the Report contains the following interesting notice:—“January 20, 1877.—Visited the Brahmin school: 35 on the register; 31 average daily attendance. Was pleased to find that twelve of the girls had passed the first Government Examination for Results, a thing unprecedented in my experience after only six months’ study. Certainly these Brahmin girls beat English girls in the power of acquiring knowledge. Though they are descended from mothers who for centuries have been kept in ignorance, they display a quick intelligence which is very remarkable. Their fathers, however, are educated men. Was much struck with one girl, a pretty, English-looking creature, tall and graceful, about twelve. She read, very nicely indeed, words of three, four, and five syllables, wrote well, and did her sums correctly, and seven months ago she did not know her letters. She had a little sister with her, and I was much struck with the motherly care she took of her.” The teacher of this school, Edith Anal, had been rescued from heathenism, many years ago, by the Rev. J. T. Tucker, and had been one of the wildest and roughest of her class—of the Maraver or Thief class. But her natural gifts of character, trained and disciplined at the Sarah Tucker Institution, had made her one of their most successful teachers. 75

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Other branch schools at Perangulam, Tenkasy, and Kullidicurichy are making most encouraging progress. The first was the station where the people were so bitterly opposed to the establishment of a school, and burnt down the building first used for that purpose, but were gradually won over by the consistent and beautiful conduct of the young mistress. The average daily attendance is thirty-six. At Tenkasy, an important town, considered specially sacred, there are two schools which have sixty-two girls under instruction, from a letter of one of which, Mr. Lash gives the following interesting extract, showing the quiet blessed work that is going on in the hearts of some of them:— “OH, WORTHY SIR,—Having heard that you and our honoured mother (Mrs. Lash) have arrived safely, and in health in our country, we are greatly rejoiced, and return thanks to God. We give you many hearty thanks for having sent us, who were very ignorant, such good instruction, and we pray that God will watch over you and protect you. As for me, I have special cause to thank God for the school, because I have obtained a blessing from it. How that came to pass I will tell you. One day our teacher had been speaking to us very plainly about the horrors of hell and the joys of heaven. I, thinking of the state I was in, grew terrified, and that morning, through the instruction of the teacher, I learnt that the worship of idols is vain, that there is but one God, and that Jesus our Saviour is the only surety to rid me of my sins. Further, by means of the teacher, I learnt to pray morning and evening, and from that time I have, unknown to my parents, prayed daily every morning and evening. I have worshipped no more idols, nor have I rubbed ashes on my forehead. Up to this time my parents have not noticed these things, but I live in constant fear of this. Sometimes the teacher has allowed me to open and close the school with prayer, and I have prayed before the other girls. “I beg that you will pray for me, that I may believe in my Saviour until my life’s end, and may see His kingdom.”

The other school in Tenkasy is not a very flourishing one, but is interesting from the fact that it is attended by several Mohammedan girls. That at Kullidicurrichy, one of the wealthiest towns of the district, is in its infancy, having only been established towards the end of last year; but it has an average attendance of forty-two, and as the Brahmins have also asked for a school, if a suitable teacher and funds can be found, they hope soon to start another. It would take too much space to allude to each school about which the Report gives interesting particulars, but we subjoin the Table of Statistics given, that our readers may have before them, in a succinct form, the progress in numbers made during the year:— YEAR. Schools. Masters. Mistresses. Christians. Roman Hindus. Total. Average Catholics Attendance. and Mohammedans. 1875,

35

3

40

252

1876,

41

13

45

254

76

29

570

822

594

1040

1323

985

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Five hundred (chiefly caste girls) have been admitted. Thirteen new schools have been opened in important places, though from the shutting up of four unsatisfactory and unimportant ones, and the amalgamation of three others with neighbouring district schools, the numbers do not appear so great in the Table. By a new arrangement with the Church Missionary Society, Mr. Lash has taken charge of all their Girls’ Boarding Schools in those districts of Tinnevelly where no European missionary resides. These schools are of increasing importance, as the Native Church in Tinnevelly (admirably worked on a system of Pastors and Pastorates, and Native Church Councils, under the general superintendence of Dr. Sargent, one of the Missionary Bishops of Tinnevelly) is becoming more and more detached from European influence. In the last Church Missionary Society Report, Mr. Lash writes:— “Those very Hindus, who have so long resisted all attempts to educate their daughters, are now desirous to have them taught. Nor do they object to Bible teaching. We must take advantage of the opening; and this must be done, not by English, but by Native Christian women. An educated Native Christian woman, living a holy and consistent life, in the midst of a large heathen town or village, and doing her duty in her little school as in God’s sight, is a more powerful argument in favour of Christianity than the most devoted English sister could be.”

And now having we trust interested our readers in these few facts laid before them, and convinced them of the real practical good that is being effected by this blessed work, there remains one subject for our active sympathy which must not be omitted. The Report concludes with these striking words:—“We have two great things in our favour—teachers ready, people willing; all we want is funds to bring them together. The parent institution is supported by the Church Missionary Society, but the Branch and Boarding Schools are entirely dependent upon voluntary contributions. In the further development of the work the expenses of course increase, and, were funds forthcoming, there are openings for Bible-women who might be specially trained for the purpose at the Sarah Tucker Institution. They have lost by death some valuable friends and constant contributors, and another cause for anxiety is the reduction of the scale of Government Result Grants, which will diminish their income; but on the whole the friends and promoters of this great work desire to thank God and take courage, trusting Him for the future as they have ever found Him faithful in the past. He has given His blessing hitherto, will He not continue to find the ways and means that are so essential? It would be a glorious achievement to plant a school and a Christian family of teachers in every town and large village in Tinnevelly. That would go far towards fulfilling our responsibility towards one part of our great possessions in India. Let us get hold of the girls who will be the future wives and mothers of the millions of India, who have the training of them in their childhood, that most impressible time when habits are formed and characters moulded, and by the blessing of God we may prove in a future generation that India has not been given to us for our aggrandisement, or for an outlet to the energies of the sons and daughters of over-populated 77

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England, but for the winning of a vast continent, with all its varied races of corrupt idolaters, to the knowledge and service of the Lord Jesus Christ. Much has been already done, but it is as a drop in the bucket to what has yet to be done. Let us then be up and doing! We in England have our part to do in helping by our prayers and our liberality those who are bearing the burden and heat of the day in India. They tell us the people are willing, the workers are ready; let us encourage their hearts and strengthen their hands by providing what alone is wanting to spread the good work tenfold. N.B.—Miss Courthope has undertaken to act as Secretary for the Branch Schools in England. Letters to be addressed MISS COURTHOPE, WHILIGH, HAWKHURST, KENT. Five pounds a year keeps a village school and mistress when once established and the building expenses paid. A town school requires a somewhat larger income. Post-Office Orders to be made payable to A. S. Courthope Ticehurst. Parcels to be sent to Whiligh, Wadhurst, S. E. Railway.

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7 ‘DIFFICULTIES OF ZENANA TEACHING’, INDIAN FEMALE EVANGELIST (OCT 1878), 154–159

This paper was prepared in compliance with a special request made to Mrs. Weitbrecht by the gentlemen of the Calcutta Missionary Conference, who have been taking up the subject of Zenana Missions warmly. It was read at their monthly meeting held on the 8th of April, and it is now sent to England for use in any missionary publication for whose pages it may appear suitable, in the hope of deepening interest in work among the women of India. CALCUTTA, April 17, 1878.

WE will begin our list of difficulties by referring to the very desultory habits of the people, especially the women,—order, regularity, punctuality, have no place in their vocabulary, nor have they any idea of administering a household. Children are under no control, and servants do not obey orders or relieve their mistresses in any adequate degree so as to leave them free time for quiet employment. This state of things is fostered by their constitutional indolence and dislike of trouble. The majority are satisfied with things as they are, and if they can read a little, and keep their household accounts, they give up, with an expression of further acquirement being unnecessary, as they are “only women after all.” The constant recurrence of Hindu festivals is another hindrance, “thirteen in twelve-months” being the orthodox number, though there are many more. The preparation for these, and the late hours they entail, exhaust the small amount of energy these women possess, and they come wearied to their teachers on her next visit, begging to be excused their usual lessons. The atmosphere of superstition in which they continually live is very deadening, and the jeers of those who do not learn very trying and discouraging to those who have a real desire to do their best and improve their opportunity. Another difficulty presents itself in the delicate health of the great majority of native ladies. Fevers and other indispositions are constantly occurring in every family, and will do so till their predisposing causes are removed. Among these may be reckoned their close ill-drained dwellings and early marriages—indeed, to

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the last-named evil do we trace the greatest hindrance of the Zenana teacher. After the marriage of a child of eight, ten, or twelve years, she is constantly going from her father’s to her father-in-law’s house, for months at a time, during the two, three, or four years which may intervene between the celebration of her wedding, and her permanent residence with her husband. During her visits she forgets what she had previously acquired, and in the intervals of her return, has to go over the same ground again. The dissipation of mind caused by this condition of things is a very great barrier to progress. And when at eleven or twelve years of age, with a mind untrained and a character unformed, she becomes practically a wife, and in another year or two a mother, it can easily be understood how greatly maternal trials, and the care of a young infant, unfit her for study even of the lightest kind, the baby being often the central piece in the hour supposed to be given to the teacher, and should it die, the mind of the poor mother is generally in too distracted a state to allow her to read any more. Much might be added on this fruitful topic, but we will pass on to allude to another hindrance which springs from the fickleness of their tastes. A woman may wish to learn to read only, but not to write or acquire the amount of knowledge which inspectors naturally look for. The aim of the Zenana teacher being not so much to educate highly, as to impart Christian instruction, and lead heathen women to the knowledge of salvation, they do not insist on their pupils learning that which is distasteful to them; they enter no family where they are not permitted from the first to impart Bible truth, and if that permission is given, they do not feel justified in refusing to teach, though satisfied that their pupils are not likely to reach a point that would fit them for examination by a Government Inspectress. We must not pass over another hindrance from the frequent removals of the husbands to distant places. Many a promising pupil has been withdrawn from this cause, as the highly educated Bengali gentleman is sometimes suddenly ordered up-country, and his family go with him. So much for the difficulties on one side—now for those on another. So few are the active and efficient workers, that their visits to a house are far too infrequent, and the time which can be given is far too short to permit us to look for very satisfactory or rapid results. One European, American, or other lady-teacher has perhaps eight, ten, twelve, or even more families to visit weekly, beside Schools to oversee. She is assisted by native teachers, but the visit can only be paid once or twice a week to each house. The distances to be travelled, and the character of the climate, add greatly to this difficulty. Then there is the labour of acquiring the native language, the length of time it takes before a foreign lady can speak familiarly or freely, even after learning it in books. A new experience of the habits, customs, modes of thought, etc., of her pupils has also to be gained, and when all this is done, the health perhaps breaks down, and the teacher has to retire for a longer or shorter time, sometimes for good altogether. 80

‘ D I F F I C U LT I E S O F Z E N A N A T E A C H I N G ’

In schools, which form an important part of our work, the difficulties already mentioned act adversely also, especially early marriage, which causes the withdrawal of a pupil when she has advanced so far as to promise to become a welleducated woman. In most cases she is lost sight of from that time, for rarely are they allowed to continue their studies at home. Still, we are not without encouragement in this line, for those girls who have taken interest in study at school, not unfrequently present themselves, after the lapse of a few years, as wives and mothers, to the Zenana teacher, and manifest the benefits received from early cultivation, and the power to reproduce latent knowledge. Schools are certainly among the most promising features in our future prospects. But in spite of all the difficulties which have been enumerated, progress has been made almost beyond our hope, and there is now many a bright intelligent woman to be found in the circle of each missionary teacher. The majority of the pupils are only of ordinary ability, some almost without any, yet among that class are found women who give their teachers the best kind of encouragement, because they hold out hope that instruction has taken root in their hearts, and is bringing forth fruit in their lives. Really superior and gifted women do however fall under instruction sometimes. There is but one remedy for the many disadvantages incident to the social position of Hindu women—but one power that can arouse and elevate them—but one knowledge that can make them truly wise or really happy. This remedy is in the hands of the Zenana teacher; this power is promised; this knowledge she studies by God’s grace to impart; and her labour shall not be in vain. May we not add, it has not been in vain, for many a gem is already shining in the crown of Jesus, transplanted and set there from the seclusion of a Zenana home, and many another is on its way to the same glorious place! We have alluded to the fewness of teachers as one of our difficulties, and the time seems come when we should bestir ourselves more vigorously than we have yet done in this direction. We cannot perhaps look for very rapidly increased supplies from home, and the foreign element is sadly subject to change and withdrawal from causes already indicated. We have, however, material at hand, of which it will be wise to avail ourselves more freely than we have ever done yet. I allude to the young ladies born and brought up in India, a small proportion of whom have been trained for missionary work in the Calcutta Normal School, and have proved themselves very valuable. About one hundred have passed through this Institution since it was commenced; about thirty of whom are still actively employed, and are bearing high characters for faithful service. Some of this number are among the greatest missionary power we now have at work, and others, less known, are doing most efficient service, so that, were they withdrawn, our missions in the Zenana line would suffer grievous loss, and be greatly curtailed. Our friends of the Missionary Conference must know this so well, that we need not particularise, or give sketches of facts, though very telling ones could be given; rather let us press the point of using immediate means to increase our 81

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indigenous teachers by encouraging those especially engaged and interested in the Calcutta Normal School to engage larger premises, and double their number of young people willing to be trained; this is an imperative necessity if the growing work is to be adequately carried on. Most, if not all, our missionary circles are alive to the importance of increasing our Native female teachers, and of giving them a good and really thorough training, which renders them invaluable auxiliaries to all our English-speaking teachers. We believe each mission has its own native female training-class or school, but the Calcutta Normal School for young ladies born in India, is unique, belongs to the work at large, and has trained young women who are found in each of our missionary circles. It has shown itself a practically catholic Institution, and has, we feel sure, the confidence of the missionary body at large. We have reason to believe, that if teachers existed in sufficient numbers, we could not only increase the efficiency and decrease the difficulties of our present work, but also double its extent very speedily; we should also be in a position to offer well-trained teachers to native gentlemen, who are now awakening to the importance of having a special teacher for their own separate families on paying them an adequate salary. This latter remark opens another point needing attention in Zenana work, i.e. that a fixed rate of fees, agreed on by the whole circle of missionary teachers, is very desirable. Native gentlemen have no idea of adequate payment, and will delight to give only one rupee a month to a superior teacher for instructing his family. It was not so at first; as much as 15 or 18 rupees per month was willingly paid in earlier years by men of good means for a teacher, and we must try and form a plan for raising the scale again. If higher fees were paid, pupils would be more diligent in using their opportunity, and the costly character of Zenana missions would be modified. This matter must not be allowed to rest. It is very desirable to press on the notice of foreign teachers the great importance of acquiring the native language as soon as they arrive in the country, and a determination to spend their first strength in studying it vigorously, and not begin active work till they can speak it. Perhaps a great deal of unsuccessful effort may be traced to the non-observance of this rule, and mistakes that have been serious in their effects on the work have resulted from it also. Time spent on the language is not really lost to the work. Another point of importance is, to select some standard book which a Government Inspectress should approve, and which each missionary Zenana teacher should aim to get her pupils to read. Our women know the Scriptures and works connected with them the best, and these a Government Inspectress would not accept, but there are suitable books which might be used as tests of their knowledge in her examination; she might also be asked to give a sketch to each mission of what she would expect the pupils to be able to do in addition to reading. In Madras they have Government grades, and attention is given in all missionary schools to the directions therein specified. Perhaps, eventually, something of the same kind may be done in Bengal. 82

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Our remarks on the difficulties of Zenana visitation have been put into as condensed a form as was possible, the aim being simply to give them clear and distinct expression, and to render this paper practically and permanently useful. May each of us realise, in a continually deepening degree, our solemn responsibility as light-bearers to our heathen fellow-subjects, long sunk in superstitious night, but now, we trust, gradually preparing for the bright shining of the Sun of Righteousness, to chase that night away for ever. M. WEITBRECHT.

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8 JAMES JOHNSTON, EXTRACT FROM OUR EDUCATIONAL POLICY IN INDIA (EDINBURGH: JOHN MACLAREN AND SON, 1880), 37–57

RELIGIOUS NEUTRALITY AN IMPORTANT FEATURE OF THE DESPATCH OF 1854.

Neutrality by system now in force impossible. It undermines native religions.

Uproots belief.

T.B. Macaulay.

That the Home Government meant their education scheme to be thoroughly impartial in its treatment of all forms of religion is too obvious to need any demonstration. I am not aware of any one in this country having questioned this feature of the Government policy. It is too ostentatiously proclaimed to be questioned by any one who knows and trusts in the honesty of English statesmen; it is only doubted by suspicious Asiatics, who, the more it is asserted, only doubt it the more. But wherein does neutrality consist? Does it mean that the Government will not in any way interfere with the religious beliefs of the natives of India, then I unhesitatingly maintain that in the matter of direct teaching in the higher departments, the principle of neutrality is violated in the most practical and important manner. It is true the Government Professors do not directly attack the heathen systems of religion in class hours, nor do they teach Christianity. But they do what is far worse, they undermine the religion of the Hindus, and offer no substitute in its place. I admit it is not intentional, but is not the less true and effectual. It is impossible to teach European science and literature without destroying belief in the gods and religions of India. I will not waste time in showing how it is that such is the effect. It is well known that their false religions are so interwoven with the most erroneous systems of geography, history, astronomy, and science, that the mere teaching of the truth in these departments of a higher education necessarily destroys religious belief. No man who knows India can doubt this. To say that the effect is the same as the teaching of true science in Christian countries is gross misrepresentation. None but a man who is ignorant of India or a sceptic in religion could assert it.1 But let me call a few out of many witnesses to the fact. So long ago as 1833 Macaulay wrote as follows:—“No Hindu, who has received an English education, ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it as a matter of policy; but many profess themselves pure Deists, and some embrace Christianity.”2 84

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Dr. Murray Mitchell, so long a distinguished missionary and educationist in India, said at a mission conference in Mildmay Hall last year: “In colleges the gulf between Hinduism and European thought yawns wide and fathomless. Hinduism teaches a professedly inspired science which is outrageously absurd. The pupil soon rejects it with contempt, and at the same time necessarily rejects also the authority of the book which inculcates it. There is thus to him no divine revelation; no authoritative declaration of spiritual truth. For an individual or a community to be thus suddenly tossed from superstition into scepticism is surely a transition most perilous and painful. No wonder if the mental balance is destroyed and the moral nature often completely wrecked.” He then speaks of the effect of the character and profession of the teachers in the Government colleges. “In appointing professors, Government seems to have a regard only to intellectual qualifications. In religion, a man may be a Christian, Deist, Atheist, Comtist, or Agnostic; the Government serenely ignores the question both of his creed and character.” He admits that there are Christian men among them, but quotes authority for saying that there are also among them distinguished men who have “diffused the principles of Tom Paine over a whole generation of youth.” The Rev. W. Fleming Stevenson, lately returned from his mission of inquiry in the East, told the last General Assembly in Ireland that a native who observed to him “those of us who learn English do not believe in idols,” expressed the general mind of his class. He adds: “The head of a native college said one day, ‘I believe that every one of our students who leaves us, knowing English, has ceased to believe in popular Hinduism.’” How many educated young men believe in the Shastras? was the question recently addressed to the students in a Calcutta college. Promptly there were two answers—“Not one in a hundred,” and “Not one in a thousand,” and the rest assented. And the Under-Secretary of Government in India, in a report to the Home Government, puts it in the mildest form when he says: “And what is the product which it costs the State so much to produce? The Bengali undergraduate has had a fair vernacular education, and has gained at least a superficial knowledge of English, but he is possibly, I may say probably, if from a Government school, without any religious belief at all.” We might multiply such evidence, but it is unnecessary. It is in vain to call such a system neutral, it systematically undermines all religious belief, and leaves the youth of India at the most critical period of their lives in a condition most dangerous and disadvantageous to the formation of moral principles and habits. The Under-Secretary in a report to the Indian Government, speaking of the effect of introducing European science, &c., says: “Every day opened to the student a succession of new and strange phenomena in the unsealed realm of history, science, and philosophy.They were suddenly thrown adrift from the mooring and anchorages of old creeds, and tossed upon the wide sea of speculation and extravagance. 85

Dr. M. Mitchell.

Unsettles moral principles. Government appointment of professors.

Rev. W.F. Stevenson.

This not neutrality. Testimony of an UnderSecretary of Government. Unsettles beliefs,

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and sense “It was no wonder that moral and social obligations began to share the fate of of moral religious beliefs, and that the whole community was in alarm at the spread of the obligation.

new views.This was precisely the state of things which Mr. Charles Marsh had so eloquently anticipated during the discussion of the charter in 1813. ‘It is one thing,’ he said, ‘to dispel the charm which binds mankind to established habits and ancient obligations, and another to turn them over to the discipline and the authority of new doctrines. In that dreadful interval—that dreary void, when the mind is left to wander and grope its way without the props that have hitherto supported it, or the lights which have guided it—what are the chances that they will discern the beauties or submit to the restraints of the religion you may propose to give them?’ His testi- That ‘dreadful interval,’ the Under-Secretary goes on to say, “and ‘that dreary mony to void’ had now arrived, and it is impossible to say how far native society might not missionary have been disorganised, HAD NOT THE MISSIONARIES STEPPED IN AND SUPPLIED A NEW influence.

DIRECTION TO THE AWAKENING SCEPTICISM AND A FRESH SUBJECT TO ATTRACT THE NEW AROUSED SPIRIT OF SPECULATION.”

A most important testimony from a high official of great knowledge and experience reporting to the Government. Moral In regard to the moral influence of the teaching in the colleges where no reliand social gion is taught, it may be admitted that the educated natives, from contact with principles English professors of high character and position, are influenced by a feeling of subverted. honour to pay more regard to truth and honesty than the uneducated. But, on the other hand, it is indisputable that they have acquired not a few new vices or aggravated old ones. They have far less regard to the authority of parents or superiors, and they are more supercilious and contemptuous in the treatment of their more ignorant brethren. The marriage tie is less regarded, and they are more addicted to luxurious habits, and the new vice of drunkenness is making alarming inroads on the physical condition and social habits of the educated youth of India. The Report to Parliament of 1870 seems to us frequently to indicate what it would Dr. C. Macnamara. have been unwise in such a document to express, that the results in this respect are not satisfactory.It is a subject on which we cannot get documentary or official evidence, but, from all we can learn, the following sad picture of society in Bengal could be substantiated by overwhelming moral evidence. It was spoken publicly at the opening of the session of the Medical School of Westminster Hospital last October by Dr. C. Macnamara, and, from his long and extensive practice, to a large extent amongst the highest class of the native, few men have had such opportunities of knowing their habits and sentiments. He said: “Many natives admit the benefits conferred by our rule, but they deplore the disorganised state of society in Bengal. The old families have almost disappeared, and the sons and husbands of the educated and rising generation are largely addicted to drunkenness and vice of every kind, and the more thoughtful men and the vast majority of women contrast this state of things with times when there was less security to life and property, less law, taxation, and education, but when the greatest slur that could attach itself to a man’s name was that of being an undutiful son. Our system, of education has broken down all faith in 86

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religion, and the outcome of a purely secular training has developed gross materialism and rank socialism, and so the necessity for suppressing the outspoken sentiments of the vernacular press, which, nevertheless, gave utterance to opinions he had heard over and over again for some years past among all classes of natives, and which he dreaded would one day break out into a revolt, in comparison with which the Mutiny was a mere brawl.” Where, then, I ask, is the neutrality of our present method? But what was the design of the Home Government in the despatch of 1854? It aimed at neutrality, as we shall show, in a most enlightened and effective way.

UNIVERSITIES, GRANTS-IN-AID, AND INSPECTION wERE NEUTRAL SYSTEM IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF INDIA COULD ALONE BE CARRIED OUT.

THE MEANS BY WHICH A

I have shown how decidedly the Home Government expressed its desire for the withdrawal of the direct teaching in the higher departments, and that the universities were meant to supersede the necessity for it. I do not assert that it was wholly, or chiefly,—it was, perhaps, not at all on the ground of their not being inconsistent with neutrality that they were to be withdrawn. It would have been questionable policy to have declared that they were practically incompatible with neutrality. But it is a most significant fact, that all the references to neutrality that I can see in the despatch, are in connection with the three new features which it introduced into the education of India—viz., The “Universities Grants-in-Aid,” and “Inspection.” To secure impartiality in quotations, I shall give those collected by a strong advocate of the present system. Mr. Cust says in his pamphlet on this subject:— “I have carefully gone over these famous one hundred paragraphs, though I have often read them before. If there is any one leading characteristic of that charter, it is the desire not to awaken a religions difficulty. Thus:— “Par. 28. ‘The examination at the University will not include any subject connected with religious belief; and the affiliated institutions will be under the management of persons of every variety of religious persuasion.’ “Par. 32.‘We shall refuse to sanction any teaching (connected and Mohammedan tenets), as directly opposed to the principle of religious neutrality, to which we have always adhered.’ “Par. 34. ‘(The Senate) will include natives of India of all religious persuasions.’ “Par. 53. ‘The system of grants-in-aid will be based on an entire abstinence from interference with the religious instruction conveyed in the school.’ “Par. 56. ‘No notice whatsoever to be taken by the Inspector of the religious doctrines, which may be taught in the school.’ “Par. 57. ‘It may be advisable distinctly to assert in them the principle of perfect religious neutrality, on which the grants will be awarded.’”

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Neutrality of despatch.

Refers to conferring university degree on special subjects

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Not carried If the system thus laid down had been faithfully and impartially carried out out. there would have been nothing to complain of.

Mr. Robert N. Cust, and Mr. M. Kempson, who have lately written pamphlets in support of the higher education by Government, and in opposition to the recent circular of the Church Missionary Society, and the views I had advocated at the Conference on Missions in October last, both maintain, that the principles of the despatch have been carried out. The former quotes a number of passages from resolutions and declarations by the Government in India. But these gentlemen should distinguish between good resolutions and good deeds. I never questioned the designs and intentions of the Government, or its members. I have always made full allowance for the difficulties of their position. I do not even impute motives to the parties most interested in supporting the present system, I give them full credit for thinking the system of which they are the representatives or agents the best that could be carried out. But we cannot blind our eyes to facts, and it is with Systems facts that I deal, not words. It is very difficult for any class of men to see their own dread faults, or the faults of their systems, and it is for that reason I urge action from extinction without. It is hardly to be expected that the system will perform the rite which Japanese officials ironically call the “happy despatch.” “Euthanasia,” a most sweet word, is not likely to become popular among systems any more than amongst individuals; nor is it desirable. A responsible Government must take the work in hand. Mr. Mr. Kemp- Kempson tells us, without the slightest reference to any evidence, that in regard to son’s my charges against the tendency of the present system, “They have no existence experience. in fact, so far as my experience goes.” If Mr. Kempson’s experience was limited to the north-west provinces, in which he was “Director of Public Instruction,” I can conceive it possible that he may not have seen, in an obvious form, the evils I speak of, for two reasons. First, because these provinces have been only a comOldest seats of paratively short time under the system, which takes time to produce its baneful learning fruit. In a list of the professed religious beliefs of graduates over all India, I was the worst struck with the fact, that of the number of those who professed themselves of no results. religious belief, the proportion was far greatest in Bengal, where the system had been longest in force, and it almost vanished as we came to these regions in which it was comparatively new. Second, the north-west provinces and the Punjab have Good rulers. been highly Good rulers. favoured with commissioners and lieutenant governors of the very highest wisdom and character, who did much to put education on the best possible basis in their power. Disloyalty and open irreligion and immorality, under such men as Sir Henry Lawrence, Lord Lawrence, and Sir William Muir, would have been unnatural and improbable.3 Grants-inSecond misconception. Both Mr. Kempson and Mr. Cust assume, that in aid for all. advocating the withdrawal of the Government colleges we expect that the grants-in-aid are to go exclusively, or almost exclusively, to mission colleges, and against this their arguments on the ground of neutrality are telling enough.

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But it is an easy feat to knock down a man of straw of our own setting up. I would at once say that such a procedure would be not only opposed to neutrality but to justice. The natives of India have a right to be fairly and even liberally dealt with in such a case; and I fully expect that they would set themselves to establish and maintain colleges and high schools, if they were left to stand alone, instead of being bolstered up by a pauperising system. They have done so before, and would do it again. When the desire for education had not a tithe of the strength it has now, the natives of India made noble contributions for education. Now it is a felt necessity, and there is no fear of the higher education going down. If the universities are kept up, they will maintain the standard in all the higher schools and colleges. That the natives of India are able, and would, if left to their own resources, maintain the colleges, is asserted in Government reports. Mr. Arthur Howell, than whom no man had better means of knowing, asserts it; the conference of missionaries at Allahabad expressed the same opinion and in the last “statement exhibiting the moral and material progress of India,” attention is called to the circumstance that on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales, the wealthy natives in several places commemorated the event by raising money for educational purposes. The native gentlemen of Behar alone subscribed the sum of £20,000. We have had noble examples of liberality among the natives of India in both building and endowing colleges and schools before Government began to do it for them. We are apt to forget that learning was honoured and maintained in India long before we had emerged from barbarism. We do not expect them to volunteer to do this; like most subjects of an absolute government, they prefer to have everything done for them. But if left alone in a firm, cautious, and friendly spirit, they could and would provide it for themselves. But would this be an advantage in a missionary point of view? That is not with me the first question. Is it right in itself? That is what we have to see to; and if it is right, I am sure it will be best for the righteous cause. Missions have nothing to fear in a fair competition with natives of any class. It is only the unfair competition with a Government, backed by the prestige and pay that makes voluntary efforts by either natives or missions so arduous or impossible. If that competition were withdrawn, we have reason to believe that colleges would soon cease to be a burden on the funds of the Church. They would, with slightly higher fees and a larger attendance, pay their own expenses. The average attendance at aided colleges is only seventy-four; they could educate three or four times that number without any corresponding addition to their contributions from home. If any should still say that the natives of India could not or would not support colleges for themselves, I would only say, that in that improbable and sad case they would have themselves to blame, and could not charge on Government the fault of aiding either missionary societies or European residents in providing the needed means of education.

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Natives could support colleges.

Testimony of witnesses. Evidence recent and remote.

Will not volunteer till left alone. Benefit to missions not first question.

Fair competition not feared.

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It is found in Calcutta, that the high schools are now paying concerns, to use a mercantile phrase, and they are being established as a profitable commercial speculation. We have another and painful reason for urging the gradual withdrawal of the direct teaching by Government in the higher departments.

THE PRESENT SYSTEM IS RAISING UP A NUMBER OF DISCONTENTED AND DISLOYAL SUBJECTS. This is not so much felt in districts in which education is of recent origin and limited in extent to the wants of the locality. But in the old educational seats, especially in Bengal, this result of the Government system of direct education is painfully and alarmingly felt. ExpectaIt fosters and gives facilities for getting an education in the language and tions culture of the ruling power, which is generally interpreted into an intention to raised, employing in lucrative and honourable posts those who have entered, as they think, with their Asiatic notions, into relations with the Government, in which their only sense of gratitude for the benefits of a cheap and liberal education is a “lively anticipation of future favours,” and a sense of injustice and a feeling of resentment if they are not conferred. The interpretation put on the despatch of 1854 has added to that native tendency to anticipate Government patronage for the favour they think they confer by attending its colleges. The wording of sec. 72 seems to have been so understood. It runs thus: “We have always been of opinion that the spread of education in India will produce a greater efficiency in all branches of administration, by enabling you to obtain the services of intelligent and trustworthy persons in every department of Government; and, on the other hand, we believe that the numerous vacancies of different kinds which have constantly to be filled up may afford a great stimulus to education.” They could then say, as they do in sec. 73: “We understand that it is often not so much the want of Government employment, as the want of properly qualified persons to be employed by Government, which is felt at the present time in many parts of India.” They express regret that “no more than forty-six persons bad been gazetted in Bengal up to 1852, all of whom were students in the Government colleges.” Other passages might be quoted to the same effect. These are worthy objects in themselves, but they have engendered unreasonable expectations in the minds of a people like the Hindus. to be disBut what is the state of matters now? A supply vastly in excess of the demand, appointed. not only from Government offices, but from all sources of employment. In the Report for 1870, the Under-Secretary makes frequent reference to this fact. The following may be taken as a sample of the views repeatedly expressed or implied in the “Blue Book.” Referring to the educated native, he says: “He is precluded by his education from manual labour, and from recruiting that class on whose

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industry and intelligence the prosperity of the country depends. He finds himself in keenest competition for intellectual employent—for there are thousands like himself—as the market, though ample, has been overstocked, and all the while industrial education has been neglected altogether, and there are millions for whom no kind of instruction has been provided by the Government at all.” This will easily be understood by a reference to the numbers who are prepared Supply in for, or who actually pass through the colleges now, as compared with what they excess of demand. were 21 years ago, when the three universities were set up. In 1857 when the universities were founded, the matriculation examination only is given. In Calcutta, there were 244 candidates, of whom 162 passed. In 1877, there were 2425 candidates, of whom 1355 passed. In Madras, the number for 1857 was 41 candidates, of whom 36 passed; in 1877 there were 2517 candidates, of whom 1250 passed. It will give an idea of the increase of education, when we quote from the “Abstract,” laid before Parliament last year, the following figures. In ten years, from 1868 to 1877, the three universities conferred the following degrees:— 286 received the degree of M.A. 1,652 B.A. ” ” 209 received diplomas in civil engineering. 809 ” ” in medicine. 910 ” ” in law. 4,091 passed the first arts examination. 17,802 entrance examination. ” Add 5,948 who passed the entrance examination from 1857–1867, and we have 23,740 matriculated within these 21 years. The rapid rate of progress may be judged of by taking the numbers who passed each fifth year during this period. In 1857, 198 passed the entrance examination in Calcutta and Madras universities; that for Bombay was not then formed. ” 1862, 522 ” ” ” ” ” 1867, 1123 the three universities. ” ” 1872, 1486 ” ” ” ” ” 1877, 2808 ” ” ” ” Well may we ask with the Under-Secretary in the “Return” from which these figures are taken: “Does the system tend to confer those vast moral and material blessings which flow from the general diffusion of useful knowledge?” described in the despatch of 1854. “What becomes of all these highly-educated young men, whom the university turns out every year? Are they, as in England, absorbed into the channels of

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What becomes of the educated?

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every-day life, with a satisfactory or even perceptible result? Are they to be traced, as in England, in a liberal and enlightened native press? Do native gentlemen, like English gentlemen, return to their zemindaries from a university career to spread around them the reflex of the enlightenment they have received themselves? Does the process of highly educating a few and leaving the masses, tend to increase or diminish the gulf between class and class? Are there any indications of a decrease in crime, or of a dawn of intelligence in the agricultural classes? Such questions will occur to any one who sees how the public expenditure on education is annually distributed, and how comparatively few are the recipients of the larger share of the State’s bounty.” Native He professes his inability to answer these questions. It is time they were press answered. Recent events have given an unsatisfactory reply; our attempt to concontrolled. trol the native press is the most significant answer that Government has yet given. Will that satisfy the nation and the Church? The above figures give no idea of the number of educated natives qualified for, as they think, and fully expecting employment in Government or mercantile offices, and in a large proportion of cases finding none of the kind they expected; while, by their training, they are, as Mr. Howell says, “unfitted for manual and productive industry.” In the official Report on the “Moral and Material Progress of India,” laid before Parliament last year, the expression occurs regarding the educated class—“The complaint is reiterated by the local Government, that the youth of Bengal resort almost exclusively to two professions, which are over-stocked—the law and the public service. . . . Dislike of manual work creates a prejudice against (even) the practical study of mechanics.” Indian If we look beyond those who have succeeded in passing the entrance examinanot like tion, or in obtaining degrees, to the much larger number who have come up as English candidates from the higher schools, with a good education in their own languages, graduates. and a fair knowledge of English, acquired not for its own sake, or for the sake of the literary treasures it contains, but solely with a view to sordid gain or worldly promotion, we shall have a better idea of the source whence so much discontent and disloyalty emanate. The number of candidates who have presented themselves for examination by the universities, during these twenty-one years, amounts in the aggregate to not less than 61,650. To show the rate of increase, we find, that for the first eleven years the number of applicants was 15,673. In the last ten years it was 45,977. The “General Report on Public Instruction in Bengal,” just come to hand, states, that Only too “the number has doubled since 1874.” These numbers, though large, are not, it numerous may be said, great, when compared with relatively the population of India. But relatively. they are out of all proportion to the numbers educated in the lower departments, and what is of far more consequence, far above the natural law of demand and supply. No comparison can be drawn from European habits, where the higher education is part of the equipment for the life of a gentleman, as well as a qualification for professional employment. To the Indian this European culture is almost 92

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exclusively a preparation for professional, and still more for official, life, and disappointed of these, the education has only excited wants and raised expectations which leave the unsuccessful aspirant a discontented and dangerous man. These figures speak for themselves. The Under-Secretary of the Home Department in India, was painfully impressed with the state of matters of which he knew so much, and in 1869 wrote these eloquent and solemn words in his “Report”—words which may well go home to every patriotic heart. The danger is far greater now than it was ten years ago. It grows with the growth of the system: “Looking to the rapid growth of our educational system, and to the enormous influence for good or evil that a single able and well-educated man may exercise in this country; and looking at the dense but inflammable ignorance of the millions around us, it seems a tremendous experiment for the State to undertake, and in some provinces almost monopolise, the direct training of whole generations, above their own creed, and above the sense of relation to another world upon which they base all their moral obligations; and the possible evil is obviously growing with this system;” and he concludes with the solemn warning: “It is true that things go smoothly and quietly, but this is attained by ignoring, not only the inevitable results of early training on the character, and the great needs of human nature, especially in the East, but by also ignoring the responsibility which devolves on the Government that assumes the entire control of direct education at all. If, therefore, while fanaticism is raging around, there is a calm in our schools and colleges, it is an ominous and unnatural calm of impossible continuance, the calm of the centre of the cyclone.”

A solemn official warning.

Government is responsible.

ABOUT REMEDIES AND OBJECTIONS.—FIRST, GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS. I do not feel called on to lay down the programme of a future policy; that I leave for more experienced and competent hands. I have proved the existence of an evil of a most pernicious and perilous kind, which demands a remedy on the score of religion, morality, and good government. I have shown the presence of institutions supported by natives and European residents, as well as those by missionary societies, capable of indefinite expansion, with a continuance of the grants-in-aid now given. I have called attention to the principle underlying the whole of the despatch of 1854, which anticipated and required a change from the existing method of direct instruction by the Government. The universities, the grants-inaid, and inspection being all based on that principle. In these circumstances, I am under no necessity of proposing any new method, I simply ask for the honest and earnest carrying out of the provision of the despatch.4 It will be a difficult, but not an impossible task. It must be done firmly and persistently, but slowly and cautiously, under imperial authority: not in a spirit of antagonism to the natives, but by appealing to their better feelings, and calling on them to make a sacrifice for the benefit of their poorer and less-favoured brethren. I have too much respect for the higher classes in India, to suspect them of the selfish desire to continue a 93

Firm, caution, and kindly withdrawal of Government Colleges,

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monopoly of State education at the expense of the poor. With special colleges, and the technical schools, and normal schools and colleges, we would not interfere. and The education in the higher class of schools should also be given up by the higherGovernment. In them the branches taught necessarily tend to undermine belief, as class well as, though not to the same extent as in the colleges, and it would be easy for schools. the natives and societies to keep them up. They can be made even now to pay their own expenses under native teachers, with a good European master. The universities would of course remain, and would be a guarantee, and the means of keeping up the standard, and stimulating to the highest effort by their examinations, degrees, scholarships, and rewards. They might be improved by broadening the basis of representation at their boards. These are what we ask, and they are only what the Home Government have What Home urged for the last quarter of a century. But if “it’s a far cry to Loch Awe,” it’s a Governfurther cry to the Hooghly, and it will require the loudest and most stern call of the ment called for in vain. British Parliament, to secure a consistent carrying out of its determinations. But it may be asked, since the terms of the despatch are so explicit, and the wishes of Government have been so clearly and frequently expressed during these Why in twenty-five years, why have not Government colleges been reduced in number, vain. and the funds employed on lower education, or the cheap substitution for grantsin-aid in native and mission colleges? GovernThe answer is not far to seek. The Indian Government cannot give, or not give, ment pre- that amount of time and attention to education which the subject demands. They occupied. are so much taken up with weighty and multifarious affairs of a more urgent though not more important nature, that they have left the power, not formally, but External practically, in the hands of secular educationists. They have thrown open the highinfluence, est appointments, even those of “Directors of public Instruction,” winch at first were given to experienced civilians, to professors and principals of colleges and schools, as the rewards of lengthened service, or of ability in teaching. The consequences are what might have been expected. With the best intention, it may be, of a professional these men inevitably identify themselves with their system, which had been all class. along the higher education. They think, and in fact tell us, that we must educate the higher classes to the highest pitch, and by-and-by education will “percolate downward to the lower strata.” We all know the tendency of professional and class legislation. To set a body of ecclesiastics or schoolmasters, of doctors or lawyers, of officers of the army or navy, to take steps for gradually reducing their numbers, until they become extinct, and to foster and strengthen another body of men for whom they had no affection, and in whom, from professional pride, they had probably no confidence, to take their place, would not be a likely way to gain the end desired. They would find a thousand good reasons for avoiding the task, or delaying its execution. In fact, to ask men to extinguish themselves or their system is wrong, to expect them to do it is folly. Mission But I must call attention to what is worse than evasion and delay in carrying out colleges disliked. the provisions of the despatch and the wishes of the Government. There seems of

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late, a growing tendency to discourage, if not to destroy, the aided colleges, as rivals to those of Government. It is with pain that I have lately received stronger confirmation of what has long been feared, that there is a strong desire to get rid of all our missionary colleges, which have done so much for the education of the people, and, as the highest officers of the Government have allowed, done much to save society from the baneful effects of mere secular teaching. Some of these colleges have of late years greatly improved in their management and efficiency, and now number a larger roll of graduates than those of Government. This is what the despatch aimed at, and what ought to have been hailed with gratitude. Instead of that, what do we find? The most efficient of them are being treated with the greatest severity, and the grants-in-aid are reduced, and reduced in the most arbitrary way, and on such short notice as to be embarrassing and discouraging to the managers. I cannot now give details, but record the fact, and am prepared with details if required. It has long been known that many in high employment in the Educational Department are opposed to mission colleges, on the ground of religious feeling. They openly advocate views directly adverse to Christianity; and this feeling, which formerly found vent in contempt for a weak opponent, now finds vent in acts of bitter hostility towards a powerful rival. I am far from charging professors and directors as a body with hostility to religion, but it cannot be denied that there are many of the most active and pushing of their number who are opposed to anything in the form of living Christianity, and in a system which is based on the exclusion of religion those who are hostile to it have a vantage ground, in opposing institutions which condemn their own by teaching the truths which they ignore, and yet gain the confidence of the natives, and do their work at so much less cost to the Government.5 I need not reply to the objections which may be made to these simple proposals.I would refer to the able men who drew up the despatch, as a guarantee that its provisions are wise and practicable. It is well known that Sir Charles Wood took counsel with the wisest and most experienced men of all parties, in preparing that important document—the Magna Charta of education in India.The most experienced governors, civilians, professors, and missionaries were engaged in its composition, and it bears the mark of the greatest wisdom and minutest forethought, “aided,” as they say they were in paragraph six, “by ample experience of the past and the most competent advice for the future.” It is not disrespectful to say of those who have carped at, and opposed the carrying out of its provisions, that they cannot boast of greater wisdom and experience than those who gave such mature and disinterested attention to the drawing up of a code worthy of the new era, when, as they say, in the opening paragraph, “By an Act of the Imperial Legislature, the responsible trust of the Government of India has again been placed in our hands.” If the despatch is impracticable, let them ask for its repeal.

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Discouraged.

Hostility of Secularists.

Do not reply to objections. Experienced men drew up despatch.

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SECOND, ABOUT MISSION COLLEGES. It is most desirable that, in order to the efficient and economical management of mission colleges, the different Evangelical Churches co-operate in supporting and managing them. At first these educational missions were entirely conducted by the Church of Scotland, and only one was set up in each Presidential city. In place But ere long, one after another of the leading missionary societies started on the division of same line—a most gratifying evidence of the proved efficiency of the system labour. which Dr. Duff may be said to have originated, but leading to what cannot but be deplored as a needless waste in men and money. So long as the Presbyterian Church of Scotland made this line of action a speciality in mission work, for which, as the Church of John Knox, she was peculiarly fitted, it made a good division of labour, taking the missions in India as one body working for one great end; but when each began to add this feature to their other work, or to give up other Waste in forms of work for this, it had the necessary effect of multiplying small educational men and institutions, with a small number if pupils, either with a small staff of teachers, in money. which case they were inefficient, or with a large staff, and then the average cost of each pupil was very high. It is found, then, that four or five European professors, with native assistants, Economy. can teach 300 or 400 pupils as well as they could teach a fourth part of the number, which reduces the cost of each pupil in proportion. At present the number of pupils, in aided colleges, is on an average only seventy-four to each. Far too small a number to pay, as they might be made to do, the great part, if not eventually nearly the whole, of their own expenses, but for the wasteful competition amongst themselves, and still more the unequal competition with Government institutions. A slight rise in the fee with increased attendance would make colleges self-supporting. An example of this kind of co-operation has been exhibited in Madras under the A partial example. able presidency and through the exertions of Mr. Miller, with the most satisfactory results—the Church of England, the Established Church of Scotland, and the Methodist Missionary Societies, all contributing to the Free Church College, under a board of management on the spot. It is hoped that these societies and others will combine at home for a general movement, which may establish mission colleges of a high class, in greater force, at more stations, and at less expense to each society than at present. A full staff Another point of great importance is to see that such a staff of professors and needed teachers is kept up, as shall admit of greater attention being paid to evangelistic for higher work in the colleges and amongst those who have passed through our educational success. institutions. This work must, as a rule, be done by the professors, not by a separate class set apart as evangelists.They would be looked on with distrust, and would not get the hold on old scholars which a former teacher would. Every professor and teacher Must be must be an evangelist, who carries his evangelistic spirit into the school and colevangelistic. lege, every day, and at all times. By having a larger staff, there could always be Call for cooperation.

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one in turn engaged in Rooking after, and addressing as occasion offered, old graduates of their own or Government colleges, in the towns, and by occasional itinerancy in the surrounding country for scattering the seed of the Word where it may fall into the hearts of old pupils, and recall old lessons.This kind of sporadic work, conducted on a concentric principle, would be of great use. Each college should be a centre, and the circle would correspond with the radius from which its graduates were drawn. It is a shame to the Church that by having almost all our colleges undermanned it was impossible to carry on such work in a methodical and efficient way. Another branch of work which ought to be greatly extended, is the training of teachers for the elementary schools. If a large number of well-qualified teachers were trained, they would soon get employment throughout the country, if the stimulus were given to the elementary education which was originally intended by the despatch of 1854. In the last place, let there be more intelligent oversight, and earnest prayer by the Church at home; and we hope, that, ere long, we may see glorious results. There is a great leavening process going on in Hindu thought and feeling. There is a conviction diffused that the Christian system is the true, and will be the triumphant religion in India. There will be opposition, there may be a conflict, imperiling our rule, if not our existence, in the country, ere that triumph is attained, but it will come, and it will, we believe, come with a sudden and mighty rush which will startle and amazean incredulous age. Hinduism is like no other system that now exists, or has ever existed in the world. It seems as if it would defy those processes of disintegration, by which believers may be gathered by units or tens or hundreds from other sects and races, in other systems, in other lands, or even in India, as among the aboriginal tribes, or those simpler races in Tinevelley and Travancore, which never fully partook of the fatal privileges of Brahminical religion, and were never brought within the iron bondage of caste, where missions have been so largely successful. Hinduism defies the tooth of time and the tool of the engineer to disintegrate it, or to pick out a stone from the hard and compact structure, except in a few rare and exceptional cases, and the intensity of passion with which these few conversions are felt and resented shows how perfect is the unity of the body—“If one member suffers all the members suffer with it.” When Hinduism falls, it will fall as those grand old towers fall which have outlived the age and state of society for which they were constructed; so strongly cemented that they will stand or fall entire—they cannot be taken down like our frail modern structures, stone by stone. It is only by the slow and persevering process of sapping and mining that they can be brought to the ground, and they fall in one solid mass. It is thus that this great donjon, in which superstition and caste have kept the millions of India as in a castle of despair, will one day fall, “to rise no more at all.” A thousand agencies are at work to undermine it, secular and religious, and we wish them all God-speed; but none can compare with the full and clear proclamation of the glorious Gospel, in thoroughly equipped and efficiently 97

Sporadic and concentric work.

Normal schools and colleges. The Church’s duty, oversight and prayer.

Hinduism to fall not by disintegration;

but in mass,

like old tower.

By undermining foundations.

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conducted educational institutions, in which Divine light is thrown on every subject of human study, by generous and disinterested men of the highest culture and Christian character.

Notes 1. See Appendix E. 2. “Life of Lord Macaulay.” 3. There is a third reason, but as it assumes the form of personality I will not introduce it into my argument. Mr. Kempson seems to form very decided opinions on very slender data. He had only seen a brief and necessarily an imperfect account of my views in a pamphlet by Mr. Cust, who did not even quote my words; and yet, with no other means of knowing my character or opinions, he pens and prints the following words: “It need hardly be said that want of sympathy leads to detraction and antagonism.” Then follow such expressions as “unfair and mischievous,” “imperfect information,” “a libel on the people of India,” &c. On what ground does Mr. Kempson charge me with “want of sympathy” with the Government, and guilty of “detraction” and “libel” and “mischievous respresentations” of the people of India? 4. See the first sentence in the analysis of the despatch by the Under-Secretary, Appendix D. 5. Cannot plead retrenchment. They are increasing cost of Government colleges.

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9 ‘RECOMMENDATIONS’, IN REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1883), 311–312, 590–602, 604–618

338. Recommendations.—The Recommendations adopted by the Commission are as follows:— (1)

(2) (3) (4)

(5) (6)

(7)

That the attention of the Local Governments be invited to the recommendations made in the several provincial reports with regard to providing or extending the means of collegiate education in the province of Sind and at Ahmedabad in Bombay, at Bhagalpur in Bengal, and at Jabalpur in the Central Provinces; and also to the question of the establishment of an aided college at Delhi under native management. That the rate of aid to each college be determined by the strength of the staff, the expenditure on its maintenance, the efficiency of the institution, and the wants of the locality. That provision be made for special grants to aided colleges, whenever necessary, for the supply and renewal of buildings, furniture, libraries, and other apparatus of instruction. That in order to secure a due succession of competent officers in the Education Department, the period of necessary service qualifying for pension should be reduced, and that a graduated scale of pensions based on length of service, and obtainable without medical certificate, should be introduced. That Indian graduates, especially those who have also graduated in European Universities, be more largely employed than they have hitherto been in the colleges maintained by Government. That in order to encourage diversity of culture, both on the literary and on the physical side, it is desirable, in all the larger colleges, Government and aided, to make provision for more than one of the alternative courses laid down by the Universities. That the discretionary power of Principals of colleges, to admit to certain courses of lectures in special cases students who have not passed the examinations required by the Universities, be affirmed. 99

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(8) (9) (10)

(11) (12)

(13)

(14) (15) (16) (17)

(18)

(19)

That an attempt be made to prepare a moral text book, based upon the fundamental principles of natural religion, such as may be taught in all Government and non Government colleges That the Principal or one of the Professors in each Government and aided college deliver to each of the college classes in every session a series of lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen That while it is desirable to affirm the principle that fees at the highest rate consistent with the undiminished spread of education should be levied in every college aided by the State, no aided college should be required to levy fees at the same rate as that charged in a neighbouring Government college That no college, Government or aided, be allowed to receive more than a certain proportion of free students, the proportion to be fixed by the Department, in communication, where necessary, with the managers That to secure regularity of attendance at colleges the principle be affirmed that fees, though levied monthly for the convenience of students, are to be regarded as payments for a term, and that a student has no right to a certificate from his college for any term until the whole fee for that term is paid That as the fees in the Presidency College of Madras are considerably lower than those which it is found practicable to levy in the Presidency Colleges of Calcutta and Bombay, the Government of Madras be invited to consider the advisability of enhancing the rate of fees in that college That the Local Governments and Administrations be invited to consider whether it is necessary to assign for scholarships, tenable in Arts colleges, a larger proportion of the provincial grant for education than two per cent That scholarship holders, as such, be not exempted from payment of the ordinary fees That the Local Governments be invited to consider the advisability of appropriating, where necessary, a certain sum for the establishment of scholarships tenable by graduates reading for the M.A. degree That the Local Governments be invited to consider the advisability of establishing scholarships for distinguished graduates to enable them to proceed to Europe for the purpose of practically studying some branch of mechanical industry That in place of the system existing in Madras, according to which the first twenty students at the University Entrance and B.A. Examinations are allowed to read free in any Government college, liberal provision be made for a system of scholarships open to general competition and tenable in any college That the Government of Bombay be requested to consider whether all or some of the scholarships now restricted to the Elphinstone and Deccan Colleges may, with due regard to the circumstances under which they were originally founded, be made tenable at any affiliated college, and that if these scholarships cannot fairly be opened to general competition, they be awarded as far as possible to poor students who, but for the stipends, would be unable to continue their studies at college 100

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678.—(4)—Recommendations on Collegiate Education 1. That the attention of the Local Governments be invited to the recommendations made in the several Provincial Reports with regard to providing or extending the means of collegiate education in the Province of Sindh and at Ahmedabad in Bombay, at Bhagulpur in Bengal and at Jabalpur in the Central Provinces and also to the question of the establishment of an aided college at Delhi under native management. 2. That the rate of aid to each college be determined by the strength of the staff the expenditure on its maintenance the efficiency of the institution and the wants of the locality. 3. That provision be made for special grants to aided colleges whenever necessary, for the supply and renewal of buildings, furniture libraries, and other apparatus of instruction. 4. That in order to secure a due succession of competent officers in the Education Department, the period of necessary service qualifying for pension should be reduced, and that a graduated scale of pensions based on length of service, and obtainable without medical certificate, should be introduced. 5. That Indian graduates, especially those who have also graduated in European Universities, be more largely employed than they have hitherto been in the colleges maintained by Government. 6. That in order to encourage diversity of culture, both on the literary and on the physical side, it is desirable, in all the larger colleges, Government and aided, to make provision for more than one of the alternative courses laid down by the Universities. 7. That the discretionary power of Principals of colleges, to admit to certain courses of lectures in special cases students who have not passed the examinations required by the Universities, be affirmed. 8. That an attempt be made to prepare a moral text-book, based upon the fundamental principles of natural religion, such as may be taught in all Government and non-Government colleges. 9. That the Principal or one of the Professors in each Government and aided college deliver to each of the college classes in every session a series of lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen. 10. That while it is desirable to affirm the principle that fees at the highest rate consistent with the undiminished spread of education should be levied in every college aided by the State, no aided college should be required to levy fees at the same rate as that charged in a neighbouring Government college. 11. That no college, Government or aided, be allowed to receive more than a certain proportion of free students; the proportion to be fixed by the Department, in communication, where necessary, with the managers. 12. That to secure regularity of attendance at colleges, the principle be affirmed that fees, though levied monthly for the convenience of students, are to be regarded as payments for a term, and that a student has no right to a certificate from his college for any term until the whole fee for that term is paid. 101

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13. That as the fees in the Presidency College of Madras are considerably lower than those which it is found practicable to levy in the Presidency Colleges of Calcutta and Bombay, the Government of Madras be invited to consider the advisability of enhancing the rate of fees in that college. 14. That the Local Governments and Administrations be invited to consider whether it is necessary to assign for scholarships tenable in Arts colleges a larger proportion of the provincial grant for education than 2 per cent. 15. That scholarship-holders as such be not exempted from payment of the ordinary fees. 16. That the Local Governments be invited to consider the advisability of appropriating, where necessary, a certain sum for the establishment for scholarships tenable by graduates reading for the M.A. degree. 17. That the Local Governments be invited to consider the advisability of establishing scholarships for distinguished graduates to enable them to proceed to Europe for the purpose of practically studying some branch of mechanical industry. 18. That in place of the system existing in Madras, according to which the first twenty students at the University Entrance and F.A. examinations are allowed to read free in any Government college, liberal provision be made for a system of scholarships open to general competition and tenable in any college. 19. That the Government of Bombay be requested to consider whether all or some of the scholarships now restricted to the Elphinstone and Deccan Colleges may, with due regard to the circumstances under which they were originally founded, be made tenable at any affiliated college; and that if these scholarships cannot fairly be opened to general competition, they be awarded as far as possible to poor students who, but for the stipends, would be unable to continue their studies at college.

679. (5).—Recommendations on the Internal Administration of the Education Department. 1. That when an educational officer enters the higher graded service of the Education Department, his promotion should not involve any loss of pay. 2. That conferences (1) of officers of the Education Department, and (2) of such officers with managers of aided and unaided schools, be held from time to time for the discussion of questions affecting education, the Director of Public Instruction being in each case ex-officio President of the conference. Also that Deputy Inspectors occasionally hold local meetings of the schoolmasters subordinate to them for the discussion of questions of school management. 3. That a general educational library and museum be formed at some suitable locality in each Province, and that encouragement be given to school-papers or magazines conducted in the vernacular.

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4. That managers of schools in competition be invited by the Department to agree to rules providing, as far as the circumstances of the locality allow, (1) that, except at specified times, a pupil of one school be not admitted to another without a certificate from his previous school; (2) that any fees due to that school have been paid; and (3) that he do not obtain promotion into a higher class by changing his school. 5. That it be an instruction to the Department in the various Provinces to aim at raising fees gradually, cautiously, and with due regard to necessary exemptions, up to the highest amount that will not check the spread of education, especially in colleges, secondary schools, and primary schools in towns where the value of education is understood. 6. That the Education Department in each Province limit its calls for returns, (1) to such as the Government may require, and (2) to such others as are indispensable for information and control. 7. That all schools managed by the Department, or by Committees exercising statutory powers, and all other schools that are regularly aided or inspected, or that regularly send pupils to the examinations of the University or of the Department (other than examinations which are conducted by the Department for admission to the public service), be classed as public schools, and sub-divided into departmental, aided, and unaided; (2) that all other schools furnishing returns to the Department be classed as private schools; and (3) that all other details of classification be referred to the Statistical Committee appointed by the Government of India. 8. That no attempt be made to furnish financial returns for private schools. 9. That native and other local energy be relied upon to foster and manage all education as far as possible, but that the results must be tested by departmental agency, and that therefore the inspecting staff be increased so as to be adequate to the requirements of each Province. 10. That the remuneration of subordinate inspecting officers be reconsidered in each Province with due regard to their enhanced duties and responsibilities. 11. That, as a general rule, transfers of officers from Professorships of colleges to Inspectorships of schools, and vice versá, be not made. 12. That it be distinctly laid down that native gentlemen of approved qualifications be eligible for the post of Inspector of Schools, and that they be employed in that capacity more commonly than has been the case hitherto. 13. That Inspectresses be employed where necessary for the general supervision of Government, aided, and other girls’ schools desiring inspection. 14. That in every Province a Code be drawn up for the guidance of Inspecting Officers. 15. That it be recognised as the duty of the Revenue Officers to visit the schools within their jurisdiction, communicating to the Executive Officers or Board to which each school is subordinate any recommendations which they may desire to make. 16. That voluntary inspection by officers of Government and private persons be encouraged, in addition to the regular inspection of departmental and Revenue Officers. 103

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17. That the detailed examination of scholars in primary schools be chiefly entrusted to the Deputy Inspectors and their assistants, and that the main duty of the Inspectors in connection with such schools be to visit them, to examine into the way in which they are conducted, and to endeavour to secure the cordial support of the people in the promotion of primary education. 18. That the general upper and lower primary school examinations be not compulsory, but that the annual reports show the number of scholars in each stage of education. 19. That in every Province in which examinations for the public service are held, they be so arranged as to give encouragement to vernacular education. 20. That the Committees appointed to conduct the public service examinations and other examinations of a similar kind include representatives of nonGovernment schools as well as departmental officers. 21. That Normal schools, Government or aided, for teachers of secondary schools be encouraged. 22. That the Text-book Committees in the several Provinces include qualified persons of different sections of the community not connected with the Department, and that to these Committees should be submitted all text-books, both English and vernacular, that it is proposed to introduce into schools, and all textbooks now in use that may seem to need revision. 23. That the Text-book Committees of the several Provinces act as far as possible in concert, and that they communicate to each other lists of English textbooks, and, in the case of those Provinces which have any common language, lists of vernacular text-books, which are satisfactory, and of books which they consider to be wanting or inadequate. 24. That the operations of the existing Government depôts be confined as soon as may be practicable to the supply and distribution of vernacular text-books. 25. That care be taken to avoid, as far as possible, the introduction of textbooks which are of an aggressive character, or are likely to give unnecessary offence to any section of the community. 26. That in the printing of text-books, especially vernacular text-books, attention be paid to clearness of typography.

680. (6).—Recommendations on the External Relations of the Department. 1. That teachers in non-Government institutions be allowed to present themselves for examination for any grade of certificate required by the grant-in-aid rules without being compelled to attend a Normal school. 2. That in any statement of expenditure required by the grant-in-aid rules from colleges whose Professors are prevented from receiving fixed salaries by the constitution of the religious societies to which they belong, the expenditure on the maintenance of such colleges be calculated at the rates current in aided institutions of the same general character. 104

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3. That in schools aided on the result-system, variety in the course of instruction be encouraged by grants for special subjects. 4. That greater latitude be given to the managers of aided schools in fixing the course of instruction and the medium through which it is conveyed. 5. That the payment-by-results system be not applied to colleges. 6. That every application for a grant-in-aid receive an official reply, and in case of refusal that the reasons for such refusal be given. 7. That the proximity of a Government or of an aided school be not regarded as of itself a sufficient reason for refusing aid to a non-Government school. 8. That with the object of rendering assistance to schools in the form best suited to the circumstances of each Province and thus to call forth the largest amount of local co-operation, the grant-in-aid rules be revised by the Local Governments in concert with the managers of schools. 9. That, in this revision, the rules be so defined as to avoid any ambiguity as to the amount and duration of the aid to which an institution may be entitled, the conditions of grants for buildings, apparatus, and furniture being clearly stated; and that special reference be had to the complaints that have been made against existing systems, particularly the complaints dwelt upon in this Report. 10. That whilst existing State institutions of the higher order should be maintained in complete efficiency wherever they are necessary, the improvement and extension of institutions under private management be the principal care of the Department. 11. That, in ordinary circumstances, the further extension of secondary education in any District be left to the operation of the grant-in-aid system, as soon as that District is provided with an efficient high school, Government or other, along with its necessary feeders. 12. That it be a general principle that the grant-in-aid should depend— (a) on locality, i.e., that larger proportionate grants be given to schools in backward Districts; (b) on the class of institutions, i.e., that greater proportionate aid be given to those in which a large amount of self-support cannot be expected, e.g., girls’ schools and schools for lower castes and backward races. 13. That the following be adopted as general principles to regulate the amount of grants-in-aid except in cases in which Recommendations for special aid have been made:— (a) That no grant be given to an institution which has become selfsupporting by means of fees, and which needs no further development to meet the wants of the locality. (b) That the amount of State aid (exclusive of scholarships from public funds) do not exceed one-half of the entire expenditure on an institution. 105

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(c) That, as a general rule, this maximum rate of aid be given only to girls’ schools, primary schools, and Normal schools. 14. That with a view to secure the co-operation of Government and nonGovernment institutions, the managers of the latter be consulted on matters of general educational interest, and that their students be admitted on equal terms to competition for certificates, scholarships, and other public distinctions. 15. That the Government of Bombay be invited to consider the propriety of converting the Dakshina fellowships into University fellowships with definite duties attached to them, to be tenable for a term of years and open to all candidates irrespective of the college in which they have been trained. 16. That in Bengal the payment from the Mohsin Fund of two-thirds of the fees of Muhammadan students, now confined to Government schools, be extended to Muhammadan students of non-Government schools approved by the Department. 17. That grants be paid without delay when they become due according to the rules. 18. That care be taken lest public examinations become the means of practically imposing the same text-books or curriculum on all schools. 19. That the revised rules for grants-in-aid and any subsequent alterations made in them be not merely published in the official gazettes, but translated into the vernacular, and communicated to the press, to the managers of aided and private institutions, and to all who are likely to help in any way in the spread of education. 20. That the further extension of female education be preferentially promoted by affording liberal aid and encouragement to managers who show their personal interest in the work, and only when such agency is not available by the establishment of schools under the management of the Department or of Local or Municipal Boards. 21. That a periodically increasing provision be made in the educational budget of each Province for the expansion of aided institutions. 22. That when any school or class of schools under departmental management is transferred to a Local or Municipal Board the functions of such board be clearly defined, and that, as a general rule, its powers include (a) the appointment of teachers qualified under the rules of the Department, (b) the reduction or dismissal of such teachers, subject to the approval of the Department, (c) the selection of the standard and course of instruction subject to the control of the Department, and (d) the determination of rates of fees and of the proportion of free students, subject to the general rules in force. 23. That if in any Province the management of Government schools of secondary instruction be transferred either to Municipalities or to Local Boards, or to Committees appointed by those bodies, encouragement be given to the subsequent transfer of the schools concerned to the management of associations of private persons combining locally with that object, provided they are able to afford adequate guarantees of permanence and efficiency. 106

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24. That when Local and Municipal Boards have the charge of aiding schools, (1) their powers and duties be clearly defined, (2) that it be declared to be an important part of their duty to make provision for the primary education of the children of the poor, (3) that precautions he taken to secure that any assignment to them from public funds for purposes of education be impartially administered, (4) that an appeal against any refusal of aid he to the Department. 25. That the system of grants in-aid be based as hitherto, in accordance with paragraph 53 of the Despatch of 1854, on an entire abstinence from interference with the religious instruction conveyed in the institution assisted provided that when the only institution of any particular grade existing in any town or village is an institution in which religious instruction forms a part of the ordinary course, it shall be open to parents to withdraw their children from attendance at such instruction without forfeiting any of the benefits of the institution. 26. That a parent be understood to consent to his child’s passing through the full curriculum of the school, unless his intention to withdraw him from religious instruction be intimated at the time of the child’s first entering the school, or at the beginning of a subsequent term. 27. That in order to evoke and stimulate local co-operation in the transfer to private management of Government institutions for collegiate or secondary instruction, and at specially liberal rates be offered for a term of years, wherever necessary, to any local body willing to undertake the management of my such institution under adequate guarantees of permanence and efficiency. 28. That in the event of any Government school or college being transferred to local management, provision be also made for the legal transfer to the new managers of all educational endowments, buildings and other property be longing to such institutions in the hands of Government. 29. That in the event of any Government school or college being transferred to local management, the incumbents of offices under Government be secured in the enjoyment of all their existing rights and privileges. 30. That all Directors of Public Instruction aim at the gradual transfer to local native management of Government schools of secondary instruction (including schools attached to first or second grade colleges), in every case 11 which the transfer can be effected without lowering the standard, or diminishing the supply, of education, and without endangering the permanence of the institution transferred. 31. That the fact that any school raises more than 60 per cent of its entire expenditure from fees be taken as affording a presumption that the transfer of such school to local management can be safely effected. 32. That in dealing with the question of the withdrawal of Government from the management of existing colleges, these colleges be regarded as divided into three classes, viz.:—

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(1) Those from which it is premature for Government to consider, the propriety of withdrawal, on the ground that they are, and will long continue to be the institutions on which the higher education of the country mainly depends. (2) Those that might be transferred with advantage, as a measure promising useful political results to bodies of native gentlemen provided the new managers give satisfactory guarantees that the college will be maintained (1) permanently, (2) in full efficiency, (3) in such a way as to make it adequate for all the wants of the locality. (3) Those which have been shown to be unsuccessful, or of which the cost is out of proportion to the utility, and from which Government might advantageously withdraw even with less stringent guarantee for permanent efficiency. Such colleges should be closed if, after due notice, no local body be formed to carry them on with such a grant in aid as the rules provide. 33. That the Government of Madras be requested to consider the propriety of dealing with the second grade Government colleges of that Province on the principles applicable to the second or third class as may be deemed advisable in each case, in the light of the recommendations made by the Madras Provincial Committee. 34. That the Government of Bombay be requested to consider the propriety of rusing the Ahmedabad College to one teaching up to the B A standard, and of securing its full efficiency for a term of years on the condition that after that period it be treated on the principles applicable to the second class. 35. That the Government of Bengal be requested to consider the propriety of dealing with the Rajshahye and Krishnagar Government Colleges on the principles applicable to the second class and with the Colleges at Berhampur, Midnapur, and Chittagong on the principles applicable to the third class, as suggested by the Bengal Provincial Committee. 36. That the bestowal of patronage in Government appointments be so ordered as to offer greater encouragement to high education.

681. (7).—Recommendations regarding classes requiring special treatment a—The sons of Native Chiefs and Noblemen 1. That Local Governments be invited to consider the question of establishing special colleges or schools for the sons and relations of Native Chiefs and noblemen where such institutions do not now exist. 2. That Local Governments be invited to consider the advisability of entrusting the education of Wards of Court to the joint supervision of the district authorities and the Educational Inspectors.

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b—Muhammadans 1. That the special encouragement of Muhammadan education be regarded as a legitimate charge on Local, on Municipal and on Provincial Funds. 2. That indigenous Muhammadan schools be liberally encouraged to add purely secular subjects to their curriculum of instruction. 3. That special standards for Muhammadan primary schools be prescribed. 4. That Hindustani be the principal medium for imparting instruction to Muhammadans in primary and middle schools, except in localities where the Muhammadan community desire that some other language be a lopted. 5. That the official vernacular, in places where it is not Hindustani be added as a voluntary subject, to the curriculum of primary and middle schools for Muhammadans maintained from public funds, and that arithmetic and accounts be taught through the medium of that vernacular. 6. That, in localities where Muhammadans form a fair proportion of the population, provision be made in middle and high schools maintained from public funds for imparting instruction in the Hindustani and Persian languages. 7. That higher English education for Muhammadans, being the kind of education in which that community needs special help, be liberally encouraged. 8. That, where necessary, a graduated system of special scholarships for Muhammadans be established,—to be awarded,— (a) In primary schools, and tenable in middle schools. (b) In middle schools, and tenable in high schools. (c) On the results of the Matriculation and First Arts examinations, and tenable in colleges. 9. That, in all classes of schools maintained from public funds, a certain proportion of free studentships be expressly reserved for Muhammadan students. 10. That, in places where educational endowments for the benefit of Muhammadans exist, and are under the management of Government, the funds arising from such endowments be devoted to the advancement of education among Muhammadans exclusively. 11. That, where Muhammadan endowments exist, and are under the management of private individuals or bodies, inducements by liberal grants-in-aid be offered to them, to establish English-teaching schools or colleges on the grant-inaid system. 12. That, where necessary, Normal schools or classes for the training of Muhammadan teachers be established. 13. That, wherever instruction is given in Muhammadan schools through the medium of Hindustani, endeavours be made to secure, as far as possible, Muhammadan teachers to give such instruction. 14. That Muhammadan Inspecting Officers be employed more largely than hitherto for the inspection of primary schools for Muhammadans.

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15. That Associations for the promotion of Muhammadan education be recognised and encouraged. 16. That in the annual Reports on public instruction a special section be devoted to Muhammadan education. 17. That the attention of the Local Governments be invited to the question of the proportion in which patronage is distributed among educated Muhammadans and others. 18. That the principles embodied in the Recommendations given above be equally applicable to any other races with similar antecedents, whose education is on the same level as that of the Muhammadans. c.—Aboriginal Tribes. 1. That children of aboriginal tribes be exempted wherever necessary from payment of fees, over and above any general exemptions otherwise provided for. 2. That, if necessary, extra allowances be given under the result system for boys of aboriginal tribes taught in ordinary schools. 3. That when children of aboriginal tribes are found sufficiently instructed to become schoolmasters among their own people, attempts be made to establish them in schools within the borders of the tribes. 4. That if any bodies be willing to undertake the work of education among aboriginal tribes, they be liberally assisted on the basis of abstention from any interference with any religious teaching. 5. That where the language of the tribe has not been reduced to writing, or is otherwise unsuitable, the medium of instruction be the vernacular of the neighbouring population, with whom the aboriginal people most often come in contact. 6. That, where the education of such tribes is carried on in their own vernacular, the vernacular of the neighbouring District be an additional subject of instruction where this is found advisable. d.—Low castes. 1. That the principle laid down in the Court of Directors’ letter of May 5th, 1854, and again in their reply to the letter of the Government of India, dated May 20th, 1857, that “no boy be refused admission to a Government “college or school merely on the ground of caste” and repeated by the Secretary of State in 1863, be now re-affirmed as a principle, and be applied with due caution to every institution not reserved for special races, which is wholly maintained at the cost of public funds, whether Provincial, Municipal, or Local. 2. That the establishment of special schools or classes for children of low caste be liberally encouraged in places where there is a sufficient number of such children to form separate schools or classes, and where the schools maintained from public funds do not sufficiently provide for their education.

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682. (8).—Recommendations on Female Education. 1. That female education be treated as a legitimate charge alike on Local, on Municipal, and on Provincial Funds, and receive special encouragement. 2. That all female schools or orphanages, whether on a religious basis or not, be eligible for aid so far as they produce any secular results, such as a knowledge of reading or of writing. 3. That the conditions of aid to girls’ schools be easier than to boys’ schools, and the rates higher—more especially in the case of those established for poor or for low-caste girls. 4. That the rules for grants be so framed as to allow for the fact that girls’ schools generally contain a large proportion of beginners, and of those who cannot attend school for so many hours a day, or with such regularity as boys. 5. That the standards of instruction for primary girls’ schools be simpler than those for boys’ schools, and be drawn up with special reference to the requirements of home life, and to the occupations open to women. 6. That the greatest care be exercised in the selection of suitable text-books for girls’ schools, and that the preparation for such books be encouraged. 7. That, while fees be levied where practicable, no girls’ school be debarred from a grant on account of its not levying fees. 8. That special provision be made for girls’ scholarships, to be awarded after examination, and that, with a view to encouraging girls to remain longer at school, a certain proportion of them be reserved for girls not under twelve years of age. 9. That liberal aid be offered for the establishment, in suitable localities, of girls’ schools in which English should be taught in addition to the vernacular. 10. That special aid be given, where necessary, to girls’ schools that make provision for boarders. 11. That the Department of Public Instruction be requested to arrange, in concert with managers of girls’ schools, for the revision of the Code of Rules for grants-in-aid in accordance with the above Recommendations. 12. That, as mixed schools, other than infant schools, are not generally suited to the conditions of this country, the attendance of girls at boys’ schools be not encouraged, except in places where girls’ schools cannot be maintained. 13. That the establishment of infant schools or classes, under schoolmistresses, be liberally encouraged. 14. That female schools be not placed under the management of Local Boards or of Municipalities unless they express a wish to take charge of them. 15. That the first appointment of schoolmistresses in girls’ schools under the management of Municipal or Local Boards be left to such boards, with the proviso that the mistress be either certificated, or approved by the Department: and that subsequent promotion or removal be regulated by the boards, subject to the approval of the Department.

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16. That rules be framed to promote the gradual supersession of male by female teachers in all girls’ schools. 17. That, in schools under female teachers, stipendiary pupil-teacherships be generally encouraged. 18. That the attention of Local Governments be invited to the question of establishing additional Normal schools or classes; and that those under private management receive liberal aid, part of which might take the form of a bonus for every pupil passing the certificate examination. 19. That the departmental certificate examinations for teachers be open to all candidates, wherever prepared. 20. That teachers in schools for general education be encouraged by special rewards to prepare pupils for examinations for teachers’ certificates, and that girls be encouraged by the offer of prizes to qualify for such certificates. 21. That liberal inducements be offered to the wives of schoolmasters to qualify as teachers, and that in suitable cases widows be trained as schoolmistresses, care being taken to provide them with sufficient protection in the places where they are to be employed as teachers. 22. That, in Districts where European or Eurasian young women are required as teachers in native schools, special encouragement be given to them to qualify in a vernacular language. 23. That grants for zanana teaching be recognised as a proper charge on public funds and be given under rules which will enable the agencies engaged in that work to obtain substantial aid for such secular teaching as may be tested by an Inspectress or other female agency. 24. That Associations for the promotion of female education by examinations or otherwise be recognised by the Department, and encouraged by grants under suitable conditions. 25. That female inspecting agency be regarded as essential to the full development of female education, and be more largely employed than hitherto. 26. That an alternative subject in examinations suitable for girls be established, corresponding in standard to the Matriculation examination, but having no relation to any existing University course. 27. That endeavours be made to secure the services of native gentlemen interested in female education on Committees for the supervision of girls’ schools, and that European and Native ladies be also invited to assist such Committees.

683. (9).—Recommendations as to Legislation. 1. That the duties of Municipal and Local Boards in controlling or assisting schools under their supervision be regulated by local enactments suited to the circumstances of each Province. 2. That the area of any Municipal or rural unit of Local self-Government that may now or hereafter exist be declared to be a school-district, and school-boards

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be established for the management and control of schools placed under their jurisdiction in each such district. 3. That the control of each school-board over all schools within the said schooldistrict be subject to the following provisions:— (a) that it be open to the Local Government to exclude any school, or any class of schools, other than schools of primary instruction for boys, from the control of such school-board; (b) that any school which is situated in the said school-district, and which receives no assistance either from the board or the Department, continue, if the managers so desire it, to be independent of the control of the school-board; (c) that the managers of any institution which receives aid either from the board or the Department continue to exercise in regard to such institution full powers of management subject to such limitations as the Local Government may from time to time impose as a condition of receiving aid; (d) that the school-board may delegate to any body appointed by itself or subordinate to it any duties in regard to any school or class of institutions under its control which it thinks fit so to delegate. 4. That the Local Government declare from time to time what funds constituting a school-fund shall be vested in any school-board for educational purposes, and what proportion of such school-fund shall be assigned to any class of education. 5. That it be the duty of every school-board:— (a) to prepare an annual budget of its income and expenditure; (b) to determine what schools shall be wholly maintained at the cost of the school-fund, what schools are eligible for grants-in-aid, and which of them shall receive aid; (c) to keep a register of all schools, whether maintained at the cost of public funds, or aided or unaided, which are situated in its school-district; (d) to construct and repair school-houses or to grant aid towards their construction or repair; (e) generally to carry out any other of the objects indicated in the various recommendations of the Commission, which in the opinion of the Local Government can best be secured by legislative enactment, or by rules made under the Act. 6. That the appointment, reduction of salary, or dismissal, of teachers in schools maintained by the board be left to the school-board; provided that the said board shall be guided in its appointments by any rules as to qualifications which may be laid down from time to time by the Department; and provided that an appeal shall lie to the Department against any order of dismissal or reduction of salary.

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7. That an appeal lie to the Department against any order of a board in regard to such matters as the Local Government shall specify. 8. That every school-board be required to submit to the Local Government through the Department an annual report of its administration, together with its accounts of income and expenditure, in such form and on such date as shall be prescribed by the Local Government; and thereon the Local Government declare whether the existing supply of schools of any class, of which the supervision has been entrusted to such board, is sufficient to secure adequate proportionate provision for the education of all classes of the community; and in the event of the said Government declaring that the supply is insufficient, it determine from what sources and in what manner the necessary provision of schools shall be made. 9. That it be incumbent upon every Local Government or Administration to frame a Code of rules for regulating the conduct of education by Municipal and Local Boards in the Provinces subject to such Local Government or Administration. 10. That such Code shall define and regulate— (a) the internal mechanism of the Education Department in regard to direction, inspection, and teaching; (b) the external relations of the Department to private individuals and public bodies engaged in the work of education; (c) the scope, functions, and rules of the system of grants-in-aid; (d) the character of any special measures for the education of classes requiring exceptional treatment; (e) the scope and divisions of the annual report upon the progress of public instruction, together with the necessary forms of returns. 11. That power be reserved to the Local Government from time to time to add to, cancel, or modify the provisions of the said Code. 12. That the Code be annually published in the official Gazette in such a form as to show separately all articles which have been cancelled or modified and all new articles which have been introduced since the publication of the last edition. (Signed) ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ”

W. W. HUNTER, President. D. M. BARBOUR. W. R. BLACKETT. ANANDA MOHAN BOSE. C. A. R. BROWNING. A. W. CROFT. K. DEIGHTON. J. T. FOWLER. HAJI GHULAM HASSAN. A. P. HOWELL. 114

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” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ”

H. P. JACOB. A. JEAN. W. LEE-WARNER. SAYYID MAHMUD. W. MILLER. BHUDEB MOOKERJEA. P. RANGANADA MUDALIYAR. C. PEARSON. KASHINATH TRIMBAK TELANG. JOTENDRA MOHUN TAGORE. G. E. WARD.

The 14th September 1883. [[**MISSING PAGE**]] I have, therefore, thought it best to note briefly the chief Recommendations to which I am opposed; in the circumstances I have not thought it necessary to state the grounds of my opposition at any length. 2. In Chapter V, which deals with Secondary Education, the Commission recommends “that in the upper classes of high schools there be two divisions,—one leading to the Entrance examination of the Universities, the other of a more practical character, intended to fit youths for commercial or other non-literary pursuits.” In this Recommendation I most cordially concur; but the Commission goes on to recommend that a certificate of having passed in “either of the proposed alternative courses be accepted as a sufficient general test of fitness for the public service,” and to this Recommendation I am strongly opposed. In my opinion, the general test of fitness for the public service should be a certificate of having passed by the final standard of the course which is of the more practical character, “intended to fit youths for commercial or other non-literary pursuits.” My experience as head of a large office in Bengal has led me to the conclusion that the adoption of the University Entrance examination as a general standard of education, has had disastrous effects in the case of youths not fitted to rise to a higher position than that of subordinate clerks. 3. In Chapter VI, which deals with Collegiate Education, the Commission recommends a more favourable scale of pensions for officers in the Education Department. This Recommendation is made solely with reference to the supposed needs of the Department. It takes no account of the additional expenditure which it involves, or of the fact that the adoption of the proposal would furnish a strong argument for the sanction of additional expenditure in other departments of the Government service. The Recommendation appears to me to be founded on an inadequate appreciation of the whole of the facts, and to be somewhat out of place in the present Report. 115

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4. I object to Recommendation (1) in Chapter VII, “that when an Educational officer enters the higher graded service of the Education Department, his promotion should not involve any loss of pay.” I object to this Recommendation because it deals with a question of administrative detail not within the scope of the Commission’s enquiry, and because a temporary loss of pay may be much more than counterbalanced by an improvement in future prospects of promotion. I also object to Recommendation (5) in the same chapter, “that it be an instruction to the departments of the various Provinces to aim at raising fees gradually, cautiously, and with due regard to necessary exemptions, up to the highest amount that will not check the spread of education, especially in colleges, secondary schools, and primary schools in towns where the value of education is understood.” I am of opinion that this Recommendation does not go far enough in the case of colleges. Private expenditure incurred in giving a boy a really good education is a remunerative investment of capital in India, and I am unaware of any good ground for taxing the general community in order to confer wealth and power on a class which is itself almost wholly untaxed. 5. In Chapter VIII the Commission recommends “that the bestowal of patronage in Government appointments be so regulated as to offer greater encouragement to high education.” I cannot say that a Recommendation of this sort may not be necessary in some Provinces, or as regards certain departments; but I desire to state as the result of my experience, which is necessarily limited, that high education is already sufficiently encouraged by the bestowal of appointments in the service of Government. I believe that the best man for an office under Government will often be the man who has received a good education; but the rule is subject to many exceptions, and, after all, the man who has the best claim to an office is not the man who has had the best or most elaborate education, but the man who will best discharge the duties of the office. 6. I have no objection to the Recommendation made in Chapter IX of the Report, “that Local Governments be invited to consider the question of establishing special colleges or schools for the sons and relations of Native Chiefs and Noblemen where such institutions do not now exist,” provided that these institutions are made wholly self-supporting; but I dissent from the Recommendation “that the special encouragement of Muhammadan education be regarded as a legitimate charge on Local, on Municipal, and on Provincial Funds.” I do not think it is possible to justify the taxation of the general community for the special benefit of one class. I also object very strongly to the Recommendation “that, in localities where Muhammadans form a fair proportion of the population, provision be made in middle and high schools maintained from public funds for imparting instruction in the Hindustani and Persian languages,” and my objection is made in the interests of the Muhammadans themselves. If the Muhammadans wish, at their own cost, to encourage the study of Persian, or of Hindustani where it is not the language in 116

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ordinary use, every facility should be given to enable them to do so; but in so far as they do so, they heavily handicap their children in the race of life as compared with boys of other religions, and I therefore think that it is bad policy to spend the public money for the purpose recommended by the Commission. I can fully appreciate sympathy with the Muhammadans in their present position, but that sympathy should not lead us to do injustice to other classes of the community, and I do not see how it would be possible to justify “a graduated system of special scholarships for Muhammadans,” or to accept the Recommendation of the Commission “that in all classes of schools maintained from public funds a certain proportion of free studentships be expressly reserved for Muhammadan students.” The proposals of the Commission appear to me to be so liberal as regards Muhammadans that they involve injustice to other classes, and their recommendation, “that the attention of the Local Governments be invited to the question of the proportion in which patronage is distributed among educated Muhammadans and others,” appears uncalled for, so long as there is no proof that Muhammadans are treated otherwise than fairly. Although I have felt bound to make these remarks, I may add that it would, in my judgment, be an unmixed gain if the Muhammadans came forward and qualified themselves to take a larger and more important share in the administration of the country; but the improvement must, and I believe will, come from their own efforts. No attempt to improve their position by protecting them against the competition of other classes can have any permanently beneficial effect. SIMLA, 24th September 1883

IV. Minute recorded by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, Esq. I concur in so many of the Recommendations contained in this Report, that I have no hesitation whatever in signing it. But after much anxious consideration, I have arrived at the conclusion that, in signing it, I am bound to put separately on record the opinions I have formed on some of the points with which it deals. I am, however, glad to be able to say at the outset, after a careful consideration of the work done by my colleagues who drew up this Report at Simla, that the very arduous duty which devolved upon them has been discharged by them in a manner, on the whole, extremely fair and satisfactory. There are, indeed, sundry statements in the Report to which I cannot give in my adhesion at all, or can do so only with many qualifications Thus, the statement that the Local cess in Bombay was in its inception purely voluntary, and the passage which speaks of our Land Revenue system in this Presidency as a “liberal” one (vide Chap. IV), both involve judgments on non-educational matters which I am not prepared to accept. And again, when the study of Sanskrit in the old Benares College is pronounced to have 117

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been “frivolous and uncritical” (Chap. VI), or the provision for college scholarships in Bombay is described as “large” (Chap. VI), or the practical operation of the “grade” system is spoken of as very successful (Chap. VI), we have judgments pronounced on purely educational topics which I cannot concur in without some qualifications. Lastly, to refer to a point which is only partially educational, “unwise enthusiasm” and “the chill courtesies of English reserve” (Chap. VI), are by no means the only “drawbacks”—the former, indeed, is perhaps the smallest of the drawbacks—to be taken into account in connection with the “intercourse” of the Indian student with “the ruling race;” while, on the other hand, “the pretensious self-assertion” and “the comparative absence of lofty motive” and so forth attributed to the Indian student considered by himself, are, I should say, considerably overstated.1 But all such points are now of subordinate importance, and having given this slight indication of them, I propose here to say nothing more about them. I shall pass at once to the “Recommendations” contained in this Report, and take them in the order in which they appear there. And the first Recommendation I wish to notice is the one which lays it down that the Director of Public Instruction should determine the rate of fees to be charged in all schools receiving aid from Government, and the proportion of students to be exempted from payment therein. I confess that I cannot reconcile myself to this Recommendation. The main grounds of my objection to it were stated by me during the debates in Calcutta, and they are summarised in our minutes of proceedings. I shall therefore not repeat them here, but I wish to make one or two observations upon points which have been urged on the other side. It is said, then, that the recommendation carries out the directions of the Despatch of 1854. I cannot accept this view. I cannot accept as correct a construction of that Despatch which says that “some fee, however small” (see para 54 of the Despatch), means some fee not smaller than a minimum to be fixed by the Director of Public Instruction, and to be from time to time raised by that officer, even although it is to be raised “gradually, cautiously, and with due regard to necessary exemptions.” And I own that I am the less prepared to accept this strained construction of the clause in question, when I find that, while the traditions of my countrymen, be they Hindus, Mussalmans, or Parsis, are decidedly against any such rule as is sought to be laid down, the grounds alleged in favour of it have been shown by the later experience of even European countries to be quite untenable. The evidence as to the facts on this point may be seen collected in Mr. Morley’s “Struggle for National Education” pp. 143–5,2 while one principal aim of that delightful little work of Mr. Matthew Arnold’s, “A French Eton,” was to reduce the cost of secondary education in England3 (vide inter alia, pp. 8, 22, 67, 75). The position, therefore, which I take up is this. On such a point we ought not to consider ourselves bound hand and foot by the provisions of the Despatch of 1854; but if we are so bound, then we ought not to extend its words by construction, and especially ought we not to do so, when we thereby run counter not only to the traditions of the communities for whose benefit the Despatch was intended, but also to the more matured experiences of those countries from whose practice 118

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the provisions were originally borrowed. But then it is said that the object of the Despatch was to make education self-supporting, and that that object can only be compassed by the increase of fees. From this reading of the Despatch also I must respectfully express my dissent. The Despatch plainly indicates the wish of its authors that the money of the State should be made to go as far as possible in developing education in this country. And doubtless if an aided school could be made by the State to increase its fee income—not, be it noticed, its fee rate, which is another and quite a different thing—the State would be able to save something out of its grants-in-aid, which could then be applied in developing education in other directions. But this involves a forcing by the State upon private workers in education of its own ideas on a subject which is a peculiarly appropriate field for the exercise of local knowledge and local experience. Such a procedure seems to me to be scarcely in harmony with the principles of the Despatch, or of the recommendations regarding private enterprise which, in pursuance of those principles, the Commission has put forward. But then it is said that a provision like the one recommended would strengthen the hands of managers of non-Government schools, and prevent one aided school from outbidding another. Put into plain English, this argument seems to me to involve a wish that some favoured institutions—perhaps those first in the field— should be enabled to monopolise the State grant, and new sharers in it should be prevented from rising up in competition. For what will be the operation of such a rule, framed with the objects avowed by its framers? The Director of Public Instruction will consult the managers of schools actually receiving aid from Government, and a minimum rate of fee and a maximum proportion of free studentships will be fixed by their joint wisdom. A school in existence then, but not receiving aid, or a school subsequently started, will both alike be bound by the rule, under penalty of being refused aid by the State, although the managers may never have been consulted about its justice or expediency; or a manager who was consulted and took a different view from the Director would be excluded from the benefit of the State grant or his presumption in differing from that infallible officer. I see nothing that can reconcile me to results like these. It seems to be assumed that reductions of fee below the minimum to be fixed by the Director will often be designed for purposes of mischief and breach of discipline. I maintain that there is no warrant whatever for such an assumption. One great inducement in the past to the opening of schools by my countrymen has been the opportunity thus afforded them for spreading education cheaply. I may cite the case of the new English School in Poona as an illustration with which I am most familiar. I hope and believe that the same inducement will continue to be a potent one in future. But if the Recommendation under consideration is put into force, the countervailing influences are sure to be very powerful, they may, perhaps, be too powerful. No doubt one of the representatives of aided institutions in the Commission assured us that managers of aided schools will not look on the Department’s action in this matter as at all an interference to be objected to Probably not. But I am not now particularly concerned for the institutions which are at present receiving aid. 119

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I am concerned for those which are not but ought to be receiving aid, and those which may be started hereafter and may properly ask for aid. I am concerned for those which shall not aim at making secondary and higher education as costly as possible, but which shall be started by men who will, within certain limits, act on the traditions to which I have already alluded. It will, I am aware, be objected to this—in fact, it was objected during our debates—that if any one wants to make education a matter of charity and impart it either as an entirely free gift or at a very small cost, he ought not to ask for State aid in doing so. But that objection seems to me to involve a non sequitur. The work done is of a nature which the State has undertaken to help, and therefore has an absolute claim to such help. And a further remark on the objection is that it certainly does not lie in the mouths of those who contend for grants to be given from State funds to that other agency of educational charity—the so called “proselytising schools.” But against all this, it is urged that a rule like the one in question has been in successful operation in Madras. I am unable to make out clearly, from the Provincial Report, or from what was said in the course of the debate, whether an aided school, under the existing rules, is liable to have its grant withdrawn if it contravenes an order of the Director on the subject of fees. Apparently it is (see Madras Provincial Report), but only if it receives a salary grant, not a result grant. If so, the example quoted is plainly of limited application. Besides, in such a matter, the mere fact of no complaints having been made for some time by natives of this country is not, to my mind, any proof that the rule is a good one. I think the principle here is wrong, and as to expediency, I cannot but think it highly inexpedient that the State should afford artificial help to institutions not managed by itself, for exacting from students higher fees than they will be able to obtain without such help. I have only to add one more observation on this point. It will be admitted on all hands that it is useless to lay down a rule when a coach and six can be driven through it with ease. And what more easy than that in the case of the rule recommended? A manager has only got to make the appropriate entries on both sides of his accounts, and show an expenditure on account of scholarships precisely equal to the difference between the fees he levies and those he is directed to levy. The rule is then satisfied, and the Department is baffled. And probably this further result will also follow. The manager will be able to return his expenditure on his schools at a figure larger than the real one by this enforced addition, and will, under some systems of grant in aid, be able to claim from the State a larger sum for having succeeded in defying the rules made by the State. Thus this laudable endeavour, commenced to make secondary and higher education more self supporting,—that is to say, more costly to the students,—“will overleap itself and fall on the other side,” for it will end by becoming more costly, and quite unnecessarily so, not to the student, but to the State. And over and above this of course, are the demoralising effects, however small in each case, of preparing returns for the State in the objectionable form I have before referred to. The next point I wish to deal with is that involved in the Recommendation contained in Chapter VI. I cordially agree in that Recommendation. And I hope 120

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that the Local Governments concerned will deal in a spirit of liberality with the cases there referred to, and not allow themselves to be influenced by the cry that too much is being spent on higher education in India. With that cry, in the form in which it has been raised, I have no sympathy whatever. I unreservedly accept the view that without mass education the country will never be able to enjoy to the full the fruits which it has a right to expect from the higher education. For that purpose, you must bestow brains, as Mill has it, on those who have only hands. And in my judgment the time has now come when with that view mass education must be pushed onward, or, as it is expressed in the Resolution appointing the Commission, “the different branches of public instruction should, if possible, move forward together.” On the other hand, I hold an equally strong opinion that, without the higher education, mass education cannot be of much avail, even if it can be secured. And the argument so often urged, that for the money spent on giving high education to one student, you might give primary education to more than one hundred, is to my mind utterly futile, and unworthy even of a moment’s consideration.4 “We have nearly all of us,” says Mr. Mathew Arnold,5 “reached the notion that popular education it is the State’s duty to deal with. Secondary and superior instruction, many of us still think, should be left to take care of themselves.” And after pointing out what has been done in European countries on this matter, he winds up thus: “In all these countries the idea of a sound civil organisation of modern society has been found to involve the idea of an organisation of secondary and superior instruction by public authority or by the State.” I will not dwell more on this point, but will merely say that in my opinion the whole religious, social, political, and industrial advance of the country depends on the steady adhesion to that enlightened policy, as regards high education, which has probably been the most generally approved portion of British Indian policy in the past. This opinion is quite consistent with a desire, which I strongly feel, that all private efforts in education, especially the efforts put forward by my own countrymen, should receive a fair field and due encouragement. But in order that such private effort should be forthcoming in any District, high education must, as a general rule, have been in existence in that District for some time. And therefore I trust that, when the Recommendation under notice comes to be carried out, no embarrassments will be felt by the local authorities in consequence of any a priori idea of the superiority of private enterprise over State action,—an idea which, however well founded in many respects, is just now, I fear, likely to be set up as a fetish, and likely to be allowed to dominate in regions which, under present circumstances, at all events, lie entirely beyond its sphere. I have only one word to add with respect to some of the specific cases enumerated in the Recommendation. The case of the Delhi College appears to me to be a particularly hard one. Subscriptions raised by the natives have been rejected as inadequate, and the College has substantially been made over to a missionary body. On both grounds the matter is worthy of reconsideration. As to the College of Jabalpur, I cannot imagine that there can be two opinions. In regard to Sind, the petition sent by some of the citizens of Karachi was not before us when our 121

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Provincial Report was written, and the offer made in that petition to contribute something towards endowing a college deserves consideration at the hands of the Government of Bombay. Coming lastly to the Gujarat College, I have nothing to add to what is said in the Provincial Report, save that the period of probation should be such as to give the College a really fair chance of success, and that the Government, if it is to err at all, should err on the side of giving it too long, rather than too short, a period of probation. I next proceed to consider two Recommendations which deal with a point certainly one of the most important in connection with education. I allude to the Recommendation regarding moral education in colleges. In stating the opinions which I have formed on this point, I know I run a certain risk of misinterpretation. But I am bound to say that, after the best consideration which I have been able to give to the Recommendations made by the Commission, and the arguments adduced in support of them, I am still strongly of opinion that the proposed measures will be impotent for good and may result in mischief. I will first take up the latter of the two Recommendations referred to. That prescribes that a series of lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen should be delivered in each College in each session. Now, first, what is the object of this new departure—for it is a new departure—in our system of academical instruction? Many of those who recommend this new departure admit that there is nothing in the character of the students of our State Colleges, taken as a class, which can be used in support of this recommendation. Others, however of the same mode of thinking, have distinctly said that the effects of education in our State Colleges on the morals6 of the students has certainly been mischievous, not to say disastrous. One gentleman, who has been particularly active in what I cannot help characterising as the misguided and mischievous agitation which preceded the appointment of the Commission, has held up to the gaze of the British public a picture of the effects of State education in India (see Mr. Johnstone’s “Our Educational Policy in India,” pages xv, 8, 10, 26), which, if it is a faithful one, would certainly justify some new departure in the direction indicated. But is it a faithful picture? On that we have a statement submitted to the Commission by five gentlemen of the same party as the author of the pamphlet above alluded to. These gentlemen undertake to say that “the result of Government so called neutrality has been by common consent decidedly injurious from a moral and religious point of view.” What these gentlemen mean by “common consent” it is not very easy to understand. The evidence before the Commission, (which is summarised in the Report Chapter VI,) is absolutely overwhelming in favour of the reverse of that which these gentlemen describe as admitted by common consent. And I owe it to the system under which I myself and many of my friends have been nurtured, to put it solemnly on record that in my judgment the charges made against that system are wholly and absolutely unsustainable, and are the results of imperfect or prejudiced observation and hasty generalisation put into words by random and often reckless rhetoric. I do not deny that there may be individuals among men of the class to which I have the honour to belong, who have strayed away more or less widely from the path of honor 122

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and virtue. But if that fact affords sufficient ground for a condemnation of our system, what system, I would ask, is there under the sun which will not have to be similarly condemned? A considerable portion of the sensational talk that is going about on this subject is, I feel persuaded, due to a misapplication of that unhappy phrase—educated native. That misapplication is referred to upon another point in the Report (see Chap. VIII), but it is necessary to enter a caveat with regard to it in this connection also. On the one hand, it is confined, and of course quite erroneously, to those who have acquired some knowledge of the English language; and on the other, it is extended, equally erroneously, to those who, like Macaulay’s Frenchman, “have just learnt enough English to read Addison with a dictionary.” The latter error is the one which must be specially guarded against in discussions like the present. But it may be said that the new departure, if not justified by the injurious effects of the systems hitherto in vogue, may still be justified on the ground that it is calculated to strengthen the beneficial effects of that system. And here I am prepared to join issue with those who maintain that it will have any such operation. I cordially accept the dictum of Mr. Mathew Arnold that conduct is three-fourths of life, and a man who works for conduct works for more than a man who works for intelligence. And therefore I should be quite willing to join, as indeed I have joined, in any Recommendation encouraging such “work for conduct” (see the Bombay Provincial Report, page 148). But I cannot perceive that “lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen” at a college constitute such “work” at all. In a primary school, lessons on the duties of a man would probably be useful; in a secondary school they would probably be innocuous; but in a collegiate institution they would probably be neither useful nor innocuous. At the earliest stage of a student’s life, ignorance of what is right is probably an important force, and then to correct that ignorance, moral lessons are a perfectly appropriate agency, although even here I should be inclined to rely more upon “lessons” like Miss Edgeworth’s,7 for instance, than on those like the extracts from “The whole Duty of Man” by D. A. Eisdale which were published in Bombay at the American Mission Press in 1841. When the student has advanced to a secondary school, much of the ignorance above referred to has presumably given place to knowledge. But still the habit of analysis and criticism is in a very rudimentary condition, and such lessons will, in all probability, do little harm. But if collegiate education is to subserve one of its most important purposes, and is to cultivate the intelligence so as to enable it to weigh arguments and form independent judgments, then these moral lessons present an entirely different aspect. At that stage, it is almost entirely unnecessary to instruct the intelligence, while it is of great use to discipline the will and to cultivate the feelings. The proposed lectures will, I fear, have little or no effect in this latter direction; while in some individual cases their effect in the former direction, being meant to operate not on the intellect but on conduct, may be the reverse of that which is desired—something like that on the Cambridge scholar, about whom I read many years ago, whose first doubts about the divine character of Christianity were said to have been roused by a study of Paley’s Evidences. That sense of 123

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moral responsibility in man which impressed Kant with the same awe as the starry heavens, can receive no strengthening from lectures on the duties of a man, any more than the awe which the starry heavens inspire can be produced by lectures on the rings of Saturn or the phases of the moon. Such strengthening must come from the emotions and the will being worked upon by the histories of great movements, the lives of great men, and the songs of great poets. It must come from the training of the will and the emotions by the actual details of academic life, by the elevating contact8 with good professors and fellow-students, by the constant engagement of the attention on the ennobling pursuits of literature, science, and philosophy; by the necessity, so often felt, “to scorn delights and live laborious days;” and, even in our very modern State Colleges of this country, though on a very humble scale, by “that mass of continuous traditions always powerful and generally noble,” of which Mr. Gladstone9 spoke so eloquently in his inaugural address to the University of Edinburgh. That is the only course of moral education in which I have any faith. That is the course which alone, in my opinion, can be efficacious. Lectures on the duties of a man can at the best only lead to the “cold decrees of the brain.” They have little or no efficacy in cooling down the “hot temper which leaps over” those decrees. These views might be easily supported by a mass of authority, but I will only refer here to that of one who is at once a writer on Moral Philosophy, a University Professor of the same subject, and a Chairman of a School Board in Scotland. I allude to Professor Calderwood, who has said in his recent work on Teaching its ends and means that “moral training is gained not so much by formal inculcation of duty, as by practice in well-doing throughout the common engagements of life” (p. 73; and see also pp. 25, 83, 123, &c.). So far I have dealt only with the first part of the Recommendation. The second part, dealing with the duties of a citizen, appears to me to stand on a somewhat different footing. It seems to be intended to point rather to what may be called political, as distinguished from social, morality. Lectures on this subject may be of use, as the subject is one on which there is some real ignorance which may be dispelled by lectures addressed to the intellect. But I must own that I am afraid of the practical operation of this part of the Recommendation. In ordinary times, it may not be very material one way or the other, though even in ordinary times one can conceive the inconvenient results which may flow from it. But in times of excitement, such as those through which we have scarcely yet emerged, I much fear that the result will be to drag the serene dignity of the academy into the heat and dust of platform warfare. If the Professor’s lectures tend to teach the pupils the duty of submission to the views of Government without a murmur of dissatisfaction, there is sure to come up a set of Liberal irreconcileables who will complain that Government is endeavouring to enslave the intellect of the nation. If the Professor’s lectures are supposed to lead in the opposite direction, there will be some Tory irreconcileables ready to spring up and say, even more loudly and quite as erroneously as they are saying it now, that the colleges supported from State revenues are hotbeds of sedition.10 This is almost certain to occur in times 124

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of excitement. It may not unlikely occur in quiet times also. And with this risk, I confess, it seems to me that the advantages of such lectures will have been dearly purchased. If it is argued that the professors in our colleges are not now prevented from doing that which may afford a target for similar denunciation, my reply is that the professors may well do what they deem proper in their private capacity as citizens. But it becomes a very different thing when they deliver lectures at college in their capacity as Professors appointed by the State for the express purpose. The position on that point is exactly analogous to the position on the point of religious instruction under the Despatch of 1859, Sections 59–61. I now come to the other Recommendation. The whole theory of moral education here adopted is one which I consider erroneous in principle, and likely to be bad in practical operation as tending to withdraw attention from the necessity of making not one or two hours of academic life, but the whole of it, a period of moral education. Holding that view, it follows, of course, that I cannot accept the suggestion about the moral text-book. But further objections to that suggestion are stated in the Bombay Provincial Report, to which I still adhere. I will only add that the view there enunciated receives support from the history of a similar experiment tried many years ago in Ireland. No less a person that Archbishop Whately endeavoured to do for the elements of Christianity what Bishop Meurin proposes, and the Commission recommends, should be done for the elements of morality based on Natural Religion. With what result? The text-book was written, approved, sanctioned for use and used in the Irish schools, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. Then the tide turned, and the book had to be abandoned, and Archbishop Whately himself, the Lord Justice Christian, and Mr. Baron Greene resigned their seats on the School Board, upon the ground that what was done was a breach of faith with the people.11 It is not necessary to enquire which, if either, of the parties to the contest was in the wrong. The lesson to be derived from the occurrence is equally clear and equally entitled to “give us pause” in the course on which we are recommended to enter, whether the fault in that particular matter lay with the Protestants or the Roman Catholics, with Archibishop Whately or with Archbishop Murray or his successor. I will only add one word here with respect to the question of religious instruction which was raised before the Commission. I deeply sympathise with the demand of some witnesses whose evidence has come before us, that provision should be made in our educational system for that religious instruction without which, as Lord Ripon declared before the University of Calcutta, all education is imperfect. I sympathise with this demand, but do not see my way to suggest any feasible means of satisfying it. There are only two possible modes, which can be adopted in justice and fairness, of practically imparting religious instruction. Either you must teach the principles common to all religions under the name of Natural Religion, or you must teach the principles of each religious creed to the students whose parents adopt that creed. The difficulties of these alternatives have been indicated by no less an authority than Mr. Cobden (see his Speeches, page 588, et seq.) Those difficulties are certainly not less great in this country than 125

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in England. They appear to me to be so great that we must be content to “take refuge,” as it has been expressed, “in the remote haven of refuge for the educationists—the secular system” But I would also point out to all those who ask for this religious education, that the cultivation of those feelings of human nature to which religion appeals is not even now entirely neglected, and that the further direction to be given to those feelings, according to the principles of each religious creed, ought to be undertaken, as it is best carried out, not by a Government like the British Indian Government,12 but by the professors of the several creeds. “Under the legislation of 1806,” says Mr. Matthew Arnold,13 “it was not permitted to public schools to be denominational. The law required that the instruction in them should be such as to train its recipients for the exercise of all social and Christian virtues, but no dogmatic religious instruction was to be given by the teacher, or was to be given in the school. Measures were to be taken, however, said the law, that the scholar should not go without the dogmatic teaching of the communion to which he belonged. Accordingly the Minister of the Home Department exhorted by circular the ministers of the different communions to co-operate with the Government in carrying the new law into execution, by taking upon themselves the religious instruction of the school children belonging to their persuasion. The religious authorities replied favourably to this appeal, and nowhere, perhaps has the instruction of the people been more eminently religious ‘than in Holland while the public schools have by law, remained unsectarian.’14 That seems to me to indicate though only in a general way, the true procedure to be followed in this matter by those who are dissatisfied with the religious results of our educational system. Some agencies of this sort more or less organised more or less powerful are at present working. Whether a more complete organisation will bring out results more satisfactory to those who are now asking for a change is a matter upon which I own I am somewhat sceptical. And some of the grounds of my scepticism have been already indicated in what I have said above, on the kindred question of moral education. But at all events on this I am quite clear, that our institutions for secular instruction should not be embarrassed by any meddling with religious instruction for such meddling among other mischiefs will yield results which on the religious side will satisfy nobody, and on the secular side will be distinctly retrograde.15 Proceeding to the next group of Recommendations under Collegiate Education. I need add little to what I have already said about fees and free studentships. I will only remark, however, that in my judgment the provision for free studentships in our colleges and high schools in Bombay (and partly also in Madras) is ridiculously small being merely 5 per cent of the total number at school or college. I have no belief in these arbitrary per centages whether in the matter of fees or scholarships or any other matters, and I think it ought at least to be open to the head of an institution to admit more than 5 per cent., when the admissions can be made without making any individual class in the institution unmanageably large. The poor boys are the very salt of our colleges and schools and I would earnestly plead for a fairly ample provision for them. Even in England as appears from Mr. 126

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Pattison’s suggestions on academical organisation (p. 67 et seq.) the principle of such provision for the poor has been accepted by high authority. I am quite aware that a system of free studentships is objected to on the ground that it is calculated to attract the best students to the State institutions and thus act unfauly on the success of non-Government ones. But as the scholarships and free studentships are now proposed to be dissociated from one another, part of this objection seems to me to be removed. And for the rest I am unable to see why when the State has on other grounds determined to maintain an institution it should not admit poor students free subject to the limitation above indicated. On the contrary I consider that the State is bound to admit them because it is thus enabled to disseminate the benefits of its institutions wider, without increasing by one pie its own expenditure upon those institutions. Proceeding now to the Recommendations in Chapter VI, I would specially emphasise the one about the appointment of native gentlemen to Inspectorships of schools. I am no fanatical advocate of the claims of my countrymen to appointments in the public service, but I must say that we have not received quite fair measure in this matter.16 To borrow a figure from John Bright, we have had a feast with a very small quantity of meat and a very large quantity of table cloth. In spite of this fact, I did not agree to the proposal placed before the Commission for a hard and fast rule requiring one half of the Inspectorships in each province to be reserved for natives because I should like, before supporting so radical a proposal to try the operation of the recommendation, which was accepted almost with one voice by the Commission. Long years hence, I hope, we may be able to dispense with the services of all highly-paid Inspectors, Native or European. When school management and inspection on the most approved principles are better and more widely understood, and when, by the development of local self-government, the people themselves begin to take a practical and energetic interest in education, there will be need for little more than examination and general supervision by the State, and that may be done by officers of a class corresponding to the Deputy or Assistant Inspectors of the present day. But such a consummation is yet in the distance, and its approach can only be accelerated, if in the meanwhile sympathetic and energetic officers are appointed to these important posts. “Take care,” said the founder of public instruction in Holland,—“take care how you choose your Inspectors; they are men whom you ought to look for with a lantern in your hand.” I may add one word here about inspection by revenue officers. According to my information, derived from official and (what in my view is of greater importance) from non-official sources, this inspection is very useful in Bombay. In Bengal, however, we have the testimony of one of the revenue officials, that a measure similar to that now in force here “set all the Education Department against us Magistrates, by giving us power to interfere with their proceedings.”17 Our Recommendation is so worded as to avoid this risk, and it may be hoped that with the additional experience now acquired it may be entirely avoided. There is one other point under this Chapter on which I wish to add a few words to what already appears in our minutes. After reconsidering all that was said in 127

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the debate against the Consultative Board of Education proposed by me, I am still of opinion that the view which prevailed was a bureaucratic and erroneous view. Looking especially to the scheme of local self-government in the Presidency of Bombay which has now been published, I do not see why the proposed board should not be able to give to the local boards quite as good advice as those officers whom the local boards will by law be bound to consult. And I will venture to add that even the trained officers of Government in the Education, as in any other department, will not find it disastrous to the efficient discharge of their duties, if they now and then take extra-departmental counsel, in the way which, according to Mr. Arnold, even the despotisms of the Continent of Europe do not disdain.18 I observe that it is suggested in the Report that if the Department fails in its great duty of keeping touch with public opinion, “the Government is at hand to correct its deficiencies.” I wish I could feel confident on this point. But it is impossible that I can do so, when I remember the almost stereotyped answer of “Government” to all appeals against its departments, viz., “We see no cause to interfere.” I come next to the important subject of grants-in-aid. And while I entirely concur in the Recommendation made to correct the practical inconveniences in the administration of the grant with respect to colleges kept by the Jesuit Fathers,— a body who have done and are doing most admirable work in Bombay and elsewhere,—I must say that I am not satisfied with the restriction to that body of the relief intended to be afforded by the Recommendation. Here, again, I am referring mostly to institutions that may hereafter come into existence. And I cannot see upon what principle the benefit of the altered rule can be refused to an institution where the source of the grievance is not the constitution of the religious body to which the teachers belong, but some other circumstance. I ventured in the course of our debates to refer, as an instance, to the case of the new English School of Poona, as one which might be in a position to claim the benefit of the new principle. And I was told that I assumed, without good reason, that the Bombay system was about to undergo some radical change. As I did not and do not consider the Bombay system of payment by results pure and simple to be a perfect system, and as the Commission had unanimously recommended a revision of the grant in aid rules in consultation with school managers and with special reference to the complaints dwelt on in the Report, I thought it quite on the cards that a salary grant system, or something similar, might, even in Bombay, be joined on to the existing system of payments by results. And in that view I referred to the new English School, and even then only as an illustration, not by any means as exhausting the possible cases calling for the application of the principle under discussion. The other objection taken—namely, that my proposal raised by a side wind the whole question of private adventure schools—seems to me to be sufficiently answered by the Recommendation No. 18 in this chapter which has been adopted by the Commission, and to which I offer no objection. Upon the question of the conscience clause, my opinions are already on record in our minutes. I wish to add only a few words. It is said that in England the conscience clause is a dead letter. My information on that subject is, of course, limited, 128

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but if it is a dead letter, I cannot explain the recent speech of Mr. Mundella,19 who spoke of the “fact that the Education Act, 1870, in relation to religious teaching, is doing a work which the country never expected of it, and which religious bodies themselves throughout the country appear scarcely to understand.” Besides, it certainly has not been formally repealed, and the question for us, therefore, is whether the provision is in itself a just and expedient one. I do not feel much pressed by the objection that a conscience clause is inconsistent with the provision of the Despatch which prohibits State interference with the religious teaching imparted in aided schools. For I consider that the effect of that prohibition is incorrectly described in the Report, when it is stated to be a “strict abstinence from all enquiry as to any religion being taught or not taught,” in such schools. I understand the prohibition to mean that the officers of the State are not to order or forbid the teaching of particular doctrines, or the use of particular text books. But I do not understand it to prohibit the State from insisting that such religious teaching as is imparted should be imparted subject to the condition that any pupil may refuse to receive it if he pleases. The effect of the prohibition is no greater than that of the conscience clause of the Education Act of 1870, which, according to Mr. Morley,20 lays down absolute neutrality and indifference as regards religious instruction, and embodies the true principle thus expressed by Mr. Gladstone.21 “The duty of the State is to hold itself entirely and absolutely detached from all responsibility with regard to their” (i.e., of the voluntary schools) “religious teaching.” The argument, again, that the conscience clause owes its origin historically to England having a State Church, is also answered by remembering that in Ireland, after the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church there, it is still enforced,22 and that even here in India itself the Government have prescribed a conscience clause for European and Eurasian schools, not to mention that we have a State Church even in India which in 1880 cost £56,012 to the revenues of the country.23 And again, I own I cannot see how it is consistent with the absolute neutrality on which so much stress was laid in the Commission, for the State to help some or even all of the warring religions and religious sects of the country with the funds at its command, where those funds are avowedly applied for propagandist purposes. That seems to me not neutrality, but participation in the strife, and even more,—in fact, a rushing into the mélée, so to say. And when it is said that the State has nothing to do except with secular results, I entirely demur to that contention, except in the case where the secular and the religious results are plainly severable one from the other. They are severable, when the pupils are allowed to withdraw from the religious lessons, if they please, in the manner provided by Section 7 of the Education Act of 1870. They are not severable, if the pupils are not allowed to do so. We are thus brought back to the question, is the conscience clause just and expedient? I can see no reasonable argument against the justice of it; indeed, the justice seems to me to be practically admitted, when a representative of missionary schools protests that attendance at religious lessons is already voluntary. That shows that if my proposal is accepted, the result will be only to enforce the good 129

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example of some missionaries upon the whole body—a result to which I cannot see any objection even in the argument that “compelling” the missionaries to do this might be wrong, though the doing of it might be itself right. Is it then expedient? If I thought that the effect of the proposed rule would be to reduce very greatly the number of missionary schools in the country, it would, in my opinion, perhaps be inexpedient. But I am satisfied that that will not be the result at all. The very eminent representative of missionary institutions in the Commission told us plainly that that would not be the result. And I agree with him. But it is said that this objection is only made by a section of society which is indifferent to religious instruction. My answer to this is a very short one: it is at once unfounded and irrelevant. Lastly, I wish to notice one misapprehension on this subject. It is not correct to say that the proposal of a conscience clause is exclusively aimed at Christian missionaries, though it most certainly is aimed mainly at them. We have already seen the beginnings of educational activity on the part of the Brahmo Samajes and the Prarthana Samajes throughout the country. To them, as well as to the various religious persuasions—Hindus, Muhammadans, &c.—which are referred to in the Despatch, and to which Lord Ripon appealed in his address before the University of Calcutta, a similar rule ought to be made applicable, although all these, unlike missionary societies, are local bodies, and although, therefore, any encouragement given to them will have a perceptible effect in fostering that “spirit of local exertion and combination for local purposes” which is referred to in the Despatch, but which cannot be fostered by encouraging a foreign agency, although private, and whether missionary or non-missionary. For I confess I cannot follow those witnesses who say that missionary effort in this country has served to evoke private native effort; while on the other hand some of the representatives of native private effort have said that, the encouragement given to the former has acted prejudicially upon their energies.24 A somewhat kindred question is the one of the education of the lowcastes. I have no wish to quarrel with the Recommendation on that subject as it now stands. The feelings or prejudices on the subject are undergoing change, and a few years of cautious forbearance may put an extinguisher upon the question altogether. Meanwhile those who have to deal with each case as it arises must remember that, in carrying out a correct principle even in educational matters, much allowance is not unfrequently always claimed, and has to be made for the feelings and prejudices of even very advanced and enlightened communities. The superstititions we have learned. From education, do not lose their power, When we have found them out; nor are all free Whose judgment mocks the galling chains they wear.

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Notes 1. See the Evidence of Sir W. Wedderburn, p. 2, Mr Wordsworth, p. 5 and Cf. A French Eton, pp. 26–7. 2. Cf. Report, Education Commission (1861), VI, 156. 3. Cf. Mr. Lethbridge in Journal, National Indian Association (August 1882), p. 440 et seq., and the evidence of Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Oxenham and the Hon. K. D. Pal and Mr. Tawney. 4. Schools and Universities on the Continent, p. 275, and cf. the statement of Mr. Justice West and the evidence of Mr. Wordsworth, and our minutes of proceedings, pp. 126–7. 5. Sir T. Madhavrao, among native gentlemen not examined by the Commission, and the vast majority of the native witnesses examined in all provinces, have taken the view of high education which as here stated. The view of His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore is very well known. 6. Bishop Meurin a statement (page 3) pronounces an unfavourable judgment on our system. His language is curiously like that used against the University of Paris in days gone by. Cf. Schools and Universities on the Continent by Mr. M. Arnold page 23. 7. Notwithstanding Dr. Whately’s protest, in a note in his edition of Bacon’s essays. 8. Cf. Mathew Arnold in Nineteenth Century (November 1882), p. 714. 9. See Gleanings of past years, Vol. VII, p. 18. 10. Cf. Gladstone’s Gleanings VII, 13, and the evidence of Sir William Wedderburn and Mr. Wordsworth, and the Honourable Amir Ali. Mr. Johnstone, in the pamphlet above referred to, attacks us on this ground also but his frame of mind may be judged of by his unhappy reference to the necessity of the Vernacular Press Act—a point on which one need not now waste a single syllable. 11. Life of Dr. Whately, by Miss Whately, II, 264. 12. Cf. Gladstone’s Gleanings, VII, 109. 13. Report of the Education Commission (1861), Vol. IV, page 139, and see page 151. Still the schools were called “godless” (see page 144) in Holland. 14. Cf. the quotation from Sir R. Peel in the evidence of Mr. Wordsworth. 15. See Morley’s Struggle for National Education passim. 16. Cf. Appendix B. to M. Dadabhai Naoroji’s. Note: presented to the Commission. 17. See Life in the Mofussal by a Bengal Civilian, Vol. II, p. 254. 18. Schools and Universities on the Continent, Preface, XXI, and p. 28. 19. See the Times for July 16. 20. Struggle for National Education page 87. 21. Quoted by Mr. Morley page 79. 22. And enforced in an even stronger form than is proposed by me—vide 41 and 42 Vict., c. 66 § 7. 23. See Financial Reform Almanac (1882) page 190. 24. See Mr. Âpte’s evidence, pp. 7, 26, Mr. Bhâve’s evidence, pp. 3, 4, Mr. M. B. Cooper’s evidence, pp. 3, 4, 6, 9.

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CHAPTER IX. EDUCATION OF CLASSES REQUIRING SPECIAL TREATMENT 553 Introductory.—Our attention has been carefully given to certain special classes of the Indian community. These classes include the opposite poles of society, the Chiefs and nobles at the one extreme, and the aboriginal tribes and low castes at the other. Besides these again are the Musalmans, and, confined to no particular caste or sect, those families whose poverty has practically debarred them from all education. The necessity for treating specially these various classes arises partly from the real difficulties which have hitherto hundred any considerable progress, and, in the case of the aboriginal tribes and low castes, from the wide sympathy which their backward condition and slender opportunities have excited. We shall therefore consider (1) the attitude of the native nobility towards education, and the steps taken to second any willingness shown by them to participate in a reformed system, (2) the special disabilities under which the Musalmans have laboured, or have supposed themselves to labour, and the efforts made to meet their wants, (3) the measures which have been suggested for reclaiming the half civilised aboriginal tribes which still inhabit the forests and mountains of India, (4) the position of low caste Hindus, with special reference to the proposals which our enquiries have led us to make, (5) the claims of those classes whose penury has prevented their accepting education when offered them.

Section 1.—Native Chiefs and Noblemen 554 The Native Nobility.—An expression which has been already used in this Report, “the downward filtration theory,” is generally understood to mean the theory which advocates the spread of higher education among the few in the hope 132

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that it will gradually filter down, and result in the education of the masses. The term has, however, been also applied to the theory which regards the education of the higher classes as a necessary preliminary to any influence upon the lower. In this latter sense, the theory has remained a theory. As yet, education has scarcely “touched these mountain tops,” though here and there are instances of Princes and Chiefs who of their own accord, or from the circumstance of their being placed under the tutelage of British officers have themselves accepted an education after European methods and endeavoured to make it popular among those subject to their influence. That, as a whole, the native aristocracy should have held aloof is not a matter for wonder. In the first place, the inducement which springs from an unsatisfied desire has been almost entirely absent. The native Prince has his own traditional standard of civilization with which as a rule he is satisfied. His horizon hardly extends beyond his own court. His administration is practical in character, and is bounded rather by what his subjects are used to than what is adapted to the progressive needs of western society. The pleasures which satisfied his forefathers satisfy him, and in his national poetry he finds abundant food for his literary tastes. The native noble is the native Prince in small. If his means are ample for his favourite pursuits, he sees no reason why he should labour with a view to some visionary enjoyment. If they are not, it never occurs to him that books can supply the want. From his boyhood everything about him combines to thrust education into the back-ground. The influence of the zanana is generally opposed to any enlightenment. Early marriage brings with it hindrances and distractions. The custom of living far away from the larger centres forbids much interest in matters of general importance. In some cases hereditary instinct leads him to regard education as scarcely better than a disgrace. In others, education would be accepted if made easy to obtain and if free from all hazard of social contamination. In the second place, with the exceptions which we shall presently notice, no measures of any importance have been taken to attract these classes towards our education. Arrangements have, indeed, been made in most Provinces for educating minors under the charge of the District Court or the Court of Wards. From various causes, however, little has resulted from such endeavours; and there does not seem much prospect, within any period to which it is worth while to look forward, that the titled classes generally will allow their sons to associate with the students of our ordinary schools and colleges. This conviction has led to the establishment of certain special colleges, of which one of the earliest suggestions was made in 1869 by Captain Walter, then Political Agent at Bhurtpur. In describing the circumstances under which the Maharaja of that State had been brought up, Captain Walter pointed out that we had not “yet thoroughly fathomed the duty that we owe to our feudatories” in the matter of education. Especially in regard to minors under our charge he exhibited the difficulties of our position and the way in which they might be met. “We require,” he said, “a college on an extensive scale, with ample accommodation within its walls for a large number of pupils and the followers (few in number of course) who would accompany them. A complete staff of thoroughly educated English gentlemen, not mere book-worms, but men fond 133

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of field sports and out-door exercise, would be necessary, and with these should be associated the élite of the native gentlemen belonging to the Educational Department. The pupils, or rather their guardians, the tutors, should be allowed ample funds from the coffers of the State to which they belonged, and the holidays should be spent in constant travel all over the continent of India, with an occasional visit to their homes.” Captain Walter’s idea commended itself to the Government of India, and the opinion of the Agent to the Governor-General in Central India was asked as to the possibility of carrying out such a scheme. In reply General Daly gave his warm assent, recommended that Indore should have a college of the kind suggested, and on behalf of the Maharaja Holkar promised substantial support. About the same time the Earl of Mayo, in an address to the nobles of Rajputana assembled in durbar at Ajmir, “made known his strong desire to establish in that city a college for the education of the sons and relatives of the chiefs, nobles, and principal thakoors of Rajputana, and intimated his intention of communicating to the Chiefs the details of the proposed scheme at an early date.” This was followed a little later by a communication from the Government of India to the Agent of the Governor-General in Rajputana, explaining the method in which His Excellency the Viceroy thought an endowment fund might be raised, and the lines on which the proposed college might be constituted. If among the nobles a sum of money could be raised by subscription sufficient to defray the cost of teaching, scholarships, and the annual repairs of the college, the Government would engage to erect the necessary buildings. It was suggested that the governing body should consist of a council of European and native gentlemen, and that its members should, in the first instance, be nominated by the Government. Before long an endowment fund of nearly seven lakhs of rupees had been subscribed by the Chiefs, to which the Government promised an equivalent sum. Of the Government grant, fourlakhs were to go to the erection of the college building, and the interest of the remainder to the salaries of the staff. Government also undertook the erection of residences for the pupils sent in by certain of the States too poor to meet that expense. The first stone of the Government Boarding-House was laid in May 1873, and about the same time other Boarding-Houses whose cost was borne by the Maharajas of Udaipur and Jaipur were also begun. The council, as finally settled, was to consist of all the principal Chiefs of Rajputana and the Political Agents accredited to their States, with the Viceroy as President, and the Agent to the Governor-General in Rajputana as Vice-President. Various hindrances connected with the erection of buildings, the collection of the subscriptions, the settlement of the financial basis, and the formation of the staff of teachers, prevented the opening of the college before the beginning of October 1875. By that date a fair number of pupils had joined, including the Maharaja of Alwar, the brother of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, and the adopted heir of the Maharaj Rana of Jhalawar, together with twelve other pupils sent in by the Maharajas of Jaipur and Jodhpur, and eight Government wards. THe attainments of the boys were very limited, few of them having any knowledge of English or much knowledge of even their own vernaculars. Nor, which was more surprising, did they show much interest in 134

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out-door games or athletics. Even riding was little cared for; boys from different States would not amalgamate, and the general want of spirit was very marked. But before long the attendance at the play-ground, at first enforced, became voluntary; the riding classes quickly grew popular; and cricket, rounders, and football were played with a zest scarcely less keen that shown at an English school. Considerable progress was also made year by year in the standard of instruction, and English, Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Arithmetic, Algebra, Euclid, History, and Geography are now among the studies of the College. It is not of course desired to make these young Chiefs great scholars, but to encourage in them a healthy tone and manly habits. To this end the training they receive is admirably adapted, while the College has been particularly fortunate in the gentlemen who have held the office of Principal. If at the outset the Chiefs displayed no great alacrity in sending their relatives, and if some of those sent looked with dislike upon their new phase of life, the experience of the past seven years has almost entirely dissipated the earlier reluctance. At the beginning of last year there were sixty-two pupils in residence from the various States of Alwar, Ajmir, Bikanir, Dholpur, Jaipur, Jhalawar, Kishengarh, Kotah, Mewar, Marwar, Sirohi, and Tonk; and the punctuality with which the pupils returned after the holidays was in marked contrast with the dilatoriness shown in the first few years. All the principal States had erected boarding-houses for their own cadets, and the College building was nearly finished. Similar in character, though upon a smaller scale, is the Rajkumar College in Kathiawar, founded in 1870–71 and now containing thirty-four pupils. The Rajaram College in Kolhapur, the Indore College, the Girasia school at Wadhwan in Kathiawar, and the Talukdari school at Sadra in Gujarat also have special classes for the sons of native Chiefs and large landed proprietors. In Madras and Bengal, there are no separate institutions of this kind. The Canning College at Lucknow has special classes for the sons of talukdars, and the Aligarh College counts several students belonging to the upper classes. Of the immense benefit that has already resulted from the special colleges in existence there can be no doubt, and it is almost equally certain that the system might be considerably extended. We have therefore recommended that Local Governments be invited to consider the question of establishing special colleges or schools for the sons and relatives of Native Chiefs and Noblemen where such institutions do not now exist.

Section 2.—Muhammadans. 555. Early Efforts in the Cause of Muhammadan Education.—When in 1782 the Calcutta Madrasa was founded by Warren Hastings, it was designed “to qualify the Muhammadans of Bengal for the public service . . . . . “and to enable them to compete, on more equal terms, with the Hindus for employment under Government.” Some fifty years later, after the introduction of English into the course of studies, the Council of Education had to confess that “the endeavour to impart a high order of English education” to the Muhammadan community had completely failed. Forty years later again, “the condition of the Muhammadan 135

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population of India as regards education had of late been frequently pressed upon the attention of the Government of India.” The Muhammadans were not even then competing on equal terms with the Hindus for employment under Government, nor had the endeavour to impart to them a high order of education been attended by any adequate success. Matters were, no doubt, in a more promising condition than in 1832, and, as regards the general spread of education, in a much more promising condition than in 1792. A considerable proportion of Muhammadans were learning English, a large proportion were in schools of one kind or another. But the higher English education was not cultivated, in any appreciable degree, more extensively than it had been in 1832. 556. Reasons alleged by the Muhammadans for holding aloof from the Education offered in Government Schools.—What the causes were which deterred the Muhammadans from such cultivation was debated even among themselves. While some held that the absence of instruction in the tenets of their faith, and still more the injurious effects of English education in creating a disbelief in religion, were the main obstacles, others, though a small minority, were of opinion that religion had little to do with the question. Some contended that the system of education prevailing in Government schools and colleges corrupted the morals and manners of the pupils, and that for this reason the better classes would not subject their sons to dangerous contact. The small proportion of Muhammadan teachers in Government institutions; the unwillingness of Government educational officers to accept the counsel and co-operation of Muhammadans; numerous minor faults in the Departmental system; the comparatively small progress in real learning made by the pupils in Government schools; the practice among the well-to-do Muhammadans of educating their children at home; the indolence and improvidence too common among them; their hereditary love of the profession of arms; the absence of friendly intercourse between Muhammadans and Englishmen; the unwillingness felt by the better born to associate with those lower in the social scale; the poverty nearly general among Muhammadans; the coldness of Government towards the race; the use in Government schools of books whose tone was hostile or scornful towards the Muhammadan religion;—these and a variety of other causes have been put forward at different times by members of the Muhammadan community to account for the scant appreciation which an English education has received at their hands. All such causes may have combined towards a general result, but a candid Muhammadan would probably admit that the most powerful factors are to be found in pride of race, a memory of bygone superiority, religious fears, and a not unnatural attachment to the learning of Islam. But whatever the causes, the fact remained; though the enquiries made in 1871–73 went to prove that except in the matter of the higher education there had been a tendency to exaggerate the backwardness of the Muhammadans. 557. Statistics in 1871–72.—The following Table shows the percentage of Muhammadans to the total population in the six more important Provinces of India, and the percentage of Muhammadans under instruction in schools of which the Department had cognisance to the total number of all classes in such schools. 136

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In the former case the percentage is 22·8, in the latter 147 It must also be borne in mind that in 1870–71 there were among the 167,711,037 inhabitants of the six Provinces about four millions who belonged to the aboriginal tribes, or semiHinduised aborigines, and to other non-Aryans hardly touched by our education. Deducting these, and excluding Native States, the Musalmans form about 25 per cent. of the total population:— PROVINCES Madras . . Bombay . . Bengal and Assam . . North Western Provinces . Oudh . . . Punjab . . TOTAL

Total population

Muhammadans

AT SCHOOL

Percentage.

Total

Muhammadans.

Percentage

31,281,177 1,872,214 16,349,206 2,528,344 60,467,724 19,553,420

6 15·4 32·3

123,689 190,153 196,080

5,531 15,684 28,411

4·4 8·2 14·4

30,781,204

4,188,751

13·5

162,619

28,990

17·8

11,220,232 17,611,498

1,111,290 9,102,488

9·9 51·6

48,926 68,144

12,417 23,783

25·3 34·9

167,711,041

38,356,507

22·8

789,617

114,816

14·5

It will be observed that in the North-Western Provinces, and to a much larger extent in Oudh, the proportion of Muhammadan schoolboys to the total number is greater than the proportion of Muhammadans in the population. In the other Provinces it is much less; the population percentage of the Muhammadans in these Provinces taken together, being over 26 and the school percentage under 10. 558 Suggestions made by Government of India to Local Governments.—In addressing the various Local Governments and Administrations, the Government of India in its Resolution No. 300, dated Simla, 7th August 1871, was of opinion; (1) That further encouragement should be given to the classical and vernacular languages of the Muhammadans in all Government schools and colleges; (2) That in avowedly English schools established in Muhammadan districts, the appointment of qualified Muhammadan English teachers might, with advantage, be encouraged; (3) That as in vernacular schools, so in avowedly English schools, assistance might justly be given to Muhammadans by grants-in-aid to create schools of their own; (4) That greater encouragement should also be given to the creation of a vernacular literature for the Muhammadans. 559. Measures taken in Madras.—Upon the receipt of the Resolution of the Government of India, the Government of Madras invited the Syndicate of the University to consider whether any steps could be taken by it which would be likely to attract a larger number of Muhammadan under-graduates. In its reply the Syndicate expressed an opinion that “the regulation of the “University should not be modified with the view of encouraging a particular section of the population, but 137

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that the Musalmans should be treated in precisely the same manner as all other inhabitants of the Madras Presidency,” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and while deploring the undoubted fact of the Muhammadans being behind the Hindus as regards educational progress, they did not see that any steps could be taken by the University to modify this state of things. The view taken by the Director of Public Instruction was not more encouraging. He considered that the Department had done all that it could for Muhammadan education, and pointed out that a special concession had been made to Musalman students by exempting them from the new regulations regarding fees. The Government of Madras was, however, convinced that the existing scheme of instruction was framed with too exclusive reference to the requirements of Hindu students, and that Muhammadans were placed at so great a disadvantage that the wonder was, not that the Muhammadan element in the schools was so small, but that it existed at all. The Governor in Council, therefore, issued orders that the Director should, without delay, “take steps with a view to the establishment of elementary schools at Arcot and Ellore, and corresponding classes in the existing schools at the principal centres of the Muhammadan population, such as Trichinopoly, Cuddapah, Kurnool, and perhaps Mangalore, in which instruction will be given in the Hindustani language, and Muhammadan boys may thus acquire such a knowledge of the English language and of the elementary branches of instruction as will qualify them for admission into the higher classes of the Zillah and Provincial schools and other similar institutions.”. . . . . Arrangements were also, without loss of time, to be made for the training of Muhammadan teachers; and instruction in Persian was to be provided in any high school in which there was a sufficient number of Muhammadan students. 560. Results of Measures taken.—Coming to the year 1880–81, we find that the measures taken during the interval and the results obtained were as follows: The special schools maintained by Government were 11 in number, 7 of them being Anglo-vernacular middle schools, and 4 Anglo-vernacular primary schools. Nine schools, Anglo-vernacular or vernacular, were maintained by Municipalities, and of aided schools with a special provision for Musalman pupils there were 4 Anglo-vernacular, and 210 vernacular. Other inducements had also been held out to Musalman students. They were admitted in all schools upon payment of half the usual fees, seven scholarships were specially reserved for Musalman candidates at the University examinations; a special Deputy Inspector of Musalman schools had been appointed; an elementary Normal school had been established at Madras; and the University of Madras still continued to allot to the Arabic and Persian languages at its examinations a maximum of marks considerably larger than that carried by vernacular languages. The combined results of these measures were eminently satisfactory. In place of the 5,531 Musalmans at school in 1870–71; the returns for 1880–81 give 22,075, or 6·7 per cent. of the total number under instruction, while the percentage of Musalmans to the total population of the Presidency is only 6 per cent. The proportion of boys at school to those of a school-going age is for Muhammadans 15·1, for Hindus 13·7. But it is not in numbers only that progress has been made. Taking the results of the middle school examinations we find that 138

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the percentage of passed candidates to those examined was, for Brahmans 44, for Hindus not Brahmans, 35, for Muhammadans 41. In the lower University examinations, taking only the percentage of successful candidates to those examined, the results for 1880–81 are equally satisfactory, as the following Table will show:— ENTRANCE. RACE.

Brahmans . . Hindus not Brahmans . . Musalmans . .

FIRST ARTS.

Percentage Percentage Examined. Passed. of passed to Examined. Passed. of passed to examined. examined. 2,150 1,066

670 290

31·2 27·2

486 173

295 86

60·7 49·7

71

19

26·8

10

6

60·0

In the Entrance examination, the percentage for Hindus other than Brahmans and for Musalmans is thus practically the same. It must be remembered, however, that the proportion of students to population is about three times as great for Hindus (including Brahmans) as for Musalmans. In the latter case, the percentage of passed candidates is even more favourable to the Musalmans; but the proportion of candidates to population is five times as great for Hindus (including Brahmans) as for Musalmans. Of college education, beyond the first examination in Arts, Muhammadans, speaking generally, do not avail themselves at all, though there is no reason to suppose that the general system of education beyond that standard is not as well suited to the Muhammadans as that below it. The attendance of Musalmans in the various institutions, Government, aided, and unaided, as compared with the total attendance, was in 1881–82 as follows:— Total Number of Students

Class of Institutions Colleges, English . . . . . . ” Oriental . . . . . . High Schools, English . . . . ” . . . . . . Middle ” ” ” Vernacular . . . English . . . . Primary ” ” ” Vernacular . . . ” English, Girls’ . High ” ” . . Middle ” ” ” Vernacular, Girls’ English ” . Primary ” ” ” Vernacular ” . Normal schools for masters . . ” ” for mistresses . . TOTAL

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1,669 38 4,836 18,553 511 63,295 276,983 2 190 197 1,897 18,468 799 157 387,595

139

Musalmans

Percentage.

30

1·7

117 723 2 4,973 19,232

2·4 3·8 ·4 7·8 6·9

1 427 42 25,547

... ·5 ... 2·3 5·2 ... 6·5

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561. Measures taken in Bombay.—Though the Musalmans in the Bombay Presidency are reckoned in the census of 1872 at 2,528,344, or 15·4 per cent. of a total population of 16,349,206, no less than 1,354,781 belong to Sind alone. Excluding that Division the percentage falls to 7·1. Of the total number at school, 15,684, or 8·2 per cent., were Musalmans. As in Madras, therefore, the circumstances which called forth the Resolution of the Government of India existed only on a small scale. Sind, no doubt, was in a very backward state, and the feelings of the Musalman community there were strongly against the study of English. Out of a population of 1,354,781, only 10,115 were in schools known to the Department, and of that number, only 3,225, or 31·8 per cent of the total number at school, were Musalmans, though their proportion to the rest of the inhabitants was as four to one. Looking at the Presidency as a whole, the indifference of the Musalmans was not so much to education generally as to education in its higher branches. This fact had already engaged the attention of the Department; and enquiries which were set on foot some two years before the issue of the Resolution of the Government of India showed that in the Government colleges and English schools of a total of 16,224, the Musalmans numbered 1,499 only. The distribution was as follows:— In colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14

” high schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

” middle schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . TOTAL

1,426 1,499

“Here,” the Director of Public Instruction remarks, “is the weak point. The Muhammadans avail themselves of our lower schools, but do not rise to the higher schools and colleges. In the list of University graduates there are one Musalman M.A. and two B.A.’s. I think that the reason is to be found not in the poverty of the Muhammadan community (for beggar Brahmans abound in the high school), but in their poverty and depressed social status combined. In this matter the Brahman and Musalman are at opposite poles. Thus we have in Gujarat 10 Brahmans in the colleges and 20 in the high schools for every Musalman, but only 3 Brahmans for every Musalman in the middle class, and not 2 for every Musalman in the lower class schools.” In the Government institutions generally the disproportion of Musalmans to the total number at school was much less than in those aided and inspected. Thus out of 161,283 students in the former, 14,629, or 9·1 per cent., were Musalmans, while the latter had but 968, or 5·2 per cent., of a total of 16,443. The measures taken by the Director, Mr. Peile, to remedy the state of things which his enquiries revealed had reference alike to the higher and the lower grades of education. The University having placed Persian on the list of languages in which examination is held for its degrees, sanction was obtained to the appointment of a Professor of Persian and Arabic in the Elphinstone College, where up to that time it had been impossible, for want of a competent teacher, that those languages should be studied in a scholarly manner. Persian teachers were also appointed in 140

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the Elphinstone and Surat High Schools. By the provision of stipends and teachers for Musalmans in the vernacular training college, the foundation was laid of a supply of qualified teachers in vernacular and Musalman schools. In regard to lower education, Mr. Peile pressed upon the Government the necessity of imposing town school-rates for class wants, since the rates then administered by the Education Department belonged almost exclusively to the villages, and the share of the public grant for vernacular education which belonged to the towns was too small to admit of adequate provision for such wants. His representations, though the imposition of these rates was not conceded, at all events secured to Musalman schools a fair share of the vernacular grant. Mr. Peile also drew up a course of Persian instruction for the upper standards in vernacular schools, and for English and high schools. This course was graduated from the beginning up to the matriculation standard, and so arranged as to prepare for the study of Persian as a classic in the Arts Colleges. Later on the number of special Musalman schools was considerably increased, and Musalman Deputy Inspectors were appointed to inspect them. “But the most promising feature in connection with the progress of “Musalman education during the past decade” [1871 to 1881] “has been the formation and recognition of a Society known as the Anjuman-i-Islam, which it is hoped will in time establish a net-work of secular schools in Bombay. This Society is so important that it was felt advisable to make special rules for its assistance. At present it receives a fixed subsidy of Rs. 500 a month from Government. By the end of the year 1880–81 the Society’s first school was fairly started. Its Hindustani and Anglo-Hindustani Departments, together with a large class of children reading the Kuran, contained in all 102 pupils. Since then the operations of the Society have been extended.”1 562. Results of Measures taken.—In 1871–72 the number of Musalmans at school, according to Mr. Peile’s estimate, was 15,577, or about 8·7 per cent. of the total number at school; in 1881–82 the number had risen to 41,548, or 11·7 per cent. of the total number at school. There were also in the latter year 22,284 Muhammadan children in indigenous schools, which would raise the percentage to 14·7. The distribution was as follows:— Class of Institution. Colleges, English . . . . . . High Schools, English . . . ” ” . . . Middle Vernacular . Primary ” ” English, Girls’ Middle Vernacular, ” Primary ” Normal Schools for Masters . . ” ” Mistresses . Unaided Indigenous Schools . . TOTAL

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

Total number of Students

Musalmans

Percentage.

475 5,731 14,257 312,771 555 19,917 480 73 78,755 433,014

7 118 781 39,231 2 1,366 42 1 22,284 63,832

1·4 2·0 5·4 12·5 ·3 6·8 8·7 1·3 28·2 14·7

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563. Measures taken in Bengal.—The following Table shows the proportion of Musalmans to Hindus and others in those colleges and schools of Bengal and Assam which in 1871 furnished returns to the Department:— Hindus Schools . . . . . . . . Arts Colleges . . . . . . TOTAL

Musalmans

149,717 1,199 150,916

28,096 52 28,148

Others 15,489 36 15,525

Total. 193,302 1,287 194,589

Thus, while the Musalmans of Bengal were 32·3 per cent. of the total population, their proportion to the total number in schools known to the Department was only 14·4 per cent. “This result,” remarks the Director in his Report for 1871–72, “shows that the education of Musalmans demands much careful attention. They have fallen behind the time, and require still the inducements held out forty years ago to the whole community, but of which the Hindus only availed themselves. Such, however, has been the progress of education and the influence of the grantin-aid system in promoting self-help, that the encouragement which was then considered just and right would now be called downright bribery; still unless the strong inducements in general use forty years ago are held out to Musalmans now, I have little hope of seeing them drawn to our schools.” But if the number of Musalmans in the schools generally was greatly out of proportion to the total number in the Presidency, still more conspicuous was the disproportion in the colleges, where out of 1,287 students only 52, or 4·04 per cent., belonged to that race. In regard to University distinctions, the Director remarks:—“During the last five years, out of 3,499 candidates who passed the Entrance examination from these Provinces, 132, or 3·8 per cent. only, were Musalmans. They ought to have been ten-fold more numerous. Out of 900 passed for the First Arts in the same period, Musalmans gained only 11, or 1·2 per cent., and out of 429 passes for the B.A., they gained only 5, or 1·1 per cent. Hence, not only the number of Musalmans who pass the Entrance is less than one-tenth what it ought to be, but this painful inferiority steadily increases in the higher examinations. Taking the candidates generally, out of every 100 who pass the Entrance, 26 go on and pass the First Arts, and 12 pass the B.A.; but of every 100 Musalmans who pass the Entrance, only 8 pass the First “Arts and 3 the B.A.” Various causes, some general and some particular, were assigned by the officers consulted as the obstacles which had barred the progress of education, both higher and lower. Among the general causes assigned by them were the apathy of the Musalman race, their pride, their religious exclusiveness, the love of their own literature among those of them who cared for any education at all, the idea so persistently held that education ought to be a free gift. Among the particular causes, a want of sympathy between Hindu teachers and Musalman pupils, a want of consideration in the arrangements of the Education Department, and, perhaps above all, the depressed condition of the bulk of Bengali Musalmans, Musalmans in the first instance by conversion only 142

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and not by descent. In different degrees of efficiency and with varying influence according to locality, these causes combined to account for the backwardness of the race. Many of them were of course beyond any immediate removal. Others were a matter of administration, and with these the Government of Bengal promptly endeavoured to deal. On the question of establishing special schools for Musalmans, the almost unanimous opinion of those consulted was that, with the schools already in existence, there was no sufficient justification for expending State funds in this direction. The vernacular of the mass of Musalmans in Bengal was known to be Bengali, and the ordinary pathsalas of the country were held to supply the proper means of elementary education. Schools of all classes might be made more attractive by increasing the number of Musalmans throughout the various grades of the Department in Musalman districts; and especially by encouraging Musalmans to qualify themselves for the profession of teaching by a course of training in the Normal schools. In all zila schools it was decided that Urdu and Arabic or Persian should be taught up to the standard of the Entrance examination; and, as a special concession, wherever there was a sufficient demand to justify the supply, there was to be a special class to teach Arabic and Persian after the Musalman fashion. The Persian language had recently been included by the University among the subjects for the F.A. and B.A. Examinations, and this it was expected would have a powerful effect in increasing the number of college students. A new Code of grant-in-aid rules was about to be drawn up, and advantage would be taken of this to offer specially liberal terms to schools managed by Musalmans. These measures for the most part had reference only to lower education. In respect to the higher, the Musalmans of Bengal had a special grievance in the appropriation to English education of a certain endowment originally assigned to the promotion of oriental (Arabic and Persian) learning. Of that endowment, known as the Mahomed Mohsin Trust, some account has already been given in Chapter VI. To remove all cause for complaint, the Lieutenant-Governor at the instance of the Supreme Government, which added a sum of Rs. 50,000 for that purpose to the Provincial assignment for education, declared that the maintenance of the English side of that College should be a charge upon the Provincial funds. It was also decided to devote a portion of the endowment to the oriental side, or Madrasa, and the remainder to the foundation of three new Madrasas, to the establishment of scholarships, and towards the payment of the fee of Musalman students in English colleges and schools. The three Madrasas were established at Dacca, Rajshahye, and Chittagong; and each was placed under an Arabic scholar of repute, assisted by a competent staff of maulavis. It was intended that in each of them the full course of the Calcutta Madrasa should in time be taught; English was to be added to the course wherever the pupils showed a desire to learn that language, and at Dacca a teacher of English was at once appointed. To the payment of scholarships tenable by Musalmans in Madrasas or in English colleges and schools there was allotted the sum of Rs. 9,000, while Rs. 18,000 went to the payment of two-thirds of 143

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the fees of Muhammadan pupils in Government colleges and schools outside Calcutta, and also to the payment of maulavis in these schools. At the same time the Calcutta Madrasa was thoroughly reorganised, arrangements were made for the more thorough teaching of the Arabic and Persian languages with a reasonable amount of Muhammadan law; and the salary of the European Principal was raised to Rs. 1,000 a month. A description of the character and status of this Madrasa has been given elsewhere, and it is therefore unnecessary to enter into particulars here. A few years later, a proposal was made to connect the maktabs throughout Bengal with the institutions for higher Muhammadan education in Calcutta and the mofussil. The attempt, however, was not successful, and it was abandoned in favour of an opposite policy, which was expressed in the hope that the maktabs might be “gradually moulded into true primary schools.” Accepting the indigenous schools of the country in the form in which, under the special conditions of locality, they were most popular, the Bengal system endeavoured by the promise of Government support to introduce into the traditional course of study certain subjects of instruction which should bring the schools so aided into some relation, more or less close, with the general system of education in the Province. The object being to encourage natural and spontaneous movement, it followed that if in any locality the existing system had a religious basis, the religious character of the school should be no bar to its receiving aid, provided that it introduced a certain amount of secular instruction into the course. Many hundreds of maktabs have in this way been admitted into the primary system of Bengal. 564. Results of Measures taken.—The results of the measures taken at this time are shown, to some extent, by the very considerable increase in the number of Musalmans under instruction in 1881–82. Including the Madrasas, in which there were about 1,000 students, the number then stood as follows:— Class of Institutions. Colleges,

. { English Oriental .

Number of Musalmans.

Percentage.

2,738 1,089 43,747 37,959 56,441 880,937 184 340 527 17,452 1,007 41 57,305

106 1,088 3,831 5,032 7,735 217,216

3·8 99·90 8·7 13·2 13·7 24·6

4 6 1,570 55 ... 25,244

1·1 1·1 8·9 5·5 ... 44·0

1,099,767

261,887

23·8

Total number.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

High Schools, ” . . . . . . . . . . . . . Middle ” ” Vernacular . . . ” ” Boys’ Primary ” High Schools, Girls’, English . ” ” . . Middle ” Vernacular . ” ” ”. . . Primary Normal Schools for Masters . . ” ” Mistresses . Private Uninspected Schools . . TOTAL

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

144

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The last column is important as showing how rapidly the proportion of Musalman students falls in schools of the higher classes. The proportion in colleges is, indeed, even smaller now than it was in 1871 when, as previously stated, 4·04 per cent. were Musalmans. Still, owing to the ready way in which Musalmans have accepted the primary system of instruction there is a very satisfactory increase in the total number of pupils of that race, which has risen from 28,148 in 1871 to 262,108 (including students in technical schools and colleges) in 1882; the proportion of Musalmans being now 23·8 per cent. against 14·4 in 1871. In each of the Madrasas of Hugli, Dacca, Rajshahye and Chittagong the full Arabic course of the Calcutta Madrasa is taught, and in each also instruction in English is given to all pupils who wish it. In the Dacca Madrasa the course in English is carried up to the Entrance standard. Of 1,089 pupils in the six Madrasas, as many as 322 learn English. The privilege of reading at one-third of the ordinary fees has also, by recent orders of the Government of Bengal, been extended to Muhammadan students of any college in Calcutta, whether Government or other. In the case of non-Government colleges, aided and unaided, the amount of the remissions is paid from the Provincial Revenues. On the other hand, in the Derajat and Peshawar Divisions, where the Musalmans formed more than 90 per cent. of the whole population, their proportion to the total number at schools was only 55 per cent.; and so completely in many parts had education been disregarded by them, that it would be a considerable time before the schools, whether Government or aided, could expect to attract any large number of pupils. Simultaneously with these enquiries, the Government of the Punjab consulted a large number of gentlemen as to the necessity of any special measures, other than those which had already been taken, for the furtherance of education among the Musalmans. Among those consulted were the Members of the Senate of the Punjab University College, and English and Native officers, both Musalman and Hindu. The replies received almost unanimously deprecated any such measures. The Musalman members of the Senate recommended, indeed, a system of special scholarships, and would be glad to see moral and religious instruction given in the Government schools; but they were unanimous in declaring that no religious prejudices existed among the more enlightened classes against the education afforded either in the Government or in the Mission schools, that no change was needed in the course of study, and especially that there should be no restriction upon the study of English. In regard to the establishment of aided schools, the Government of the Punjab pointed out that the matter was very much in the hands of the people themselves; but that if any exertion were made in that direction, it would meet with liberal encouragement from Government, and that in such schools it would be for the managers to provide whatever religious instruction they thought fit. So far as the Musalmans had shown an indifference to the education offered them, that was ascribed by the Government to the disproportionate attention given by them to religious studies, to a preference, as more practical, for the course of study in indigenous schools, and to the impoverishment which 145

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was said to have affected most Muhammadan families of note. That, as a class, the Musalmans had been subject to any special disabilities, was emphatically denied; and the conclusion drawn from the general body of evidence went to show that the suggestions made by the Government of India had already been adopted in the Punjab. No special measures, therefore, have since been taken, but the percentage of Musalmans at school has risen since 1871–72 from 34·9 to 38·2, and the increase has been in the higher rather than in the lower class of schools. The following Table gives the statistics for 1881–82:— Total number of Students

Class of Institutions Colleges, English . . . . . . . ” Oriental . . . . . . . High schools, English . . . . . ” Vernacular . . . . Middle schools, English . . . . . ” Vernacular . . . Primary schools, English . . . . ” Vernacular . . . Middle schools, Girls’, English . . ” ” Primary ” ” Vernacular Normal schools for Masters . . . ” ” Mistresses . . Central Training College . . . . TOTAL . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

103 122 453 132 2,671 2,704 23,019 70,641 8 141 9,066 220 138 58 109,476

Musalmans

Percentage.

13 71 91 64 703 935 7,176 28,378

12·6 58·1 20·0 48·4 26·3 34·5 31·1 40·1 ... 1·4 46·7 45·9 42·7 27·5 38·2

2 4,235 101 59 16 41,844

569. Measures taken in Oudh.—The following Table shows the proportion of Musalmans to the total number at school in 1871–72:—

AIDED

GOVERNMENT.

Class of Institutions

{

{

Total number of Students.

Musalmans

Percentage.

2,340 7,390 31,525 1,908 187 720 200 3,983

630 2,732 6,235 1,072 71 195 37 993

27·0 36·9 19·7 56·1 38·0 27·0 18·5 24·9

1,222 451 49,926

200 252 12,417

16·3 55·8 24·8

Higher schools, English . . . . . Middle ” ” and Vernacular Lower schools, Vernacular . . . . Female  ” . . . . . . . . . Normal ” . . . . . . . . . College . . . . . . . . . . . Higher schools, English . . . . . Middle Class, English and Vernacular . . . . . . . . . . Lower schools, Vernacular . . . . Female schools . . . . . . . . TOTAL . . . . .

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This Table is, in itself, enough to show that the education of Musalmans in Oudh had not been neglected, and that the Musalmans were far from indifferent to the advantages held out to them. The course of studies, indeed, was UrduPersian rather than Hindi-Sanskrit. If any section of the community had cause for complaint, it was the Hindus. But, in reality, they had no grievance; for, Urdu being the language of the Courts, and Government service being to the vast majority alike of Hindus and Musalmans the great incentive to education, the requirements of all were best met by the adoption of Urdu as a medium of instruction. Persian was also taught in the schools, and was a study popular with the better class of Musalmans. For Arabic there seemed to be little or no demand. To know the Koran by heart was, indeed, as in other parts of India, the beginning of wisdom. In most cases it was also the end. Facilities for the study of Arabic as a language were abundantly offered in the Canning College, Lucknow, at which, however, though “situated in a city containing 111,397 Muhammadans, or about 9,000 Muhammadan boys of a school-going age, there are but 144 Musalman students.” That number, the Director had no doubt, might be increased by hundreds, perhaps by thousands, by the offer of stipends, or even of daily rations of food. Such students, however, he confessed, would not be attracted by the love of Oriental literature, nor would they continue their studies if more advantageous occupation offered itself. Towards “the creation of a vernacular literature,” or, as the Director more accurately puts it, “the provision of a suitable literature” for Musalmans and Hindus, something might be done. But “it seems to me,” wrote the Director, “that special machinery for the production of school-books, and for the reward of Native authors, is required. At present no such machinery exists. The Government of India, I believe, are afraid lest the works produced by translators should not be popular and remain unsold. So at present authors can only be encouraged by the purchase of their books, for prizes or special rewards. But there is no machinery even to estimate the value of the books submitted; the books are forwarded to the Director of Public Instruction, and he must, in addition to his other multifarious duties, go over each book presented, and accurately gauge its merits, or he may call upon some of his subordinates as hard-worked as himself to assist in the criticism of books submitted for publication. Moreover, many, nay most, of those who write and adapt books for school use are either not acquainted at all with Western science and art, or at best have but a superficial acquaintance with these subjects. Thus, the books that are printed follow a stereotyped eastern groove, or are unidiomatic and bald versions of some trifling English work. If a special office for the examination and publication of works in Hindi, Urdu, Persian and Bengalee were established, and this office were connected with the Educational Departments of Bengal, the North-Western Provinces, and the Punjab, and were under the control of some one of these Departments, I cannot but think that a better class of literature would be produced than under the present system.”

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The following is the comparative Table for Oudh in 1881–82:— Class of Institutions Colleges, English . . . . . . . . ” Oriental . . . . . . . . High and Middle Schools, English . ” ” ” Vernacular Primary Schools, English . . . . . ” Vernacular . . . . ” Girls’, English . . ” ” Vernacular . Normal Schools for Masters . . . . ” for Mistresses . . . TOTAL .

Total number of Students

Musalmans

Percentage

126 113 1,081 536 4,388 45,899 350 1,722 67 6 54,288

7 51 195 134 1,317 9,449 156 1,080 11 ... 12,400

5·5 45·1 18·0 25·0 30·0 20·5 44·5 62·7 16·4 ... 22·8

. . . . . . . . . . .

570. Measures taken in other Provinces.—In the Central Provinces the Musalmans formed only 2·5 per cent. of the total population, but they were as fully alive to the importance of education as the rest of the community. In the higher schools, especially, their attendance was good, and orders had already been given that classes should be opened for the study of Arabic and Persian in all zila schools in which there should be a sufficient demand. The Chief Commissioner did not think that any further measures were necessary. In Mysore the general state of Muhammadan education was very backward and unsatisfactory. The Chief Commissioner was of opinion that Hindustani schools should be established wherever a reasonably sufficient number of Muhammadan pupils were forthcoming to attend them; that Hindustani masters should be added to the existing schools of all descriptions wherever a class of pupils in that language could be formed; and that the subject of the provision of suitable schools books should be duly considered. The question of Muhammadan education had already engaged the anxious attention of the Chief Commissioner, who had repeatedly urged upon that community the necessity of taking further advantage of the facilities offered them if they wished to keep pace with the progress made by other classes. The Muhammadans of Coorg were generally in very poor circumstances, and quite indifferent to the education of their children. The only measure which the Chief Commissioner thought practicable was to establish an efficient Hindustani class at Merkara in connection with, or independent of, the central school, and the Director of Public Instruction had been instructed to make enquiries as to how this might best be done. The Musalmans of the Assigned Districts of Haidarabad were, it was stated, but few in number and depressed in social and intellectual condition relatively to the other classes of the people. It had always been one of the objects of the Local Administration to introduce into the ranks of the Commission a certain number of Musalmans. Measures had also been recently adopted for promoting the spread of education 148

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among that portion of the community, but it was too early to judge of their results. 571. Memorials regarding Muhammadan Education.—Of the various memorials on the subject of Muhammadan education that have come before the Commission, by far the most important is that of the National Muhammadan Association whose head-quarters are at Calcutta. Though having reference on certain points to Bengal alone, the memorial in reality covers nearly the whole ground of Muhammadan grievances, and indicates the methods of redress to which the Musalmans consider themselves entitled. The memorialists begin by setting forth the causes “which have led to “the decadence and ruin of so many Muhammadan families in India.” These were principally three. First, the ousting of Persian as the language of official use, and the substitution of English or the vernacular; secondly, the resumption between 1828 and 1846 of the revenue-free grants which under the Muhammadan rule were generally made to men of learning for charitable and pious uses; thirdly, the order passed in 1864 that English alone should be the language of examination for the more coveted appointments in the subordinate civil service. The combination of these causes resulted, according to the Memorialists, in a general impoverishment of the Musalman race, and this impoverishment in its turn has prevented them from obtaining such an education as would fit them for a useful and respectable career. It has been to no purpose, the memorialists urge, that for the “last twenty years the Musalmans have made strenuous efforts to qualify themselves to enter the lists successfully with the Hindus, for, with every avenue to public employment already jealously blocked by members of a different race, it is almost impossible for a Muhammadan candidate to obtain a footing in any Government office.” The various orders, issued from time to time, that a proper regard should be paid to the claims of Musalmans, had practically been inoperative. One reason of this was that undue importance was attached to University education, an education which, until very recently, had not taken root among the Muhammadans, though many of them possessed “as thorough an acquaintance with the English language as any ordinary B.A.” This affected the Musalmans both generally as regarded all Government employ, and specially as regarded the subordinate judicial service. Their numerical inferiority in this branch of the administration was ascribed to the decision that no one in Bengal should be appointed a Munsiff unless he was a B.L. of the Calcutta University, to attain which degree it was necessary that the candidate should first have passed the B.A. Examination. Another grievance was the substitution of the Nagari for the Persian character in the Courts of Behar, where, according to the Memorialists, the Hindus were, to all intents and purposes, Musalmans, where the change had proved vexatious to the higher classes, had hindered the administration of justice, had failed to satisfy the advocates of Hindi, and was for various reasons objectionable to all classes. The memorialists, therefore, asked (1) that “in the dispensation of State patronage no regard should be paid to mere University degrees, but the qualifications of the candidates should be judged by an independent standard. It will not be considered presumptuous on your memorialists’ part 149

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if they venture to submit that stamina and force of character are as necessary in the lower as in the higher walks of life, and these qualities can scarcely be attested by University examinations”: (2) that “separate examinations may be instituted for appointments to the subordinate judicial service without the candidates being required to submit to the preliminary condition of passing the Bachelor of Arts Examination of the Calcutta University:” (3) that since, “owing to the general impoverishment of the Musalman community, the confiscation of their scholastic foundations, the neglect, ruin and waste of their charitable endowments,” Muhammadan education has “fallen entirely into the background, similar facilities should be accorded to the Muhammadans as are being offered to the Eurasian community. They are fairly entitled to ask that the large funds appertaining to the various endowments which still exist under the control and direction of the Government should be scrupulously and religiously applied to promote Muhammadan education;” (4) that “the order substituting the Nagari character for the Persian in the Behar Courts should be withdrawn;” (5) “that a special Commission should be assembled to examine the whole question of Musalman education, and to device a practical scheme for the purpose.” 572. Opinions of the Local Governments on the Memorial.—This memorial was circulated by the Government of India to the various Local Governments and Administrations. Their replies we shall endeavour to summarise; and, as the memorial has special reference to Bengal, it will be more convenient to take that Province first. 573. Reply from Bengal.—In respect to the resumption laws, “on the harshness of which the memorialists had dwelt at length, it seems to the LieutenantGovernor that there has been a great deal of very ill-informed declamation . .; vague statements regarding their disastrous effects are met by statements equally vague regarding their necessity and the general fairness with which they were conducted. Mr. Rivers Thompson is not prepared to deny that possibly in many cases (and, obviously, the action of Government would most seriously affect Muhammadan holders of land) the assessments of revenue on land previously held rent-free may have entailed losses both in position and wealth; but the statements of writers who maintain that these proceedings entailed wholesale ruin on the Muhammadan community in general, and the scholastic classes in particular, cannot be suffered to pass without remark. Such statements admit of no proof. They are unsupported by the history either of the origin or of the progress of the resumption proceedings themselves. These proceedings originated chiefly in the misconduct of the native official classes in the early days of British rule. Before the transfer of the sovereignty of Bengal and Behar to the East India Company in 1765, the revenue collector under the Moghul Sovereigns used occasionally to alienate lands in the shape of endowments and rent-free grants. They had, of course, no authority to do this, the ruling power alone being competent to grant away its share in the produce of the land; but it is on good authority believed that these alienations were few in number and limited in extent before the accession to sovereignty of the East India Company. During the first few years of the 150

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Company’s administration, however, such invalid grants increased enormously. . . . There can be as little doubt, under the circumstances of the case, that they were due, not to any praiseworthy intention of supporting religion or promoting learning, but to purely selfish motives of personal gain.” Mr. Rivers Thompson then goes on to show that the Government, though repeatedly asserting its right and declaring its intention to assess revenue on these alienated lands, abstained from making good its claim until compelled by financial pressure. It had been asserted by a writer in the Nineteenth Century, and repeated in the memorial, that the harshness of the resumption proceedings had left behind a legacy of bitterness, had entailed widespread ruin on the Musalman gentry, and had destroyed the Muhammadan educational system. But, the Lieutenant-Governor continued, “no details in support of their statement were furnished at the time, and the author of the article in question has since confessed himself unable to supply the omission. Desirous of ascertaining whether official records lent colour to the writer’s assertions, the Lieutenant-Governor consulted the Board of Revenue, who have reported that the assertions in question admit of no verification from the revenue records of Government. . . . The fact is always either forgotten or ignored that the result of even the harshest resumption case was not the dispossession of the holder, but the assessment of revenue on his holding, and even that in no case at more than half the prevailing rates. . . . The holders of rent-free grants possessing titles from the former rulers of the country were, of course, exempted from the operation of the law.” The Lieutenant-Governor concludes by showing that “if the provisions of the resumption laws were thus tempered in the case of the holders of large grants, the procedure was, so far as the Government was concerned, even more lenient in that of petty lakhirajdars” . . .; that the Musalmans were not treated with exceptional rigour, and that if irretrievable injury was done to Muhammadan progress by the operation of these laws, “the enquiry naturally suggests itself why Hindus, equally subjected to the same laws, have survived their effects.” On the subject of the supersession of Persian by vernacular tongues in official business, the Lieutenant-Governor did not think it necessary to comment at length. The memorialists had admitted that the measure had been successful, while the statement that this success had been purchased at the expense of the impoverishment of the middle class of Muhammadans was supported by no proof, and was, on the face of it, incredible, being tantamount to the assertion that thirty millions of people had been impoverished because at the very outside some few hundreds of subordinate officials were thrown out of employment. That the Muhammadans of Bengal had fallen behind in the race and yielded place to the Hindus was true; but this was due to failure on their part to take advantage of the opportunities afforded impartially to all subjects of the British Government. The memorialists had stated that at the dawn of the new order of things the Musalmans had “naturally stood aloof” from the English education offered them. The words quoted were significant, and told of religious repugnance to make terms with modern thought. That the memorialists should, on the one hand, blame the Government for not providing special facilities for instruction in English, while on the other asserting that the 151

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Musalmans “naturally stood aloof” was a manifest inconsistency. The grievances of a more specific character advanced in the memorial were two, namely, that University qualifications, which necessarily imply acquaintance with English, are now held essential for admission to the Bench and Bar, and that Urdu had been superseded by Hindi as the official language in Behar. On the former point, while agreeing with the High Court that a knowledge of English was, for a variety of reasons, an indispensable requirement, the Lieutenant-Governor held that for candidates for pleaderships and posts in the Subordinate Judicial system a University degree was not absolutely necessary. Some independent system might, he thought, be devised, to test the legal knowledge of the candidates. Proposals were already under consideration for the establishment of examinations for admission to the subordinate services, and, with necessary changes, examinations for pleaderships might be included in the plan. To the objections against the introduction of Hindi as the official language of Behar, the Lieutenant-Governor considered that a sufficient answer had been given in the success with which the change had been effected. The outcry against it was “far louder among the Muhammadans, who are not affected by the change, than among the supposed sufferers. The change is the logical sequence of that exclusively Hindi teaching which has prevailed for nearly ten years with such marked success in all the primary patshalas and vernacular schools of Behar, in the very institutions, that is to say, from which the subordinate official classes, in whose behalf alone this outcry is raised, are fed. To give effect to the wishes of the National Muhammadan Association, therefore, on this point, it would be necessary to reverse the existing and approved policy of popular education in these Provinces—a course which the memorialists themselves would hardly advocate.” The question of affording special facilities for Musalman education, more particularly by the establishment in Calcutta of an English college, had for several years been urged upon, and considered by, the Government. It had not, however, appeared until very lately that this particular measure would tend to promote the permanent interests of the Musalmans, but the views of that section of the community now seemed to point very definitely in this direction, and “the elevation of the Calcutta Madrasa to the status of a college” would be “a legitimate concession to the reasonable demands of those interested in it.” Moreover, the Lieutenant-Governor was convinced by personal observation that neither from an educational nor from a political point of view, was it advisable any longer to maintain the Madrasas established some few years ago at Chittagong, Dacca, Rajshahye and Hugli. The funds on which they subsist might usefully be devoted to the support of a Muhammadan College in Calcutta, such an appropriation would be hailed with satisfaction by all intelligent Musalmans, and the Lieutenant Governor “would be glad to learn that any action taken in this direction would meet with the approval of His Excellency the Viceroy in Council.” As to the Muhammadan educational endowments, to which the memorialists referred, the Lieutenant Governor had every reason to believe that they were administered with due care. For the special Commission asked for by the memorialists, the Lieutenant Governor saw no necessity. 152

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574. Memorandum on the Memorial.—Before passing on to the replies of the other Local Governments, it will be well to notice here a memorandum on the memorial presented by the Nawab Abdool Luteef Khan Bahadoor, who for many years has taken an active interest in matters affecting the education of the community to which he belongs. This gentleman demurs to the memorial “being accepted as the exponent of the views of the Muhammadan community, and criticises it on several important points. Though glad that the decadence of a community once renowned for all that constitutes a great nation” had once more been brought prominently to notice he regrets “that this condition is unwisely attributed solely to the action of the British Government, and not to acts of omission and commission on the part of the Muhammadans themselves, and, to a great extent, to causes beyond the control of both the Government and the Muhammadans.” He points out that when, as one of the necessary results of the change of political supremacy, the vernaculars took the place of Persian in official business, the Musalmans of Bengal neglected Bengali no less than English, and so shut themselves out from the various appointments in which a knowledge of English is not required. Their neglect of English, which was the chief obstacle to their advancement, was, in a considerable measure, due to the feeling that a Muhammadan “who desires to be respected in society must be a good Persian scholar and possessed of at least some knowledge of Arabic.” This had burdened them in the race with Hindu competitors. The comparatively small importance attached to Persian in the Government system of education had rendered those who followed it “unfit for harmonising with the orthodox classes of the Muhammadan community, who ascribed to English education the social defects due entirely to the absence of a Persian education, moreover the habits and natures of these young men have created a strong prejudice against English education in general.” The poverty of the Musalmans, due to the loss of power and patronage and to “the inability of the Muhammadans to recognise the full force and effect of the said alteration of political power in the country,” had in a large number of cases put an English education out of the question. This difficulty had, however, in Bengal been removed to a considerable extent by the recent “action of the Bengal Government in sanctioning the payment (from the Mohsimah funds) of two-thirds of the fees of the Muhammadan students who might pursue their higher studies in any college.” The numerical inferiority of the Musulmans in Government employ was not a trustworthy test, for the memorialists had overlooked “the circumstance that as regards Bengal, where the Muhammadans are most numerous, the mass of the Muhammadan population consists of cultivators among some millions of Brahmins and Kayasthas, who, from time immemorial, have enjoyed a superior system of education and, in consequence, a passport to public offices.” The Nawab was opposed to the suggestion in the memorial that in the dispensation of State patronage no regard should be paid to mere University degrees. More especially in regard to admission to the High Court Bar, he would not relax the present rule, though for pleaders in the District Courts a less severe examination might be accepted. If, as was asserted, the Musalmans were “handicapped in consequence of a defective acquaintance 153

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with the vernacular language and accounts,” this might be remedied “by insisting on more attention being paid to these subjects in primary and secondary schools resorted to by Muhammadans, and also by providing a system of apprenticeship in Government offices, whereby the candidates of all nationalities might be trained to the discharge of the duties appertaining to the posts to which they may aspire.” For a special Commission the Nawab saw no necessity, since the Government was already in possession of ample information at least in regard to Bengal. In dealing with the question of Muhammadan endowments for education, the Government was bound, “as much in the interests of education as of religious neutrality, . . . . . to act in harmony with the views of the majority of the Muhammadans, and to respect their religious feelings.” To abolish the present Madrasas and devote the funds to the support of an English college for Musalmans would, in the opinion of the Nawab, be impolitic; and he would, therefore, earnestly suggest that the cost of the college classes in the Calcutta Madrasa should be met from Provincial Funds. The importance of maintaining institutions for the cultivation of the higher Oriental learning was, both politically and intellectually, very great. On this subject the Nawab dwelt at considerable length and in much detail. His opinions, he stated, were entirely opposed to those of gentlemen of the advanced school, but he was “addressing an enlightened and parental Government, one that is always disposed to respect the cherished feelings and revered institutions of its subjects, and I feel no apprehension as to the result of my appeal.” 575. Reply from Madras.—The replies from the other Provinces may be more briefly summarised. In Madras the wants of the Musalmans were fairly provided for, and this class was more favoured than oven the Eurasians. In most parts of the Province the Musalman population was so intimately connected with the Hindu community that, except in the elementary stage, it was better that boys of both races should pursue their studies side by side; not only because such a system facilitated their acquisition of the English language and of knowledge generally, but on account of the advantages of such a scheme. It would be very undesirable to adopt or extend measures likely to have a retarding effect on the process of race approximation, which had already softened the antagonistic feelings between the two communities. During the last two years there had not been a single application from any Musalman body for the establishment of a special school. The Musalmans of Madras could not generally be described as impoverished, their scholastic endowments had not been confiscated, nor had their charitable endowments been ruined and wasted. The system of instruction pursued seemed to be wholly in accord with the views of the memorialists, and there were no circumstances in the Madras Presidency which appeared to call for the appointment of a special Commission. 576. Reply from Bombay.—As in Madras, the proportion of Musalmans in Bombay is very small, and the circumstances and history of the Presidency are “so totally different from those of the Eastern Provinces of the Mogul Emperors of Delhi, to which the memorialists refer, that no comparison can be made between them, and the memorialists’ remarks are, for this reason, quite inappropriate as 154

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applied to Western India generally.” There “the British succeeded Hindu rulers, not Muhammadan, and certainly the Muhammadan chances of employment now are better than they were in the days of Hindu dynasties. Sind, of course, was an exception; the dynasty that was overthrown was Muhammadan, but it was foreign, and was supported entirely by foreign chiefs, to whom large grants of land were made to enable them to keep up troops. Even, however, under these rulers a very large part of the State business was in the hands of the Hindu amils who . . . performed almost all the clerical duties in the time of the Mirs.” On the subject of the needs and claims of the Musalman community, the Musalmans of Bombay would scarcely endorse the plea of helplessness made by the Calcutta memorialists. If the number in Government employ was small, the reason was to be found, not in any disinclination on the part of those who exercised patronage to enrol Musalmans, nor again in the overpowering influence of Hindu advisers and subordinates, for the Government was well aware of the administrative advantage of associating men of different races in every department of public business; but to the unwillingness of the Musalman mind to submit to the educational tests which qualified for entrance into the public service. There was, however, no reason for believing that the Musalmans would continue to hold aloof from the present system, and it would be to their lasting prejudice if they were encouraged to do so by rules permitting them to enter the public service on easier terms than their Hindu and Parsi fellow-subjects. It was represented that the anxiety of the Government of Bombay to induce the Musalman community to educate itself had been shown by special encouragements, and the disabilities of which the memorialists complained in regard to admission to the subordinate judicial service did not exist in Bombay. In Sind, the only Province of the Presidency in which the Musalman population was large, the inclination was perhaps to give them a preference hardly justified by their qualifications. By the Education Department special schools and classes had been opened wherever Musalmans could be persuaded to attend, and Musalman Deputy Inspectors had been appointed to inspect those schools. There was, however, still a considerable amount of apathy among the race, and it was difficult to rouse them to any desire for learning. 577. Reply from the North-Western Provinces and Oudh.—Upon enquiries being made as to the proportion of Musalmans to Hindus in these Provinces, it was found that they were as 13·25 to 86·75. Of literate persons in the whole male population the proportion was 5·74 per cent., that of the Musalmans being 4·41 against 5·05 amongst the Hindus. Of 54,130 native officials 35,302 were Hindus and 18,828 Musalmans, or 65·22 per cent. of the former and 34·78 of the latter. The allegation, therefore, of the memorialists as to the exclusion of Musalmans from a fair share of Government patronage did not apply to these Provinces. Of the better-paid appointments, such as Deputy Collectorships, the Musalmans had in many years held an actual majority, and always a share out of all proportion to their total population. In 1882 there were 95 Musalmans against 76 Hindu tahsildars, while of 84 Subordinate Judges and Munsiffs 47 were Musalmans and only 37 Hindus. Of 57 Subordinate Judges and Munsiffs appointed since 1866, 155

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twenty-nine were Muhammadans, and of Munsiffs appointed during the five years ending the 31st March 1882, twelve were Musalmans and only ten Hindus. There was nothing in the rules in force as to the qualifications demanded for those appointments which, in the opinion of the High Court, unfavourably affected Musalmans. Upon the question of relaxing or altering the present educational tests, the opinions of the officers consulted were unanimously in the negative; “while the fact that out of the male Muhammadan population the proportion under instruction is 2·18 per cent., against 1·33 among the Hindus and 1·48 per cent in the whole male population, may be taken to indicate that the Muhammadans, on the whole, take no less advantage of the existing system of public education than the Hindus.” There were no Musalman endowments, charitable or scholastic, which had been wasted or confiscated. It was questionable whether the best interests of the Musalmans would be served by special provision for their education. “But the Government of these Provinces has always shown an earnest desire to aid and encourage real education among the Muhammadans; and any movement among the Muhammadans towards this end has received, and will receive, substantial support, upon the general principles laid down for the State co-operation. The liberal support given to the Aligarh College was an instance in point.” 578. Reply from the Punjab.—According to the last Punjab Civil List the appointments held by the Hindu and Muhammadan officials of the higher classes in the Punjab were distributed as follows:— Appointments. Extra Assistant Commissioners . Tahsildars . . . . . . . . . Munsiffs . . . . . . . . . . Superintendents of Settlement .

. . . .

Muhammadans . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

Hindus

. . . .

54 50 28 9

38 72 46 15

Total Administrative and Judicial appointments . . . .

141

171

Executive and Assistant Engineers, Public Works Department Assistant Surgeons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Professors and Headmasters, Educational Department . . Forest Rangers, Forest Department . . . . . . . . . GRAND TOTAL . .

2 13 4 8 168

18 52 22 9 272

Thus, in the highest appointments which are open to natives, and for which no examination test is required, the Musalmans were in excess of the Hindus; in the next class, in which the fitness of candidates is to a certain extent tested by examination, the Musalmans, though less numerous than the Hindus, held a considerable proportion of the appointments; while in those which require a special and technical education, the Musalmans formed only an insignificant minority. In open professions the smallness of their numbers was even more striking; and if the energy displayed respectively by Hindus and Musalmans in the scientific and legal professions were taken as a test of their respective fitness, it 156

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would appear that the Government, so far from being behind-hand in affording to Musalman opportunities to distinguish themselves as servants of the State, had in reality bestowed upon them an undue share of its patronage. The failure of the Musalmans to secure high appointments in the Education Department was owing to their want of knowledge of English. But there was no rule in the Punjab demanding a knowledge of that language as a qualification for the post of Extra Assistant Commissioner, Tahsildar, or Munsif; and this fact had contributed in a large measure to swell the share of such appointments held by Musalmans. The Lieutenant-Governor saw no need for a Commission such as that advocated in the memorial. Most of the arguments there used had been met by anticipation in measures already devised; by result grants-in-aid, by throwing open the University scholarships to vernacular as to other students, by a scheme for the award of open scholarships to boys distinguishing themselves in the Primary and Middle School Examinations, and by other measures detailed in the last review of education in the Punjab. As to endowments the only one of importance was that of the Itimad-ud-daula Fund at Delhi, and this was managed by a Committee composed mainly of native gentlemen, presided over by the Commissioner of the Division. “The general conclusion which the Lieutenant-Governor would draw, after a full consideration of the prayers of the memorialists, is that the Muhammadan community, and not the Government, is responsible for the state of things depicted in the memorial . . . It is not for the Government to confer special privileges upon any one class of its subjects when they have failed to avail themselves of the opportunities freely offered to all.” The Anjuman-i-Islamiya, Lahore, to whom the memorial was sent for an expression of their opinion, while admitting that in many ways the Musalmans had themselves to thank for the backwardness in education, were at one with the memorialists on several points. Thus, they maintained that “with every avenue to public employment already jealously blocked up by members of a different race, it is almost impossible for a Muhammadan candidate to obtain a footing in any Government office;” they supported the allegation that in the dispensation of State patronage impartiality had not been observed, and complained that due provision had not been made for Musalman graduates and under-graduates; they asserted that the community had suffered considerably from the resumption proceedings, though these came into operation about a century before the British took possession of the country, that the poverty of the Musalmans was even greater in the Punjab than in Bengal, and that this poverty obliged them to take their sons away from school at an early age; they considered that the condition of the Musalmans justified measures similar to those adopted in behalf of the Eurasians; they trusted that no such change of Hindi for Urdu as had taken place in Behar would be permitted in the Punjab, though interested persons were pressing for such a measure; and they were of opinion that the special Commission for which the memorialists prayed was one which should be appointed. 579. Replies from the other Provinces.—In the Central Provinces the number of Musalmans is very small, but the proportion of them in Government employ is reported to be ten times as great as that of the Hindus, and the share of judicial 157

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offices held by them to bear a still larger ratio to their numbers. In the schools, while the Hindus are only 3·46 per cent., the Musalmans are 8·35. No academical degree is required for admission to the bar, that admission being determined by a local examination. In Assam the Musalmans are reported to be by no means impoverished; they have received as large a share of Government patronage as they are entitled to, and in the eyes of most officers, if two persons, a Hindu and a Muhammadan, having equal qualifications, are candidates for the same office, it is, on the whole, an advantage to be a Muhammadan. That they are backward in point of education is, no doubt, true; but every facility is afforded them, and special encouragements have of late been held out to them. What is wanting is the desire to profit by these facilities, and the grant of any concession such as the memorialists ask for would probably check the growth of such desire. In the Haidarabad Assigned Districts, the Musalmans are said to hold their full share of the higher appointments; while in the schools their proportion is stated to be larger than that of Hindus. The demand for a knowledge of English from candidates for public service has perhaps to some extent affected the Musalmans injuriously; but English is spreading so fast that in a few years it will be quite an exception for any one of the classes that seek Government employ not to possess it. The position of Musalmans generally has been improving of late years. Coorg has only 12,541 Musalmans, the majority of whom are engaged in trade, agriculture, and menial service. They evince but little desire to learn English, though special schools for their benefit are supported by the administration. 580. Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission.—In the foregoing pages, we have preferred to reproduce the statements made with regard to the condition of the Muhammadans in the several Provinces, rather than to attempt generalisations of our own. The wide differences in the circumstances of the Musalmans in the three Presidencies render such an attempt hazardous. But apart from the social and historical conditions of the Muhammadan community in India, there are causes of a strictly educational character which heavily weight it in the race of life. The teaching of the mosque must precede the lessons of the school. The one object of a young Hindu is to obtain an education which will fit him for an official or a professional career. But before the young Muhammadan is allowed to turn his thoughts to secular instruction, he must commonly pass some years in going through a course of sacred learning. The Muhammadan boy, therefore, enters school later than the Hindu. In the second place, he very often leaves school at an earlier age. The Muhammadan parent belonging to the better classes is usually poorer than the Hindu parent in a corresponding social position. He cannot afford to give his son so complete an education. In the third place, irrespectively of his worldly means, the Muhammadan parent often chooses for his son while at school an education which will secure for him an honoured place among the learned of his own community, rather than one which will command a success in the modern professions or in official life. The years which the young Hindu gives to English and Mathematics in a public school, the young Muhammadan devotes in a Madrasa to Arabic and the Law and Theology of Islam. When such an 158

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education is completed, it is to the vocation of a man of learning, rather than to the more profitable professions, that the thoughts of a promising Muhammadan youth naturally turn. The above are the three principal causes of an educational character which retard the prosperity of the Musalmans. It would be beyond the province of a strictly Educational Report to attempt generalisations based upon the social or historical conditions which affect the Muhammadan community in India. The Recommendations we proceed to make have been framed, we believe, not merely with a regard to justice, but with a leaning towards generosity. They are based not more upon the suggestions contained in the Provincial Reports than upon the evidence of witnesses and the representations of public bodies. They deal, we think, with every form of complaint that is grounded in fact, and they contemplate the various circumstances of various localities. Few of them, indeed, are of general application; many of them, we trust, will before long be rendered obsolete. Special encouragement to any class is in itself an evil; and it will be a sore reproach to the Musalmans if the pride they have shown in other matters does not stir them up to a course of honourable activity; to a determination that whatever their backwardness in the past, they will not suffer themselves to be outstripped in the future; to a conviction that self-help and self-sacrifice are at once nobler principles of conduct and surer paths to worldly success than sectarian reserve or the hope of exceptional indulgence. We have spoken of the causes; we here accept the fact that, at all events in many parts of the country, the Musalmans have fallen behind the rest of the population; we therefore recommend (1) that the special encouragement of Muhammadan education be regarded as a legitimate charge on Local, on Municipal, and on Provincial Funds. The Muhammadan indigenous schools which are found in all parts of the country are established on a purely religious basis and in most cases impart an education of the most elementary character. In order to encourage a wider utility, we recommend (2) that indigenous Muhammadan schools be liberally encouraged to add purely secular subjects to their course of instruction. As the instruction given in Muhammadan primary schools differs considerably from that in the ordinary primary schools, we recommend (3) that special standards for Muhammadan primary schools be prescribed. In regard to the medium of instruction in primary and middle schools, it appears that even in places where Hindustani is not the vernacular of the people, Muhammadans earnestly desire that their children should be educated in that language, and we therefore recommend (4) that Hindustani be the principal medium for imparting instruction to Muhammadans in primary and middle schools, except in localities where the Muhammadan community desire that some other language be adopted. In order that Muhammadans may be enabled to qualify for the lower grades of the public service, we recommend (5) that the official vernacular, in places where it is not Hindustani, be added as a voluntary subject to the curriculum of primary and middle schools for Muhammadans maintained from public funds, and that arithmetic and accounts be taught through the medium of that vernacular. To meet the complaint made in some parts of the country that due encouragement is not given to the language and 159

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literature of the Muhammadans, and that this circumstance has operated as one of the causes which have kept that community aloof from the Government system of education, we recommend (6) that in localities where Muhammadans form a fair proportion of the population, provision be made in middle and high schools maintained from public funds for imparting instruction in the Hindustani and Persian languages. It has been found that whilst Muhammadans in many places form a fair proportion of the students learning English, their number decreases as the standard of instruction rises, we therefore recommend (7) that higher English education for Muhammadans, being the kind of education in which that community needs special help, be liberally encouraged. It has been submitted with much force that the poverty of the Muhammadans is also one of the main reasons why education has not made satisfactory progress in that community, we therefore recommend (8) that where necessary a graduated system of special scholarships for Muhammadans be established, to be awarded (a) in primary schools, and tenable in middle schools, (b) in middle schools, and tenable in high schools, (c) on the results of the Matriculation and First Arts examinations, and tenable in colleges also (9) that in all classes of schools maintained from public funds a certain proportion of free studentships be expressly reserved for Muhammadan students. Complaints having been made that Muhammadan educational endowments have not always been applied to their proper uses, we recommend (10) that in places where educational endowments for the benefit of Muhammadans exist and are under the management of Government, the funds arising from such endowments be devoted to the advancement of education among Muhammadans exclusively. And further, in order that Muhammadan educational endowments may be utilised to the utmost, we recommend (11) that where Muhammadan endowments exist, and are under the management of private individuals or bodies, inducements by liberal grants-in-aid be offered to them to establish English teaching schools or colleges on the grant-in-aid system. The employment of Muhammadans as teachers and inspecting officers among Muhammadans will in our opinion largely tend to popularise education among that community and enable the Department to understand the special needs and wishes of the Muhammadans; we therefore recommend (12) that, where necessary, Normal schools or classes for the training of Muhammadan teachers be established; (13) that wherever instruction is given in Muhammadan schools through the medium of Hindustani, endeavours be made to secure, as far as possible, Muhammadan teachers to give such instruction; and (14) that Muhammadan inspecting officers be employed more largely than hitherto for the inspection of primary schools for Muhammadans. Another useful means of spreading knowledge among the Muhammadans will be the recognition and encouragement by the State of such associations as the Anjuman-i-Islam in Bombay and the Anjuman-i-Islamiya in Lahore; we therefore recommend (15) that associations for the promotion of Muhammadan education be recognised and encouraged. In order to secure the continuous attention of the Education Department to the subject of Muhammadan education and to prevent the claims of the Muhammadans for special treatment from being overlooked, we recommend (16) 160

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that in the annual Reports on Public Instruction a special section be devoted to Muhammadan education. In certain Provinces the backwardness of the Muhammadans in education has prevented them from obtaining any considerable share of appointments in the public service. But it has also been made a subject of complaint that even in places where qualified Muhammadans are available, their services are not duly utilised by Government officers: we therefore recommend (17) that the attention of Local Governments be invited to the question of the proportion in which patronage is distributed among educated Muhammadans and others. 581. Application of Recommendations regarding Muhammadans to other Races.—We have so far been dealing exclusively with the case of Muhammadans, but we do not overlook the fact that there may be other races in India whose claims to special treatment are based upon circumstances similar to those of the Muhammadans. Such races deserve the same consideration which our Recommendations are intended to secure for the more important and numerous class of society whose condition has been reviewed. The Raja of Bhinga has pleaded the cause of the Rajputs, and the claims of other races may hereafter be put forward. Such claims can only be fully considered by the local Governments, who will be in a position to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of special treatment. In order that the matter may not be overlooked, we recommend that the principles embodied in the Recommendations given above be equally applicable to any other races with similar antecedents, whose education is on the same level with that of Muhammadans.

SECTION 3.—The Aboriginal Races. 582. The aboriginal Tribes of India.—The term “aborigines,” by which a large section of Indian society is known, is but a loose and indefinite expression for distinguishing those races which have not adopted the civilisations or the creeds of the higher races inhabiting India. In a few Districts they form the mass of the population. Elsewhere they consist of small isolated communities dwelling in the midst of more civilised races. Their numbers cannot be exactly stated. Those who have descended from the hills, or have exchanged their forest-home for the villages of the plain, have not always been separated in the census returns from the other classes of rural society with whom they live intermixed, and no very exact line of demarcation can be drawn between them and their Hindu neighbours. In the course of a hundred generations the various Indian communities have been largely influenced by Aryan beliefs and customs. It is only those descendants of the earlier tribes who, from one cause or another, have not submitted to the influences of Aryan civilisation, that in the present Chapter are treated as aboriginal races. These can easily be distinguished from the Hinduised population; while between the aborigines, who have become partially affected by Hindu custom and feeling, and the Hindus, there is a gradual shading off which renders it difficult to determine according to any principles of classification whether the classes 161

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referred to should be placed on this or on the other side of the dividing line. It is estimated that the races of India that are more or less aboriginal in character, exceed forty millions; but the adoption of the stricter principle of classification, which has been followed in the last census, gives a population of only 6½ millions of aborigines in India. Even this calculation has been arrived at by the adoption of a classification which is not uniform for the various Provinces of India. Thus in Bombay the census officer writes: “The substratum of the agricultural class in Gujarat, the Kolis of the ghats and coast, and the hereditary watchmen and village servants of the Deccan and North Karnatic, such as the Ramoshi and Berad, are taken to be Hindus, as are the depressed classes of all parts of the country, though history and tradition indicate their aboriginal origin. The aboriginal form of religion is under this interpretation restricted to the tribes still inhabiting the forest and those directly connected with these tribes.” In the Central Provinces, however, many aboriginal tribes are still classified as such, notwithstanding that they have exchanged the forest and mountain for a life of agriculture in the plains. Of the 6½ millions of aborigines returned by the census officers, 1,160,000 lie beyond the limits assigned to the enquiries of the Commission, as they are found in the Native States of Rajputana, Central India, and Baroda. Of the rest, 2½ millions inhabit Bengal and Assam, 930,000 belong to Bombay, and 1,750,000 are to be found in the Central Provinces. The problem of educating the distinctly aboriginal races of India therefore practically concerns only the three Provinces of Bengal, Bombay, and the Central Provinces. 583. Their Want of Education.—The distribution of the purely aboriginal population given above corresponds, as might be expected, with the physical features of the territories in which they are found. The chains of the mountain systems of India, and the thick forests which lie at their base, are the homes of the aboriginal races, of which the most important tribes are the Santhals, Kols, Gonds, Korkus, Khonds, and Bhils. Many however of the Gonds hold land in the Central Provinces and live in the plains, whilst the Korkus rarely venture beyond the limits of the hills. The general absence of education of even the most elementary kind amongst these races may be inferred from the following figures. In Bombay for several years the half-civilised hill tribes were not affected in any perceptible degree by the departmental schools, and in 1871–72 there were but 1,017 children of these tribes in the public primary schools, a number which in 1881–82 had risen only to 2,738 in all classes of schools, whether aided, inspected or departmental. This gives a percentage of only 1·9 of the aboriginal population of schoolgoing age who were at primary schools. In Bengal and Assam the education of the aboriginal tribes has been partly taken up by the direct instrumentality of the State, but chiefly by the missionary societies with help and encouragement from Government. In 1880–81, there were 2,336 Santhals, 154 Paharias, 893 Khonds, 1,843 of the tribes inhabiting the Khasia and Jaintia hills, 339 Mughs and Chukmas, and 7,513 Kols, at various schools in Bengal, yielding a total of 13,078 pupils at school, including 1,400 Christians. Of the 13,078 children of these races at school in that year, 464 (of whom 236 are Christians) were at secondary schools, 195 162

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(of whom 179 are Christians) were at Normal schools, and 26 (Christians) at industrial schools. A special scheme for the education of the Santhals connected closely with their village organization, and under the control of the Department, has recently been sanctioned, but has not yet come into operation. In Chapter IV, we have reviewed the operations of the Bengal Department for the year 1881–82. We have shown that while missionary enterprise has been freely encouraged, the direct instrumentality of the Department has not been neglected. Kols, Santhals, Paharias, Khasis, and the semi-Burmese tribes in Chittagong are attending primary schools as well as a few institutions of a higher order. In 1881–1882, the number of aboriginal pupils known to the Department in Bengal and Assam fell little short of 24,000. We have already mentioned the endeavours made by the Education Department in the Central Provinces, in concert with the Forest Officers, to institute an industrial school for the Korkus. For want of European superintendence the experiment proved unsuccessful, but the educational officers have not wholly neglected other means, and although their success has been small, still there were in 1881–82 1,055 children of the aboriginal tribes at schools, or about 1 in 1,453 of their total number. Of the pupils 7 only were in middle schools. In the adjoining Province of the Haidarabad Assigned Districts not even an attempt appears to have been made to attract the hill tribes to school. This review shows that it is in Bengal that the greatest progress has been attained chiefly through the exertions of missionary societies. In Bombay the Department has secured some small success in primary education only; but whereas in the Gujarat Division 4 per thousand of the aboriginal races have learnt or are learning to read and write, in the Konkan one in two thousand, and in the Central and North-Eastern Divisions only one in a thousand of the aboriginal population are returned as either instructed or under instruction. In the other Provinces hardly even a begining can be recorded. It is clear therefore that the efforts of Government have hitherto failed to give education to the aboriginal races of India, and that special measures are required to overcome the difficulties which surround the question. 584. The Difficulties attending the Education of Aborigines.—The general character of the aboriginal races, as classified according to the census returns adopted by us, is very distinct. Those who still avoid contact with the plains are the most difficult to deal with, as will appear from a description of the life which they lead. A few of them cultivate patches of the hill sides which they lay bare of timber and undergrowth, merely setting fire to the fellings and growing coarse grain in the ashes without any attempt to dig the soil. Others keep herds of cattle and buffaloes which they graze in the forests, living upon their milk, and exchanging what they do not require with other sections of the forest community for the grain which they grow. These herdsmen have little commerce with the plains. A few tribes live by industrial pursuits, smelting iron from the ores found in the laterite on the mountains, and producing the iron arrow points, the long sharp pointed spears and small axes which nearly every hill man carries with him not only for domestic purposes and for cutting wood, but also as a protection against wild beasts. A still larger section live by the chase, pursuing deer and even tigers 163

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and panthers with their rough weapons, shooting birds with the bow and arrow, not disdaining even squirrels, rats, and dead animals for their ordinary meals. All these tribes eat berries and roots, and the excessive mortality and sickness among them are often attributed to the unwholesome character of their ordinary food. Many of them fall victims to the attacks of wild beasts, to the bites of poisonous snakes, and to the constant malaria and fever to which the heavy rainfall gives rise. They are patient, inured to suffering, and naturally truthful. But the most universal features in their character are their shyness and confirmed dislike of any settled occupation. Their poverty is extreme, and as they have little commerce with the villagers of the plain, and carry on their own simple transactions with each other by barter, there is no effective desire among them for the most elementary education. With them contact with the outer world must be the precursor of schools. Amidst such a population, separated as their settlements are by dense forests or steep mountains, the difficulties of pioneering education are extreme. The Gonds of the Central Provinces who number more than 2 millions are a fair type of an aboriginal population who are becoming mixed up with the Hindu population of the plains and yet have retained some of their distinctive characteristics. They have already adopted the system of caste and will not eat with a stranger. They cling to their forest pursuits, but also cultivate land and carry on trade with their neighbours. But they are unthrifty and addicted to barbaric display and entertainments. Though mixing with the Hindus they still sacrifice and eat bullocks, and they worship the powers of evil, the spirits of their fathers, and the weapons and creatures of the chase. They are extremely backward and despise education. These people have no money for paying the smallest fees, they can only be attracted by those who have won their sympathy, and the ordinary village school-master considers them beneath his notice. Their language also is in a state of fusion and transition in most cases it has never been reduced to writing. Even tribes which call themselves by the same name can hardly understand each other’s language. Fraud being almost unknown among them, they set no value on a knowledge of accounts, and their commerce is a mere matter of barter. Recognising these difficulties, we feel that advantage must be taken of every agency which can be employed in the task of instructing the aboriginal races. The work cannot in all cases be left until private bodies come forward to take it up. It is with the tribes living on the fringe of civilisation that the best chances of success are offered. If any schools are now situated near their settlements, special encouragement should be given to the instruction of aboriginal children in them. No fees should be charged. If a few boys of the hill tribes are thus brought under instruction, the educational agency, whether Government or other, may be able to push forward its schools within the territory of the tribes in question. This gradual measure will probably succeed better than the attempt to plant at once a system of schools within their territories before they have learnt the meaning of education or become accustomed to the notion of schools. At the same time, if any private agency is prepared to go into the midst of the tribes and to offer them education, we think that it should be liberally aided in carrying out its object. Experience 164

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has shown the necessity for sympathy with these simple forest people; and their improvement offers a special field for missionary and other philanthropic activity. It is also desirable that they should be supplied with school-masters of their own race, who might be trained for a short period in our Normal schools. The subjects taught must be of the most elementary character. If any tribe possesses a vernacular of its own which has been reduced to writing, we would not discourage its use; but we believe that it will often be more beneficial to the interests of the aborigines that they should be brought to adopt the vernacular of their civilised neighbours. With them a practical education will be that which will help to remove their isolation and bring them into commerce with their neighbours. 585. Recommendations regarding the Provision of Schools.—In view of their undoubted poverty, we recommend that the children of aboriginal tribes be exempted, wherever necessary, from payment of fees, over and above any general exemptions otherwise provided for. This Recommendation will necessarily apply to schools maintained at the cost of public funds, whether provincial, local, or municipal. For aided schools we recommend that, if necessary, extra allowances be given under the result system for children of aboriginal tribes taught in ordinary schools. But we anticipate the greatest success, not so much from the ordinary schools, whether departmental or aided, as from the operations of special agencies. Such agencies will in all probability be missionary agencies, and therefore we recommend that if any bodies be willing to undertake the work of education among aboriginal tribes, they be liberally assisted on the basis of abstention from any interference with religious teaching. We have elsewhere recommended that in certain cases, where the only school in any locality is one in which religion is taught, instruction in religion should not in every case be insisted on, but with regard to the aborigines, the need is so great for attracting any agency into the field, that we recommend that absolute freedom in all circumstances be left to the managers. Having thus removed every obstruction to the intervention of private enterprise by the offer of liberal aid, and by guaranteeing entire abstinence from interference with religious instruction, we lay great stress upon the employment of aboriginal teachers in preference to those who will be regarded by the tribes as foreigners. Such men can only be obtained in course of time and with liberal assistance from the State. But the experiment has proved successful in Bengal and should be tried elsewhere. We therefore recommend that when children of aboriginal tribes are found sufficiently instructed to become teachers among their own people, attempts be made to establish them in schools within the border of their tribes. As regards the subjects of instruction, we need only remark that they must be as simple as possible and adapted specially to the wants and wishes of the people. 586. Recommendation as to Language.—The question remains as to the medium of instruction. We recommend that where the language of the tribe has not been reduced to writing or is otherwise unsuitable, the medium of instruction be the vernacular of the neighbouring population with whom the aboriginal people most often come into contact: and moreover that where the education of 165

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such tribes is carried on in their own vernacular, the vernacular of the neighbouring District be an additional subject of instruction if this is found advisable. The question of the language and character is a vexed one and demands special notice. Mr. Cust, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, and a distinguished authority on the non-Aryan races of India, protests strongly against the statement made by the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces that the Gonds converse perfectly well with the officers of Government in Hindi or Marathi, and against the condemnation of the Gond language because it has never been reduced to writing, and has not even an alphabet of its own. He argues against the injustice of effacing Gondi from the languages of the world, and considers it even an advantage that the language has not been reduced to writing, on the ground that it will more easily adopt a modified form of the Roman alphabet. He denies that the language of the Gonds is a “barbarous language” as it is called by the Commissioner of Nagpur. He quotes the remarks of Bishop Caldwell, the highest authority on the subject of Dravidian languages, who writes as follows:—“While the more cultivated Dravidian idioms are so simple in structure, the speech of the Gond boasts of a system of verbal modification and inflection almost as elaborate as that of Turkish.” Referring to the fact that, even in the United Kingdom, Welsh is taught in Welsh schools, and Gaelic in Gaelic schools, Mr. Cust urges that the attitude of the Commisioner of Nagpur is unsympathetic, and that the Austrian military ruler of a Slavonic Province could not have expressed himself more decidedly. He proceeds to observe—“It is not pretended that the language of the few hundreds of a broken tribe in the lowest stage of nomadic absence of culture, like the Juang, is to be preserved, but where there is a population counting by hundreds of thousands, given to agriculture, settled in villages, living decent domestic honest lives, it is impossible to deny to them schools in their own vulgar tongue if you give them schools at all.” The following statement and figures bearing on this subject are taken from the report of the census taken in the Central Provinces in 1881. The two aboriginal races of Gonds and Korkus are by far the most numerous of the aboriginal tribes in the Central Provinces. The former have descended into the plains and are becoming mixed up with the Hindu population. The latter stand aloof. The Gond language is Dravidian, the language of the Korkus is Kur or Munda, and belongs to the Kolarian or Northern family as distinguished from the Dravidian or Southern group. Seventy-five per cent. of the Gonds, who number more than two millions, are returned as adhering to the aboriginal religion, and 67 per cent. of the Korkus who number over 85,000 are similarly returned. The census report states that the Gonds in eight Districts have to a large extent adopted some form of the Hindi language or Hindustani or Uriya. In one District out of 57,000 Gonds and Khonds it is said that only 4,313 speak Gondi exclusively, and in Bilaspur and Raipur the proportion of those who speak only their aboriginal language is very small. It is further stated that the sub-divisions of the same large tribe can hardly understand each other’s dialect. Regarding the Korkus of the Chhindwara District, the report states that “all the Korkus speak Hindi, which is a necessity for them, living as they do amongst tribes who do not understand 166

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their language.” The total number of both Gonds and Khonds in the British Districts who are returned as speaking either Gondi or Khondi, is 967,502. The total aboriginal population speaking Munda is returned as 100,641. Regarding the distribution of languages through the Central Provinces, the Inspector General of Education writes that “nearly 10 per cent. speak either Gondi or Khondi, 61 per cent. Hindi, 20 per cent. Marathi, 5 per cent. Uriya, and 1 per cent. Munda.” Regarding the other Provinces we possess less information. The census reports for Bengal and Assam have not yet been published. In the Bombay report no place is given to any aboriginal language, and apparently the aboriginal races are returned as speaking either Marathi, Gujarathi, or Hindustani. We have given the statistics and statements furnished by the census officers without comment. The Inspector General of Education in the Central Provinces has, however, placed a paper before us in which he argues that as the Gonds and others have become mixed with their Hindu neighbours, they have adopted their dialect, and that it is better for the Education Department to recognise that fact. He insists on the fact that the Gond of one District speaks a language unintelligible to the Gond of another District. He also quotes the evidence given by Major Doveton, Conservator of Forests, who stated that of the great number of Gonds with whom he had come in contact, he could not recall one whose knowledge of language was confined to Gondi. Major Doveton thought that to the Gond Gondi was wholly unprofitable. The Inspector General of Education sums up his argument as follows:—“When we are asked to introduce Gondi into our schools, we are asked to reduce that language to writing, to master various dialects that are day by day undergoing change, and losing their distinctive character, and actually to create a literature.” Mr. Cust is not, however, the only advocate for the recognition of the aboriginal languages. The Reverend A. Campbell of Santhalisthan, in a paper placed before the Commission, contends for the claims of the vernaculars of the Santhal tribes as the medium of instruction in primary schools. We have given careful consideration to the subject and endeavoured to meet the difficulties we have noticed. It is a matter for regret that up to the present time the Local Governments generally, but especially in the Haidarabad Assigned Districts and in the Central Provinces, have been unable to provide adequate instruction for the aboriginal population. We hope that greater and more successful efforts will now be made both by the direct instrumentality of the Department, and, wherever possible, by the preferable means of aided effort, to reach these races. We attach the greatest importance to the training of aboriginal boys as teachers. We cannot approve of the suggestion that has been made for using the Roman character in giving education in the aboriginal dialects. For unless the larger Indian communities can be induced to adopt that character, it would not be expedient to perpetuate the isolation of the aborigines by teaching them an alphabet as foreign to their neighbours as to them. But we are not prepared to view the question of language in the light in which it has appeared to the Department in the Central Provinces. In order to reach the minds of the aboriginal races it will be necessary, we think, to teach them in their 167

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mother tongue. In the upper classes of the school, the vernacular of the District may with advantage be taught. For although a foreign language should not be forced upon any tribe, and certainly not as a means of primary education, still it is desirable in the best interests of most aboriginal races that they should be enabled to associate and deal on equal terms with the neighbouring population. Where any vernacular retains independent vitality and can be reduced to writing, we think that efforts should be made to recognise it. Where the aborigines have already adopted a Hindu language, we would give instruction in that tongue and not endeavour to go back from a change which is beneficial to them. But in many cases a change is going on, and in such cases we would commence with the aboriginal dialect spoken and gradually advance to the study of that vernacular which is in course of adoption. A wide discretion may be left to local authorities, but we are convinced that greater efforts are required, and that the task of educating the aboriginal races, difficult as it is, should no longer be neglected. Much may be done by the Department, and more by private effort liberally aided and encouraged. We think that Government should freely aid and cordially recognise any efforts made by Missionaries or others to reduce the speech of the aboriginal races to writing, and to compile grammars and vocabularies of the numerous nonAryan languages throughout India.

SECTION 4.—The Low Castes. 587. Education of Low Castes.—The question of the duty of the State towards the education of the low caste Hindu community was raised and discussed in the Commission on December 18th, 1882,2 and on March 8th, 1883. This question is in some respects a wider one than that of the education of the aboriginal population; for it is in evidence that a few low-caste boys of ability have already advanced beyond the elementary stage and are demanding an entrance into secondary schools. Moreover, the low-caste community, in some Provinces at least, are becoming alive to the advantages of education. In some towns they are taking full advantage of special schools established for them and of night schools, and are generally showing anxiety to obtain a practical recognition of their rights. Most of them are very poor, but a few are ready to pay fees; and as they contribute to the local cesses which support the State primary schools, they have a claim to some return for their contributions. The question of their rights is therefore a practical and pressing question. But we must acknowledge that any settlement of it is beset with difficulties. 588. The Difficulties.—The difficulties in the way of admitting the claims of low caste children are both social and religious. It has been asserted that in theory the rights of low castes are admitted even by native society, and that in the indigenous village schools of Bengal the low caste, who sits on a separate mat, does not defile his neighbour and may freely attend school. On the other hand, the evidence shows that as a fact such classes very rarely attend indigenous schools; that even under the departmental systems constant pressure has to be exercised by 168

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the superior officers to secure the claims of low-caste Hindus to receive instruction in the Government or cess-schools; and that the higher castes generally are strongly averse to their children mixing with low caste boys. The objection must therefore be admitted to prevail almost universally, and we proceed to examine the causes. Among these perhaps the most potent cause is the fear of caste pollution. One of our questions to witnesses inquired into the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary education to all classes of the community, and several witnesses have replied that positive hostility is shown to the admission of low-caste boys to school. A Madras witness mentions the case of a school for Cherumars, the ancient slave caste, being established at Calicut, but the Nayars and Tiyars “used to waylay the boys as they went to school and snatch their books out of their hands.” A Bombay witness relates how some promising low-caste boys were recently sent from the regimental school at Dharwar to the Government high school, when a large number of Brahman boys seceded at once from the high school. Mr. Kunte, the headmaster of a Government high school and for some time acting Principal of a college in the Bombay Presidency, made the following statement in his evidence before the Commission: “The question of the admission of children of Mahars and Dhers into Government schools is not raised by the Mahars and Dhers themselves. It is not real and has no practical bearing. It is a groundless agitation caused by sentimental English officials and unpractical native reformers.” We quote Mr. Kunte’s answer in full, in order to observe that his view of the question seems to us opposed alike to the policy laid down by the Secretary of State and to the conclusions arrived at by the Commission. The facts which we have given regarding the popularity of night schools in Bombay, and the attendance of 3,512 low caste boys in the primary schools of that Presidency, afford ground for believing that efforts for the education of these classes may be attended with fair success. The evidence, however, given in all the other Provinces of India is conclusive as to the difficulties which surround this question. There are several instances of enlightened individuals and even of whole communities being favourable to the claims of low caste pupils; but, speaking generally, objections are widely entertained in every part of India to their admission into the same school with Hindus of the higher castes. These objections are not universally, perhaps not even generally, due to religious sentiment alone, but in a large measure to the uncleanly habits and the unpolished manners and conversation of low-caste boys. They are also occasionally due to the desire of the upper classes to keep the low castes in a state of subjection and servility. In a paper laid before the Commission some of these objections, as well as the risk of contagious diseases, are strongly insisted upon, and the writer remarks with reason that “to parents to whom the well-being of the children is of equal importance with their education, the practical working of the principle of equality is a perpetual source of discomfort as regards both the physical and the moral welfare of their children.” These may be, and in some cases are, real and reasonable difficulties. On the other hand, in the case which occurred at Dharwar, no one ever pretended that the regimental school-boys were either unclean or immoral, and the objection 169

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taken to their admission to the high school could not have proceeded from that cause. It is also worthy of note that the aboriginal races, whose habits are equally unclean, are never objected to on that ground. In submitting a report on education in Kaira and Cambay for the year 1880–81, the Collector commented at length on the determined opposition shown by the people to the admission of Christians and low castes into the cess-schools. He stated that they had been banished from six schools in the District, and he noticed with dissatisfaction the language used by the Deputy Inspector on the subject. On the whole, therefore, it may be said that there exists a deep-seated prejudice to the admission of low-caste boys into public schools and, though its force varies in different parts of India, its existence is partly due to religious feeling and partly to fear of physical and moral contagion. 589. Authoritative Decision on the Subject.—It illustrates the intensity of the popular prejudice that some of those who have been ready to argue that the admission of low-caste boys into the indigenous schools is not objectionable in principle, have denied that the policy of admitting all classes of Indian society to schools maintained or aided by the State has ever received the sanction of high authority. There can, however, be no doubt on this point. In a Despatch No. 58, dated April 28th, 1858, the Court of Directors referred to a difficulty which had arisen in Dharwar in the Bombay Presidency regarding the refusal of the Local Government to interfere in the case of a low caste boy who was denied admission into the Government school. They then passed the following order upon the Government of India’s letter, dated May 20th, 1857:—“The educational institutions of Government are intended by us to be open to all classes, and we cannot depart from a principle which is essentially sound, and the maintenance of which is of the first importance. It is not impossible that, in some cases, the enforcement of the principle may be followed by a withdrawal of a portion of the scholars; but it is sufficient to remark that those persons who object to its practical enforcement will be at liberty to withhold their contributions and apply their funds to the formation of schools on a different basis.” The principle thus laid down has been repeatedly re-affirmed by the Local Governments of Madras and Bombay, and in the latter Presidency cases of opposition to the orders of Government have been reported from time to time. 590. Measures taken to meet the Difficulty.—Under the orders cited, the general rule of the Education Department throughout India is in favour of the admission of low-caste boys to Government schools as a matter of right. Bombay is, however, not the only Province in which the enforcement of the right has led to difficulties. Some Dher boys were admitted to the Chanda High School in the Central Provinces, and immediately the other boys, as well as the teachers who were natives of the town, left the school. In a statement put before us by the “Delhi Literary Society,” it is said that there are several cases on record of attempts to admit Chamar boys to schools which have resulted in empty benches. In order to meet these difficulties two attempts have been made, the institution of separate Government schools for low-caste boys, and the extension of special encouragement to missionary bodies to undertake their education. 170

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In Bombay there are 16 special schools attended by 564 low-caste pupils. In the Central Provinces there are 4 such schools with 111 pupils. In the Punjab at Delhi, and in its neighbourhood there are a few mission schools of an elementary character for low-caste pupils, which, however, are more expensive than Government schools of the same character, owing to the difficulty of inducing any large number of low-caste children to attend them. In the Haidarabad Assigned Districts, as well as in Bombay, fees are remitted in the case of low-caste children. But none of these measures touch the whole difficulty. Without denying the necessity for the establishment by Government of special primary schools, we may remark that such a measure seems to admit the principle of exclusion, and is moreover only practicable where the low caste community is large. It intensifies the difficulty when a clever lad from the depressed castes wants to enter a secondary school or perhaps a Normal school, and it leaves the great mass of the low castes unprovided for even in the matter of primary education. These low-castes are a most essential part of the constitution of every village community. Their services in Western and Southern India are recognised by the bestowal of free or partially free grants of land, on which they pay the local cess out of which the school fund is formed. As they are scattered throughout every village in these Presidencies, it is not possible to provide everywhere separate schools for them. The proportion which the low caste community bears to the whole population of India cannot be exactly estimated, but that it is not inconsiderable may be inferred from the figures which are presented in the census report of Bombay, the Presidency in which the low caste question is at present attracting most notice. The “depressed castes” of Hindus in the British districts of Bombay number nearly 1,100,000, and are chiefly employed in village service of the lowest description. Numerically they are the third largest class of the classes into which the census returns divide the Hindu community, the classes of “cultivators” and of “artizans” alone outnumbering them. Of the total population classed in the census returns as Hindus, they number 9·31 per cent. There is no reason to suppose that the proportion is larger in Bombay than in other parts of India, and if such be the case, the question of the education of low-caste Hindus cannot be considered a matter of no practical importance. On the contrary, it is from this class of the community that the ranks of dacoits and other criminal organisations are largely recruited. It has further been pointed out by witnesses in Bombay that the tendency of social progress is to deprive the village Mahars and Ramoshis of their customary dues which used to be paid in kind. The natural movement of society from status to contract involves in India a severe social struggle, and it is necessary that these classes which are least able to help themselves should receive from the State proper attention to their claims for education. 591. Recommendations regarding Low-caste Children.—It is impossible to overlook the objections which are felt to the association of low-caste children with those of other classes. The principle, however, of their right to receive education in the State schools has been asserted; and at the present time, when the control 171

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over primary schools is likely to devolve less upon the Department and more upon numerous Local Fund and Municipal Boards scattered throughout the country, it is desirable to re-affirm that principle. We therefore recommend that the principle laid down in the Court of Directors’ letter of May 5th, 1854, and again in their reply to the letter of the Government of India, dated May 20th, 1857, “that no boy be refused admission to a Government college or school merely on the ground of caste,” and repeated by the Secretary of State in 1863, be now re-affirmed as a principle, and be applied with due caution to every institution, not reserved for special races, which is wholly maintained at the cost of public funds, whether provincial, municipal, or local. We are fully alive to the fact that no principle, however sound, can be forced upon an unwilling society in defiance of their social and religious sentiments. In dealing with primary education we have recognised a distinction between “special” and “other” aided schools, and we have recommended that “a proper proportion be maintained in every school-district so as to secure a proportionate provision for the education of all classes of society.” This Recommendation will not prevent two or more adjoining school-districts from uniting in order to establish a common school for the education of their low-caste population. But all schools that are wholly maintained at the cost of public funds must be regarded as open to all tax-payers and to all classes of the community, and if any of those classes object to association with the children who are assembled in the board, or municipal, or Government schools, they should be encouraged to set up a “special school,” and apply for a grant-in-aid. In that way it is open to all classes of the community to secure their proper share of the school fund to which they may be compelled by the Legislature to contribute. The grant-in-aid rules afford them a sufficient remedy. But even in the case of Government or board schools, the principle affirmed by us must be applied with caution. It is not desirable for masters or Inspectors to endeavour to force on a social change which, with judicious treatment, will gradually be accepted by society. If the low-caste community seek an entrance into the cess-school, their right must be firmly maintained, especially in the secondary institutions where there is no alternative of a special school for them to attend. It is however undesirable to urge them to claim a right about which they are themselves indifferent. Still less should the schoolmaster relax in their case those rules regarding decency of dress and conversation which should be enforced in every case. In order, however, to facilitate the public recognition of the claims of the lowest classes by evidence on their part that they desire education, and that they can conduct themselves with propriety at school, we consider that every encouragement should be given to special schools for the education of such classes. We therefore recommend that the establishment of special schools or classes for children of low castes be liberally encouraged in places where there are a sufficient number of such children to form separate schools or classes, and where the schools already maintained from public funds do not sufficiently provide for their education. In our discussions on this subject it was brought to our notice that in some parts of the Central Provinces and of Bombay special objections were entertained by the rural communities to the instruction of 172

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low castes on the ground that education would advance them in life and induce them to seek emancipation from their present servile condition. It is therefore clear that in some parts of India at least this class of society requires special help, and we consider that such help can often be best afforded without giving offence to other castes by the establishment of special schools.

CHAPTER X. FEMALE EDUCATION. 594. Introductory.—Female education in India has to encounter peculiar difficulties. These difficulties are partly due to the circumstance that the East India Company did not turn its attention to the subject until many years after it had begun to direct its efforts towards the education of boys. But the most serious impediments arise not so much from the action or inaction of the Ruling Power, as from the customs of the people themselves. In the first place, the effective desire for education as a means of earning a livelihood, does not exist as regards the female part of the population. There is evidence before the Commission that a demand for girls’ education in schools is slowly but surely springing up among the natives. There is also evidence to show that this desire is of comparatively recent origin, and that it would be easy to exaggerate its extent and force. In the second place, the social customs of India in regard to child-marriage, and the seclusion in which women of the well-to-do classes spend their married life in most parts of the country, create difficulties which embarrass the promoters of female education at every step. The duration of the school-going age for girls is much shorter than that for boys. It usually terminates at nine, and seldom extends beyond the eleventh year. At so early an age a girl’s education is scarcely begun; and in very few cases has the married child the opportunity of going on with her education after she leaves school. In the third place, the supply of teachers for girls’ schools is more scanty in quantity, and less satisfactory in quality, than the supply of teachers for boys’ schools. Finally, the State system of instruction is conducted in a large measure by a male staff; and although female teachers are being gradually trained, in very inadequate numbers, the direction and inspection remain in the hands of male officers, while the text-books are, as a rule, framed with a view to the education of boys rather than of girls. The Commission has collected evidence, both oral and documentary, on each of these four chief causes of the backwardness of female education in India. They have endeavoured, after anxious consideration, to meet the difficulties by the specific Recommendations enumerated at the end of this Chapter. But in entering on the subject of girls’ education, we desire it to be understood that practical difficulties exist which cannot be solved by any recommendations of a Commission, or even by the zealous action of Government, but only by the growth of public opinion among the natives themselves. The Despatches of 1854 and of 1859 declared their cordial approval of all reasonable steps for the promotion of female education under the system of grant-in-aid. But the latter Despatch fully recognised the 173

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impediments which lay in the way of any great or rapid extension, and the risk which would attend official attempts to force on a sudden change in native custom in regard to the education of girls. 595. Female Education in Ancient India.—While endorsing the sentiments of the Despatches, in regard both to the promotion of female education and to the difficulties which stand in the way of any sudden expansion, we do not underrate what had been effected in earlier periods by the natives of India themselves. Apart from the Sanskrit traditions of women of learning and literary merit in pre-historic and mediæval times, there can be no doubt that when the British obtained possession of the country, a section of the female population was educated up to the modest requirements of household life. In certain Provinces little girls occasionally attended the indigenous village schools, and learned the same lessons as their brothers. Many women of the upper class had their minds stored with the legends of the Puranas and epic poems, which supply impressive lessons in morality, and in India form the substitute for history. Among the lower orders, the keeping of the daily accounts fell, in some households, to the mother or chief female of the family. The arithmetic of the homestead was often conducted by primitive methods, addition and subtraction being performed by means of flowers or any rude counters which came to hand. Among the more actively religious sects and races, girls received an education as a necessary part of their spiritual training. In the Punjab they may still be seen seated in groups around some venerable Sikh priest, learning to read and recite the national scriptures or Granth; and the Brahman tutor of wealthy Hindu families does not confine his instruction to the sons alone. In some parts of the country, such education as girls obtained was confined ostensibly to reading and arithmetic, writing being an art not held suitable for women of respectable life. The intellectual attainments, wit, and powers of memory of the Indian courtesan class have often been remarked, and formed one of their proverbial attractions. As a matter of fact, there always have been women of great accomplishments and strong talents for business in India. At this moment, one of the best administered Native States has been ruled during two generations by ladies—the successive Begums of Bhopal; many of the most ably managed of the great landed properties or zamindaris of Bengal are entirely in the hands of females; while, in commercial life, women conduct, through their agents, lucrative and complicated concerns. But the idea of giving girls a school education, as a necessary part of their training for life, did not originate in India until quite within our own days. The intellectual activity of Indian women is very keen, and it seems frequently to last longer in life than the mental energies of the men. The intelligence of Indian women is certainly far in advance of their opportunities of obtaining school-instruction, and promises well for their education in the future. 596. Female Education: Division of the Subject.—In dealing with female education we propose (1) very briefly to summarise its progress up to the date of the appointment of this Commission in 1882; (2) to exhibit by a tabular statement the position and extent of female education in that year; (3) to explain the 174

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different kinds of agencies at work, and their financial aspects; (4) to examine the suitability of the existing system of female instruction, together with the suggestions which have been made to us for its improvement; (5) to set forth in specific Recommendations the proposals to which our enquiries have led us. 597. Female Education in Madras.—In most Provinces of India, female instruction formed a part of the programme of missionary effort, and its early development has necessarily found a place in the historical section of this Report. In the Madras Presidency, the first attempt at female education in the modern sense, consisted of the boarding schools maintained by the Church of England Societies in Tinnevelly; but intended almost exclusively for daughters of Christian converts. In 1841, the Missionaries of the Scottish Church commenced the work of educating the Hindu girls of Madras. In 1845, the first girls’ school under partial native management was opened. As narrated in Chapter II of this Report, the Despatch of 1854 found about 8,000 girls in Missionary schools in the Madras Presidency and neighbouring States; 1,110 being in boarding schools. The total number of girls’ schools was 256. The Despatch of 1854 led to an increase of effort. In 1858–59, grants-in-aid to the extent of Rs. 1,589 were given to 39 schools attended by 1,885 girls. In 1870–71, aid to the amount of Rs. 25,682 was given to 138 schools, with 7,245 girls. There were, besides, 2,148 girls in 289 mixed schools, and 792 in village boys’ schools. In 1870–71, over 10,000 girls were being instructed within the Madras Presidency, of whom 2,810 (chiefly Eurasians or Europeans) studied English, 5,788 Tamil, 1,397 Telugu, 703 Malayalam, 221 Kanarese, 25 Tuluva, and 7 French. In 1858, an annual examination for school-mistresses’ certificates was instituted, which gradually developed into a general examination for girls’ schools, and exerted a wholesome influence in improving the quality of the teaching. In 1870–71, there were 141 candidates, of whom 41 passed. These improved arrangements, together with the increased efforts of the missionary bodies and the native educational agencies which had entered the field, aided by grants and supplemented by Government efforts, produced a great increase during the next ten years. The following Table shows the position of female education in Madras on the 31st March 1882. There were then, according to the departmental return, 557 girls’ schools, with 35,042 pupils; aided and unaided institutions forming by far the most important element in the total. Madras has now an organised system of female instruction, from Normal or training schools for female teachers, down to primary schools for girls. The Government Training school for female teachers has not proved very successful hitherto, but arrangements have lately been made which are likely to increase its usefulness, and the aided and missionary training schools are doing excellent work. Besides the Christian Zanana Missions, there is a Zanana Agency on a secular basis, conducted by a Committee of native gentlemen and English ladies. Zanana education, however, is not so extensively developed, or apparently so much required as in some other Provinces; the seclusion of women of the better classes is less complete, and it is easier for girls to obtain a considerable amount of education at school. Madras ranked highest in 175

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the Census returns of 1881 among the Provinces of India with regard to female education (excepting the little territory of Coorg). Those returns show a total of 39,104 females under instruction in the Madras Presidency, or 4,062 in excess of the pupils returned by the Education Department in 1882; and 94,571 not under instruction, but able to read and write. The proportion under instruction is 1 girl in 403 of the female population, and the proportion of those able to read and write but not under instruction, 1 woman in 166 of the female population. Female Education in Madras in 1882. GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools.

Number of Institutions Number of Pupils

OTHER INSTITUTIONS, AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION)

Secondary Primary Normal Secondary Primary Schools. Schools. Schools. Schools. Schools.

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 20

4 26

47 2,123

3 137

42 363

460 18,242

Mixed Schools.

Total.

Total Expenditure

7

8

9

Unknown 557 14,131 35,042

Rs. 226,169

598. Female Education in Bombay.—The early growth of female education in Bombay has been so fully described in Chapter II, that we need not again dwell upon the subject. It will suffice to note that the honour of initiating the movement there belongs to the American Mission. From the year 1823 to 1851, female education in Bombay practically remained in the hands of the Missionaries of various bodies. In the latter year, the natives began to enter the field in force. The Students’ Literary and Scientific Society then organised a number of girls’ schools, which amid various vicissitudes have done and continue to do a most important work in female education. The Parsis and the Banias of Gujarat have displayed an especial interest in the movement. The Despatch of 1854 found 65 girls’ schools (of which we possess full returns) in Bombay, with about 3,500 pupils. There were also 593 girls attending boys’ schools. We have no figures to show the attendance of girls in indigenous schools at that date, but it is believed to have been very small. In 1857, small annual rewards were offered by Government to vernacular schoolmasters who should form girls’ classes in their schools, with the result that in 1864–65 there were 639 girls in such schools. The visit of Miss Carpenter, the interest shown by European ladies at Thana, Dhulia, and elsewhere, and the liberality of certain Southern Maratha Chiefs and leading Parsis, gave a fresh impulse to the movement. Female Normal schools were established at Ahmedabad, Bombay, and Poona. In Sind, 22 schools were opened for girls in 1868. Of the 659 pupils attending them, 75 per cent. were Muhammadans. Half of the schools were conducted by female teachers of respectable parentage, who could read, write, and sew. In 1869, there were altogether 209 girls’ schools in the Bombay Presidency, attended by 9,291 pupils. The statistics for 1871 show 218 girls’ schools, with 9,190 pupils.

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Since 1871, the Bombay Government has recognised its duty towards female education. Grants-in-aid have been more freely given, and a large number of girls’ schools have been founded, with the result of multiplying nearly threefold the number of pupils returned in 1871. It is worthy of remark, however, that the number of pupils (11,238) in departmental girls’ schools now exceeds the number (10,621) in aided and unaided institutions, excluding mixed schools for boys and girls. Apart from this, the special features of female education in Bombay seem to be (1) the evidence of a growing desire among the commercial classes for its extension; (2) the efforts on a large scale made by the natives themselves (Parsis, Marathas, and Gujarathis) to meet this demand; and (3) the successful endeavours by the Government to create an efficient staff of female teachers. The Training College for female teachers at Ahmedabad is doing much to solve this difficult problem both in the ordinary manner and by methods of its own. It will be again mentioned in the paragraph dealing with the supply of female teachers. The statistics of female instruction on the 31st March 1882 derived from the Bombay Education Department are given below. The census officers in 1881 only returned 18,460 girls under instruction in the British Districts, with 2,733 in the Bombay Feudatory States, showing an average of one girl under instruction in 431 of the female population in British Districts. The Bombay Census returns are, however, below the truth in this respect; and it has been explained to us that many girls who are “under instruction” have been returned to the Census officers as “able to read and write.” The returns show 32,648 women not under instruction, but able to read and write, being one woman in every 244 of the female population. Female Education in Bombay in 1882. GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools. Number of Institutions Number of Pupils

2 73

Secondary Primary Schools. Schools. ...

OTHER INSTITUTIONS AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION) Normal Secondary Primary Schools. Schools. Schools.

181

9

151

11,238

538

10,621

Mixed Schools Unknown 4,296

TOTAL

Total Expenditure

343 26,766

Rs. 178,707

599. Female Education in Bengal.—We have dwelt at some length on the history of education in Southern India, partly because the movement took its rise at an earlier date in Madras and Bombay than in the Northern Presidency, but chiefly because such education has there affected the mass of the female population to an extent unknown in Northern India. Considerable progress has of recent years been made in Lower Bengal. But when we leave Madras and Bombay, the proportion of females under instruction to the total female population, at once decreases from 1 in 400 odd, to 1 in 976 in Bengal, and 1 in 2,169 in the North Western Provinces. We may state once for all that in the North as in the South

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of India, missionary societies have been the pioneers of female education, and still hold a foremost place in the work. With this general preface applicable to all the Northern Provinces, we shall briefly mention any special features peculiar to individual Provinces, and show the numerical progress which has been made in all. A characteristic feature of female education in Bengal is the high position held by the Bethune Girls school in Calcutta. This institution was established in 1849, and bears the name of its founder Mr. Drinkwater Bethune, then Legal Member of Council, who took an active part in many movements for the advancement of native society. It was opened under the name of the Hindu Female school with 23 pupils, and was for some time maintained at the entire cost, and under the direct management of Mr. Bethune, who also by his will left lands and other property in Calcutta for its endowment in perpetuity. On his death in 1851, it was taken up by Lord Dalhousie, who for nearly five years paid Rs. 8,000 a year for its maintenance from his private purse. The charge was afterwards transferred to the State, although the direct management of the school continued, and still continues, in the hands of a Committee. Unlike the earlier missionary efforts, the Bethune school rests on a secular basis, and the Committee aims at conducting it in accordance with national Indian feeling. It derives its pupils chiefly from the higher classes, exacts an adequate payment for boarding and other charges, and carries its instruction up to University standards. The Despatch of 1854 found 288 girls’ schools (of which we have returns) in Bengal, with 6,869 pupils. Grants to the amount of Rs. 5,000 were assigned for girls’ schools, and about 40 were started by the Inspector in Burdwan, Hugh, and the 24 Parganas. But the mutiny intervened, the education of girls in public schools was strongly criticised, and the grant was withdrawn. Under the grant in aid system the number of girls’ schools in 1862–63 stood at 35, with 1,183 pupils. A female Normal school was established at Rampur Bauleah under the grant in aid system, seven zanana agencies were at work under missionary bodies, classes for girls in the improved pathsalas were formed by offering the gurus monthly rewards of Re 1 for every four girls under instruction. Miss Carpenter’s visit gave a stimulus to female education in Bengal, as well as in Bombay. In 1869 there were 2,351 girls in aided schools in Bengal, in 1870–71, the number of aided girls’ schools had risen to 274 containing 5,910 pupils. Since then there has been a great development of female education in Bengal upon the system of grant-in aid. The total number of girls at school in 1882, as shown by the departmental returns given below, was 41,349. The Government maintained two schools of a high class—the Bethune school at Calcutta, and the Eden school at Dacca. The college department of the Bethune school was opened in 1879 in consequence of the success of one of its pupils at the Entrance Examination of the University. From that time there have been candidates at the Entrance and First Arts Examinations every year, and on the 31st March 1882, the college department contained six pupils reading for degrees in the Calcutta University. Two of them have since obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The Free Church female Normal school in Calcutta, also contains three

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matriculated students who are reading for the First Arts examination. The Census officers in 1881 returned the number of girls under instruction in Bengal at 35,760 (or 5,589 less than the Education Department’s total), being 1 girl under instruction in 976 of the female population. According to the census of 1881, the number able to read and write, but not under instruction, was 61,449, or 1 in 568 of the total female population. Female Education in Bengal in 1882. GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS. Collegiate schools

Secondary Schools

Number of Institutions

1

2

Number of Pupils

6

299

Primary Schools

OTHER INSTITUTIONS, AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION) Normal Schools

Secondary Schools

2 41(a)

Primary Schools

20

990

752

17,452

Mixed Schools

Total

Unknown

1,015

22,799

41,349

Total Expenditure

Rs. 223,768

(a) Including 3 matriculated students reading for the F. A. Examination in the Free Church of Scotland Normal School.

600. Female Education in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh.— Nowhere has it been sought to promote female education with greater ardour by direct Government agency, as distinguished from private efforts, than in the NorthWestern Provinces. The early efforts of the Missionaries were succeeded by earnest endeavours on the part of the Education Department. The Despatch of 1854 found (so far as the returns now available show) 17 Missionary girls’ schools, with 386 pupils in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. Mr. Reid and Mr. Kempson, the successive Directors of Public Instruction from 1854 to 1878, were strong advocates of female education, while Sir William Muir, who became LieutenantGovernor in 1868, cordially supported the efforts of the Education Department. The girls’ schools existing before 1857 for the most part disappeared in the mutiny. In 1859, a fresh start was made. Mr. Reid was persuaded that if “Government were to appoint 150 Pundits to the charge of as many schools in every individual District in these Provinces on liberal salaries, we should have 70,000 or 80,000 girls in these schools before the year was out.” As long as Government was willing to spend money freely and to accept mere numbers as a test of success, no difficulties arose. “But,” writes our Provincial Committee for the North-Western Provinces, “against anything like efficiency and reality there were two prominent obstacles.” In the absence of educated women teachers, the Department was obliged to employ elderly men whose best working days were past. “It was, however, hoped that in process of time we might train up women, if they could be found; and it was determined to establish Normal schools with this object. Competent mistresses were the first difficulty, and when they were supposed to have been procured, there came the further difficulty of pupils to train. Married women of a suitable age as a rule would not be spared by their husbands, and rarely had time for any continuons study.”

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Respectable widows were not found to be available in any numbers, although an attempt was made in this direction. In 1870–71, the number of girls’ schools in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh was 640, with 13,853 pupils. Between 1871 and 1881, a great decrease took place in girls’ schools. Their abolition was mainly due to the financial position of the Government in 1876. It was felt that if retrenchments were necessary, they could be carried out in the girls’ schools with the least prejudice to education. A further reduction took place in the following year, and whereas in 1875–76, there were in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, 400 Government primary schools for girls, with 9,000 pupils; in 1880–81 only 160 schools remained with 3,757 pupils. The total number of girls’ schools in 1882, as shown below by the departmental returns, was 308, attended by 8,883 pupils. The census officers in 1881 returned the number of girls under instruction at 9,771 in the British Districts of the North-Western Provinces, being one girl to 2,169 of the female population. The number of females returned by the Census of 1881 as able to read and write, but not under instruction, in the British Districts, was 21,590, or one in 981 of the female population. Special difficulties attended the cause of female education in the Oudh Districts. Six girls’ schools were first opened as an experiment; by 1869 the number had increased to 38 schools, with 879 girls, and in 1870 to 69, with 1,369 girls. Female Education in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh in 1882. GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools. Number of Institutions Number of Pupils

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS, AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION) Primary Schools.

Mixed Schools.

TOTAL

Normal Schools.

Secondary Schools.

160

3

3

142

308

3,687

89

68

5,039

8,883

Total Expenditure

Rs. 79,082

601. Female Education in the Punjab.—The Despatch of 1854 found the work of female education hardly begun; indeed so far as the returns now available show, there were only 17 schools for girls known to the Department, with 306 pupils in the year 1856–57. The pupils were at first nearly all Muhammadans. The selection of teachers was generally left to the people themselves. In February 1862 a durbar was held at Lahore under Sir R. Montgomery, the Lieutenant-Governor, who impressed upon the European officers and native gentlemen present the importance he attached to the education of women, and invited their co-operation. Again in 1863–64 he stated that “these schools were chiefly remarkable as a proof of the zeal and readiness with which the people of these Provinces could respond to an external impulse involving a radical change in their habits, provided they were assured of its beneficial tendency.” By 1865–66 there were 1,029 schools, with 19,561 girls on the rolls. Musalmans and Hindus contributed nearly equal proportions, but the former largely preponderated in

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Government schools, and the latter in aided schools. Of the schools, 699 were aided, at a cost of Rs. 23,410, and were more or less under native management. Although schools were thus opened and scholars enrolled in large numbers without much difficulty, it appears from subsequent official reports, that a large proportion of the schools were merely rudimentary schools which had existed from time immemorial for the purpose of conveying religious instruction. The character of the education did not seem in 1867–68 to be satisfactory, and in that year, Rs. 10,000 were withdrawn from the grant for girls’ schools. The number of schools, has gone on steadily decreasing from 1,029 with 19,561 pupils in 1865–66, to 317 schools, with 9,756 pupils in 1881–82. The returns of 1870–71 showed 465 schools for girls, with 11,819 pupils. The Table below, compiled from departmental sources, shows 311 schools in 1881–82, with 9,353 pupils. The Missionaries have, during the past ten years, worked with great success in this field of education in the Punjab, both by the ordinary method of girls’ schools, and by means of zanana agencies. The Census Report of 1881 returns 6,101 girls under instruction in the British Districts of the Punjab, or one girl in 1,416 of the female population; together with 8,407 women in the British Districts able to read and write, but not under instruction, being 1 in 1,028 of the female population. The Census return under the last heading is admitted, however, to be below the truth. Female Education in the Punjab, 1882 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools. Number of Institutions Number of Pupils

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION) Normal Schools.

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

Mixed Schools.

TOTAL Total Expenditure

145

3

1

162

311

3,807

138

8

5,350

9,353

Rs. [********]

602. Female Education in the Central Provinces.—In the Central Provinces, in 1870–71, there were 137 Government girls’ schools with 4,494 pupils, 2 aided schools with 169 pupils, and 2 unaided with 58 pupils. There were also 3 Normal schools for mistresses, containing 59 students. During the past ten years, rapid progress has been made by means of Government primary schools for girls. The departmental returns for 1882 show 64 primary Government girls’ schools, against 14 aided and unaided institutions. The Government Training College for female teachers at Jabalpur is successfully endeavouring to increase the scanty supply of female teachers, and it will be again referred to hereafter. The Census Report of 1881 returns 3,171 girls under instruction, or one girl in 1,539 of the female population, together with 4,187 women able to read and write, but not under instruction, being 1 in 1,165 of the female population.

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Female Education in the Central Provinces in 1882 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools. Number of Institutions Number of Pupils

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS, AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION) Normal Schools.

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

Mixed Schools.

TOTAL

1

64

14

79

17

2,676

532

3,225

Total Expenditure

Rs. 25,959

603. Female Education in Assam.—Female education has, during the brief period since the separation of Assam from Bengal in 1874, shown the same rapid development which has characterised the course of general education in Assam. It rests entirely on the basis of grant in aid and inspection as the following Table shows. The percentage of girls at school to the female population of school going age is 0·47, which is higher than the proportionate return for the Central Provinces, or the North Western Provinces and Oudh. The Census Report of 1881 returns 1,068 girls under instruction, or one in every 2,226 of the female population, together with 1,786 women able to read and write but not under instruction, or 1 in every 1,331 of the female population. But doubts are thrown by the Local Administration on these returns. Female Education in Assam in 1882 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools.

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION) Normal Schools.

Secondary Schools.

Primary Schools.

Mixed Schools.

Number of Institutions

[Illegible Unknown Text]

Number of Pupils

1,209

468

TOTAL

Total Expenditure

71 1,677

Rs. 5,604

604. Female Education in Coorg.—In Coorg the only special girls’ school in 1871 was at Virajpet, established by the nuns for native Catholic girls. But a number of Coorg girls attended the village schools for boys. In 1882, the returns showed one primary aided school with 26 pupils, and 307 girls in mixed schools. The number of pupils was 333 and the expenditure Rs. 230. The Census Report for 1881 returns 431 girls under instruction or 1 in 180 of the female population; together with 356 women able to read and write but not under instruction, being 1 in 239 of the female population. 605. Female Education in the Haidarabad Assigned Districts.—Girls’ schools were first established in 1867, and numbered 27 in 1870–71 with 671 pupils. Experiments were made in opening girls’ schools in towns, but many of the institutions thus established did not prove permanent, and in 1881–82, only

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12 schools were returned with 368 pupils, as shown in the following table. The decline is attributed in the Provincial Report to the want of active interest in the matter by the local Education Department, which has adopted the principle that Government must follow the lead of native effort in regard to female education. The Census Report of 1881 returned 356 pupils under instruction, or one in every 3,650 of the female population; together with 789 women able to read and write, but not under instruction, being 1 in 1,638 of the female population. Female Education in the Haidarabad Assigned Districts in 1882. OTHER INSTITUTIONS, AIDED AND UNAIDED (UNDER INSPECTION)

GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS Normal Schools Number of Institutions Number of Pupils

Secondary Schools

Primary Schools

Normal Schools

Secondary Primary Schools Schools

8

4

269

99

Mixed Schools

TOTAL

Total Expenditure

12 70

438

Rs.3.524

606. Census Returns of Female Education for 1881.—It may be interesting to summarise the facts disclosed by the Census of 1881 in regard to female education in India. It will be observed that the year 1881 is not the year to which the General Tables of the Commission refer; and the accuracy of the Census Returns has been questioned in several Provinces. Female Education in British India in 1881,* according to the Census Returns. PROPORTION TO TOTAL No. of FEMALE POPULATION females Females Total No. of not under who can Girls female girls under instruction PROVINCE read and under population instruction but able to write but read and instruction not under write instruction Madras . . . . . . . . . . 15,749,583 39,104 94,571 1 in  403 1 in  166 Bombay . . . . . . . . . . 7,956,696 18,460 32,648 1 ” 431 1 ” 244 Bengal . . . . . . . . . . 34,911,270 35,760 61,449 1 ” 976 1 ” 568 North Western Provinces and Oudh. . 21,195,313 9,771 21,590 1 ” 2,169 1 ” 981 Punjab . . . . . . . . . . 8,640,384 6,101 8,407 1 ” 1,416 1 ” 1,028 Central Provinces . . . . . . 4,879,356 3,171 4,187 1 ” 1,539 1 ” 1,165 Assam. . . . . . . . . . . 2,377,723 1,068 1,786 1 ” 2,226 1 ” 1,331 Coorg . . . . . . . . . . . 77,863 431 356 1 ” 180 1 ” 219 Haidarabad Assigned Districts . 1,292,181 356 789 1 ” 3,630 1 ” 1,638 TOTAL 97,080,374 114,222 225,783 1 ” 849 1 ” 430 * Exclusive of Ajmir with a total female population of 211,378, where 145 girls are returned as under instruction, and 963 women able to read and write; and of British Burma, with a total female population of 1,745,366, where 31,056 girls are returned as under instruction, and 31,740 women as able to read and write. Total for British India, 145,223 girls under instruction and 258,486 who can read and write but who are not under instruction. The total number of women educated or being educated in British India, is therefore just over 404,000.

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607. Female Education throughout India in 1882.—The following Table has been compiled from the statistics of female education, obtained from Departmental sources and given at the end of the Report—

FEMALE EDUCATION IN BRITISH INDIA IN 1882 Return* showing the number of Institutions and Scholars on March 31st, 1882 NUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS FOR GIRLS

PROVINCES

1

MADRAS

BOMBAY

BENGAL

{ { { { { { {

NORTH WESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH

PUNJAB

CENTRAL PROVINCES

ASSAM

Class of institutions DepartAided mental

2 Secondary Schools Primary

3

4

NUMBER OF SCHOLARS IN

Unaided Unaided under not under Total inspection inspection

5

6

7

DepartAided mental schools schools

8

Unaided Unaided schools schools under not under inspection inspection 11

9

10

4

19

23

46

26

157

206

389

47

241

219

507

2,123

11,660

6,582

20,365

·87

14,131

·61

Mixed Normal TOTAL

1

3

52

263

Secondary Schools Primary

242

9 181

50

4

20

137

557

2,169

11,954

9 95

6

11,238

2

73

343

11,311

1

6 299

4,338

TOTAL

2 183

Collegiate Schools

1

Secondary

2

Primary

59

95

6

4,283

2,000

TOTAL

3

Primary

1·50

538

·03

21,859

1·30

4,096

·26

4,876

4,283

2,000

26,566

1·59

b6

18

2

22

649

103

1,051

·01

921

69

990

15,355

2,097

17,452

·34

22,799†

·45

2

41

2

Secondary Schools

·02

73

Mixed Normal

13

35,042

538

332

12

157 6,788

Mixed Normal

Total

Percentage of scholars to [******* * **] [******* * **] [******* * **] proportion of school-going age.

941

71

3 160

132

160

138

1,015

305

3 10

302

10

308

16,045

41‡ 2,200

68 3,687

4,797

3,687

4,954

41,349

·80

68 242

8,726

242

8,883

·27

Mixed Normal TOTAL

3

Secondary Schools Primary

3

1

1

145

162

307

3

3

145

166

64

13

89

89 ·28

8

8

3,857

5,350

9,207

·71

138

138

[********]

311

3,857

5,496

9,353

·72

1

78

2,676

514

18

3,208

·44

1

17

13

1

79

2,693

514

18

3,225

·44

67

4

71

1,132

77

1,209

·34

468§

·3

1,677

·47

Mixed Normal TOTAL Secondary Schools Primary Mixed Normal TOTAL

1 65

17

Secondary Schools Primary Mixed Normal TOTAL

67

4

71

184

1,132

77

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION NUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS FOR GIRLS

PROVINCES

1

COORG

{ {

HAIDARABAD ASSIGNED DISTRICTS

TOTAL FOR INDIA¶

{

Class of institutions DepartAided mental

2

3

4

Unaided Unaided under not under Total inspection inspection

5

6

DepartAided mental schools schools

7

8

9

Unaided Unaided schools schools under not under inspection inspection 10

11

Total

12

13

Secondary Schools Primary

1

1

26

26

·22

307

2·64

26

333

2·86

99

368

·9

70

·03

438

·2

Mixed Normal TOTAL

1

1

4

12

Secondary Schools Primary

8

269

Mixed TOTAL

8

Collegiate Schools

1

Secondary Primary

4

6

50

25

605

1,591

398

6

12

69

1

6

99

6

81

325

1,420

309

2,600

23,850

43,271

13,299

2,054 2,000

Mixed Normal TOTAL║

4

11

616

1,652

423

6

15

110

405

2,697

24,291

45,096

*

Excluding schools for Europeans and Eurasians.

‡

†

In Middle English schools In Middle Vernacular schools In Primary schools In Training schools In Indigenous schools

§

·01

82,420

·55

42,071

·28

515 13,608

2,000

127,066a

[******* * **]

Of this number three were matric [******* * **] [******* * **] reading for the F. A. Examination [******* * **] [******* * **] Church Normal School

[******* * **] 585 20,744 30 59 [******* * **]

¶

Percentage of scholars to [******* * **] [******* * **] [******* * **] proportion of school-going age.

NUMBER OF SCHOLARS IN

Excluding British Burma and all Native States that administer their own system of education

In Middle English schools In Middle Vernacular schools In Primary English schools In Primary Vernacular schools In Training schools for masters

37 0 [******* * **] [******* * **] 9 468

Excluding three Primary schools with 60 pupils and [******* * **] Normal schools [******* * **] [*****] pupils [******* * **] a Including [******* * **] boys [******* * **] girls schools b Including [******* * **] pupils in primary departments. ║

608. Review of the above Statement.—The first feature which strikes us in the last Table, when compared with the figures given in the previous paragraphs, is the great aggregate increase in female education for all India during the past ten years. This increase has been fairly spread over the larger Provinces, with the exception of the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. The next feature which deserves attention is the very large proportion of effort which is devoted to the primary education of girls as compared with their secondary or higher instruction. In this matter the action of the departmental authorities, missionary societies, and other managers of girls’ schools, seems in complete accord with the present necessities of female education in India. With the exception of Bengal, and in a much smaller degree of Madras, secondary education for girls is entirely in the hands of missionary bodies and native managers. The third feature calling for notice is the 185

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different view taken in different Provinces, with regard to the function of direct Government agency in the matter of female primary education. Throughout India, the total number of pupils in Government girls’ primary schools is 23,850, or one half of those in aided or unaided schools under inspection, namely, 58,570. In Bengal, Assam, and Coorg there are no Government primary schools for girls. In Madras, the pupils in the Government primary schools for girls are only about oneninth of those in the aided and unaided primary schools under inspection. In the North-Western Provinces, Oudh, and the Punjab the proportion is 3·5 to 5. In Bombay, the number of pupils in the departmental primary schools for girls is 11,238, against 10,621 in aided and unaided primary schools. In the Central Provinces, the girls in Government primary schools amount to 2,676, or five times the number (namely, 532), in aided and unaided schools under inspection. In the Haidarabad Assigned Districts the former are nearly three times as numerous as the latter. 609. Non-departmental Agencies.—The relative success attained by the Education Department as compared with the various extra-departmental agencies is, therefore, by no means uniform in regard to the numerical results. These results, however, depend not merely on the view which the departmental authorities may take, but also on the amount of extra-departmental agency available for the work. That amount varies in different Provinces. We do not think it either desirable or possible to lay down any hard-and-fast line with reference to the division of labour between departmental and extra-departmental agencies in the different parts of India. In certain tracts, for example in the Central Provinces, there would be scarcely any female education but for the existence of the Government primary schools. In Bombay, it seems that the time has come when female education may be largely extended by means of private effort, if such effort be liberally aided. As a general rule, we are anxious to see the extension of female education conducted on the basis of grant-in-aid in a greater degree than heretofore, and to that end we shall, at the end of this Chapter, make certain specific Recommendations with regard to the grant-in-aid rules. 610. Female Education: Municipalities and Local Boards.—The action of Municipalities varies very widely with regard to female education. The truth is that native public opinion has not yet decided either as to the expediency of schoollife for girls, or as to the claims of female education on Municipal funds. Some Municipal bodies have shown a fair amount of liberality to girls’ schools, including those conducted by Missionaries. Other Municipalities have not recognised their corporate duty in the matter of female instruction; and an apprehension has been expressed that Municipal grants will not be given to girls’ schools. The same difference, although in a less degree, characterises the attitude of the Local Boards to female education. In so far as Municipalities and Local Boards are the exponents of native public feeling, such a want of uniformity is at present inevitable. In this, as in many other respects, the national development of female education in India must wait upon the growth of native public opinion, although it is possible for officials, and for enlightened members of the native community, to do much to 186

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION

abridge the transition stage. The contributions from Local and Municipal funds for female education in all India in 1881–82, were Rs. 107,889, the total expenditure being Rs. 847,971. The expenditure by Municipal and Local Boards was nearly one-half of the expenditure from Provincial revenues on female education, namely, Rs. 252,878. It amounted to nearly three times the expenditure from fees in girls’ schools, namely, Rs. 44,539. The proportion varies very greatly in different Provinces, as will be seen from the statistics given in a subsequent paragraph. By far the largest share of Municipal and Local contributions is paid in Bombay, where they amount to Rs. 51,619, or nearly one half of the whole sum for all India. 611. Other Agencies.—But while the action of Municipal and Local bodies still displays an absence of uniformity with regard to female education, other agencies are at work which tend steadily and powerfully towards its extension. The Commission has not before it returns showing the increase of girls’ schools under native management, but there is every reason to believe that the number has largely augmented of late years. The Missionaries are also extending their operations, and endowments are from time to time made by wealthy natives for the promotion of female education. The total expenditure from these and other sources, unconnected with the Provincial revenues or with Local or Municipal funds, amounted in 1881–82 to Rs. 442,665. This sum is more than one half of the total expenditure on female education, excluding of course schools for Europeans and Eurasians which do not come within the purview of the Commission. It is nearly twice as much as the expenditure from Provincial funds, four times as much as the expenditure from Local or Municipal funds, and ten times as much as the expenditure from fees levied in girls’ schools. Native associations and mixed Committees of Natives and Europeans interested in the cause of female education are gradually springing up. For example, the Arya Mahila Samaj of Poona, composed chiefly of Maratha ladies of position, may be expected to exercise an important influence in the capital of the Deccan. Associations of Natives and Europeans for the promotion of female education on a secular basis, form one of the hopeful signs of the times. 612. Mixed Schools for Boys and Girls.—There seems to be a general consensus of opinion among the witnesses examined by the Commission, that mixed schools are not suitable for this country. Yet in some Provinces, the girls found in boys’ schools amount to many thousands. Most of these are undoubtedly mere infants. As, moreover, it is impossible to establish a girls’ school in every village, attendance at a boys’ school will often be a girl’s only chance of learning anything, and in that case it should not be discouraged. Hitherto, little or nothing seems to have been done in India in the way of establishing schools for children under seven years of age. Such schools, under a bright and well trained mistress, would probably be found most useful in laying the foundation for the further education of both sexes. The return of pupils in mixed schools given in a previous paragraph shows over 42,000 pupils in schools of this description for all India. Of these, 22,799 are returned from Bengal, 14,131 from Madras, and 4,296 from Bombay. Assam, Coorg, and the Haidarabad Assigned Districts contribute 845 to 187

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the total. It seems possible that a large number of girls below seven years of age might be brought under instruction by means of infant schools, and in our Recommendations we express the view that such schools should be liberally encouraged. 613. Subjects of Instruction for Girls.—As the subjects of instruction laid down by the Department for girls do not in general differ much from those for boys, it does not seem necessary to present a detailed account of them. They comprehend the usual amount of reading, writing, and arithmetic, with some grammar, geography, and history. In Madras, the standards are nearly the same as for boys, with needle-work added, and with singing as an optional subject. It is stated in the evidence that as girls do not usually remain at school more than 2½ years on an average, a large portion of the scheme must be quite beyond their reach. The standards also are said to require adaptation, especially the higher ones. A desire has been expressed for more instruction in arithmetic on Indian methods. History, geography, and hygiene are considered by some witnesses to be useless, while others think that the fault is in the way in which they are taught. It certainly seems difficult to bring all these subjects within the time likely to be spent in the education of an Indian girl. The simple rules of cleanliness and health, might, if judiciously presented, be reckoned among practical subjects. It appears to be generally felt that some revision of the standards is required to adapt them to the actual wants of girls’ schools. In the Central Provinces, while the scheme of studies is the same as for boys, an equal amount of attention is not in fact given to geography and grammar, while it is found that girls do not make so much progress in arithmetic as boys. Singing is occasionally attempted, and needle-work in several branches is attended to. In the North-Western Provinces, the books used for boys are in use for girls also. But great complaints are made as to their unsuitability, in respect both of subject and of language. Roman Urdu is used in mission schools, and a few books have been prepared for them, but much is still wanting in this respect. In Bombay there are special standards of instruction for girls’ schools, which are lower than those for boys, but include needle-work in addition. Several ladies who have given evidence consider that sufficient stress is not laid on this important branch of female education. History is entirely excluded from the course and is regarded by some as an unnecessary subject, while arithmetic up to fractions is looked upon by others as beyond the proper range of primary education for girls. In the Punjab, the course is the same as for boys, but it is found that girls only attempt the easier portions of it. This is not surprising, inasmuch as the primary course in this Province includes Persian, and arithmetic up to its highest branches. The witnesses generally think that the standards for girls should be lowered in the Punjab; and at least one important Association objects to the introduction of Persian into the curriculum. The girls’ schools for the most part teach in the Nagari or the Gurmukhi character, and in the dialect of the Punjab, but a complaint is made that books in these vernaculars are not easily obtained. In Bengal, the standards have been revised in consultation with managers of girls’ schools, and although the Inspectress desires to see them still further simplified, with a view to improve the teaching, the witnesses with whom this subject is a 188

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION

speciality do not express dissatisfaction with them. They only desire to see the revised standards brought more generally and definitely into use. 614. Subjects of Instruction for Girls,—Needle-work.—It may be stated generally that the instruction given to girls does not generally differ from that prescribed for boys, but the standard is lower, and needle-work is added. There does not seem to be much variety in the style of needle-work taught. Plain work is useful, even when taught on the English method, instead of the native. Fancy-work after European fashions is being largely adopted, and no doubt affords a resource for the less hard-worked occupants of the zananas. But complaints are with justice made that native styles of embroidery are being neglected for English. Whoever has seen what Indian women are capable of accomplishing in this respect, will be sorry that the native art should be neglected. 615. Text-books for Girls.—Little seems to have been done in the way of preparing special text-books for use in girls’ schools. It was stated indeed that a work had been introduced in the Punjab, intended, as indicated by its name “Stri Shiksha,” for the teaching of women. But grave objection was taken to the contents of this book, and it does not appear to be now sold by Government authority. The Persian works in use seem also to be objected to on moral grounds. In this country even more than in others, the life of women is a thing apart from that of men, and it is unlikely that books prepared for boys will be either interesting or suitable to girls. Morality, no doubt, is the same for both sexes and for all classes; still the particular lessons in morality to be inculcated on boys, are certainly not those primarily needed for girls. For example, we desire boys to grow in manly virtues; the native community does not wish to see its girls advancing in boldness and independence of spirit. It is not to be expected that men should be good judges of what is useful or interesting for little girls. Hence we are not likely to see good general reading-books for girls until competent native ladies devote themselves to the preparation of them. We have received with pleasure specimens of such works lately prepared by Pandita Ramabai. Meanwhile, advantage may be taken of the assistance of English ladies who have acquired sufficient facility in the vernaculars. Nor are school-books alone wanting. Witnesses have drawn attention to the lack of suitable literature to be read by educated women at home. Bengal publishes a vernacular magazine written and edited by, and for, native ladies. This is an encouraging sign, and it indicates what is wanting in Provinces where other languages are spoken. 616. Instruction and Text-books.—It appears, on the whole, that the scheme of study in girls’ schools has been formed too much on the model of that for boys. The history of female education in modern India would lead us to expect this. It has been devised and set on foot by men as an addition to the system established for boys. Many women have indeed devoted themselves to this work, and have been the real agency in introducing and fostering female education. The statements by lady-witnesses form one of the most interesting sections of the evidence collected by the Commission. But ladies have not hitherto been much consulted as to the arrangements made by the Department. Hence there is a want of careful adaptation of the means to the end. The present system may perhaps serve to turn 189

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

out a certain number of girls instructed up to a certain standard. But how girls may be fitted to fill efficiently and intelligently the very peculiar place appointed for them in the life of this country, is a matter the consideration of which requires at once an enlightened sympathy with the female mind, and a close acquaintance with the conditions and customs of Indian women. It is no disparagement to the Education Department to say that in these respects it has much to learn. 617. Agencies for Female Education other than Schools.—The difficulties of extending female education by means of schools have already been referred to. The two principal ones are—the short duration of the school-going age for Indian girls, and the seclusion of Indian women after marriage. The first can only be overcome by a change in the custom of the country which at present compels the early marriage of girls, at an age rarely extending beyond their eleventh or twelfth year. For the second difficulty several solutions have been attempted, and to each of these we propose to devote a paragraph. 618. Zanana Missions.—The most successful efforts yet made to educate Indian women after leaving school, have been conducted by Missionaries. In every Province of India, ladies have devoted themselves to the work of teaching in the homes of such native families as are willing to receive them. Their instruction is confined to the female members of the household, and, although based on Christian teaching, is extended to secular subjects. The degree in which the two classes of instruction are given, varies in different zanana missions, but in almost every case secular teaching forms part of the scheme. Experience seems to have convinced a large proportion of the zealous labourers in this field, that the best preparation for their special or religious work, consists in that quickening of the intellectual nature which is produced by exercising the mind in the ordinary subjects of education. The largest and most successful of the zanana missions are composed of one or more English ladies, with a trained staff of Native Christians or Anglo Indian young women who teach in the zananas allotted to them. They derive their funds from the missionary societies in Europe and America, supplemented in many cases by local subscriptions in India, and by the private means of the English ladies who conduct the work. The Commission has not complete statistics with regard to the results achieved. But the figures3 accessible to it together with the enquiries made by it in the various Provinces, show that these results are already considerable, and that they are steadily increasing. The two impediments in the way of their more rapid extension are—first, the natural reluctance of many natives to admit into their families an influence hostile to their own religious beliefs, and, second, the uncertain attitude of the Education Department towards such missions. With the first of these obstacles the Commission cannot deal. But we have observed that much has been accomplished in this respect by the fact, courtesy, and wise moderation of the ladies engaged in the work. The second impediment comes within our cognisance, and we have provided for at by a specific Recommendation, that grants for zanana teaching be recognised as a proper charge on public funds, and be given under rules which will enable those engaged 190

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION

in it, to obtain substantial aid for such secular teaching as may be tested by an Inspectress, or other female agency. 619. Secular Zanana Agencies.—But while the Commission cannot deal with the reluctance of orthodox native families to subject their female members to influences hostile to their national faiths, the native community is itself beginning to take action in the matter. In all the Presidency towns, and in many of the large cities of India, it is now possible for a wealthy native to obtain instruction for the ladies of his family within his own house. A distinct class of zanana agencies on a secular basis is springing up, conducted by committees of native gentlemen, or by mixed committees of Natives and Europeans, with the object, in some cases, of imparting education in zananas without any element of religious teaching, in others of testing by periodical examinations, and encouraging by rewards the home education of governesses. These agencies are already doing useful work, although on a comparatively small scale, and the Commission trusts that they will receive a still larger measure of sympathy and co-operation from English ladies in India. Cases have been brought to our notice of a native family of rank employing a European or Anglo Indian governess, in other cases a Native Christian governess is employed, on the understanding that she will confine her instruction to secular subjects. The Parsi and Brahmo communities not only permit their girls to remain longer at school than is the custom with the Hindus and Muhammadans, but they have among them an educated class of young women well qualified to conduct the work of instruction in private families. While we look to the schools to carry on the general extension of female education, we regard as a hopeful sign the desire for improved education at home; and we have framed our Recommendations with a view to give the fullest encouragement to all zanana agencies, whether secular or religious, so far as is compatible with a due regard to economy combined with secular results. 620. Literature for the Zanana.—The want of school-books for girls has been already mentioned, and the same remarks apply to the dearth of a suitable literature for the zanana. An education which ends with the mere task-work of receiving instruction from a mistress, fails to accomplish its purpose. On the one hand, we find 277,207 women in India (including the Native States) not at school, yet who can read and write. On the other hand, we find a deficiency of modern books in the vernaculars, suitable for their perusal. This is a difficulty which can best be met by the efforts of educated men and women among the natives themselves, and by the native literary societies, especially the societies for the promotion of female education which are now so numerous throughout India. We earnestly commend this difficulty to their attention, and we hope that the Local Governments will not be found wanting in the encouragement of any well-devised efforts, whether by societies or by individuals, towards its solution. 621. Quality of the Instruction in Girls’ Schools.—The examinations which have been gradually prescribed for girls’ schools in the different Provinces enable us to test the quality of the instruction given. But it should be borne in mind that the stringency of the standards is not identical in all the Provinces; and that while, on the one hand, 191

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all girls’ schools are not subject to examination; on the other, it is not everywhere possible to separate European and Anglo-Indian girls from natives in the returns. Subject to these remarks, the following Table exhibits the results of the departmental examinations in girls’ schools. The third column does not take cognisance of girls in “mixed” or boys’ schools; but only of those in institutions intended entirely for girls. 622.—Results of the Examinations in Girls’ Schools, 1881–82.

PROVINCES

1 MADRAS .

{

.

{

BOMBAY

BENGAL

.

{

Class of Institutions

Number of pupils on the rolls on March 31st, 1882††

Total number examined in departmental or other prescribed examinations.

2

3

4

Secondary Primary Normal TOTAL Secondary Primary Normal TOTAL Collegiate Secondary Primary Normal† TOTAL

389 20,365 157 20,911 538 21,859 73 22,470 6 1,051 17,452 41 18,550

292 10,426 76 10,794 311 6,514 45 6,870 5a 9 201

169

78·60

215

Percentage of successful scholars to those presented for examination

Number of trained mistresses who passed for certificates in 1881–82

5

6

7

109 6,819 38 6,966 134 3,366 31* 3,531 4b 8 157

37·3 65·4 50·0 64·53 43·09 51·67 68·89 51·39 80·00 88·88 78·10

Number passed.

31 31

* At the Training College Examinations. † There are two Normal schools for mistresses with 41 pupils, who are trained to become teachers in native schools and zananas but they do not pass any prescribed examination for this purpose. †† Girls attending Boys’ schools are not included in this return. a Including pupils studying in the Free Church Normal School. b Of these one passed the [******* * **] and 3 the matriculation Examination of the Calcutta University.

PROVINCES

1 NORTH WESTERN PROVINCES & OUDH.

{

Number passed.

Percentage of successful scholars to those presented for examination

Number of trained mistresses who passed for certificates in 1881–82

4

5

6

7

68 8,726 89

66 984

31 520

46·97 52·84

8,883

1050

Class of Institutions

Number of pupils on the rolls on March 31st, 1882††

Total number examined in departmental or other prescribed examinations

2

3

Secondary Primary Normal TOTAL

7 ‡

192

551

52·48

7

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION

PROVINCES

PUNJAB . .

{

CENTRAL . PROVINCES

{

ASSAM . . .

{

COORO HAIDARABAD ASSIGNED . DISTRICTS

TOTAL FOR INDIA¶ . .

{

{

Class of Institutions

Number of pupils on the rolls on March 31st, 1882††

Total number examined in departmental or other prescribed examinations

Number passed.

Percentage of successful scholars to those presented for examination

Secondary Primary Normal TOTAL Secondary Primary Normal TOTAL Primary Normal TOTAL Primary TOTAL Primary

8 9,207 138 9,353

171

51

29·82

171§

51

29·82

3,208 17 3,225 1,209

527║ 7 534 1

270║ 2 272 1

51·23 28·57 50·93 100

1,209 26 26 368

1

1

100

167

111

66·46

TOTAL Collegiate Secondary Primary Normal TOTAL

368 6 2,054 82,420 515 84,995

167 5 678 18,991 128 19,802

111 4 282 11,295 71 11,652

66·46 80·00 41·59 59·47 55·47 58·84

Number of trained mistresses who passed for certificates in 1881–82

2 2

40 40

These figures include 698 European and Eurasian children. At the upper and lower primary examinations. The results of other examinations are not tabulated. ║ All the girls are examined and the results of their examination are recorded in the school minute books and in the Inspectors diaries. Only those who were examined in the lower primary and upper primary standards and who passed such examinations, are recorded in columns 4 and 5. ¶ Excluding Ajmer British Burma, and all Native States that administer their own system of education. †† Girls attending Boys schools are not included in this return. ‡ §

623. Review of Examination Results in Girls’ Schools (1881–82).—The only Province which during the year under review sent female students to the collegiate examinations was Bengal; the progress there made in the higher education of girls has been referred to, and the success of two girl candidates at the B.A. examination in the following year, although too late for the purview of this Report, afforded a theme for the address of the Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University in March 1883. Apart from circumstances peculiar to Provinces, the principal feature of the above Table is the overwhelming proportion of girl candidates at the primary examinations. The total number examined in the Primary schools was close on 19,000, of whom 11,295 passed. The proportion of successful candidates, exceeding 59 per cent, shows that the instruction in primary girls’ schools, as tested by the standards prescribed, is fairly efficient. Only 678 girls 193

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presented themselves at the secondary examinations, of whom 42 per cent were successful. But it should be observed that while rather less than one-fourth of the girls in primary schools presented themselves for examination, one-third of those under secondary instruction appeared as candidates. It should be noted, however, that the only departmental examinations at which girls from schools in Bengal are invited to appear, are those for the various classes of scholarships, middle and primary. The discouraging features in the foregoing return are the paucity of trained schoolmistresses, and the scanty source of supply for the teaching staff, with 85,000 girls to teach. Only 78 mistresses passed examinations in the year. Of these 31 obtained certificates in Bombay, 7 in the North-Western Provinces, and 2 in the Central Provinces. In Madras, 38 passed the Normal school examination, but without attaining the standard prescribed for a certificate. 624. Deficiency of Teachers for Girls’ Schools.—These figures bring us to the root of the difficulty in regard to the extension of girls’ education in India. They show that the supply of trained female teaching power is wholly inadequate to the demand. By comparing the increase of girls at school with the number of trained mistresses, during a period of years, the inadequacy becomes more apparent. The same result is arrived at by a scrutiny of the local distribution of Normal school attendance. There were only 515 girls at Normal schools throughout all India in 1881–82. Of these, 157 were in Madras, 138 in the Punjab, and 73 in Bombay. Bengal, with its 18,550 girls in female schools, had only 41 young women receiving a training in Normal institutions. Excepting Madras and Bombay, no Province returns any candidates passed at Normal school examinations, saving 2 girls in the Central Provinces and 7 in the North-Western Provinces. We desire to call attention to the altogether disproportionate supply of mistresses, as compared with the demand which the foregoing Table discloses. 625. Male Teachers for Girls’ Schools.—The evidence before the Commission shows that a feeling exists in many parts of India against the employment of men as teachers and inspectors in girls’ schools. Hitherto, it has not been found practicable in the various Provinces to carry on the work of female schools without such agency. The efforts which are being made to call into existence a more adequate supply of female teachers will be presently considered. The majority of girls’ schools are still conducted by male teachers. Only elderly men are considered suitable for the work, and any attempt at a wide extension of female education by means of young male teachers, would be opposed to the sentiments of the people. It follows, therefore, that the teaching staff of the girls’ schools at present has to be mainly recruited from superannuated schoolmasters, many of whom have lost their powers of work. In Maratha and other Southern Districts the difficulty of finding suitable male teachers is less felt than in Provinces which were long under Muhammadan rule. 626. Female Teachers for Girls’ Schools.—As yet it has not been found possible to obtain anything like an adequate supply of trained female teachers. Many plans have been tried in the different Provinces, but all have ended in comparative failure. The Bengal Department even attempted to utilise female votaries of the 194

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION

Vaishnava sect as teachers. The members of this sect, male and female, renounce caste and devote themselves to a religious life. At one time, the female Vaishnavas seem to have contributed a good deal to the instruction of their countrywomen, and at the beginning of the century, many of the Bengal zananas had preceptresses belonging to this class. But an effort, cautiously and patiently made by the Education Department to train them as teachers for girls’ schools, ended in unfavourable results. The only native women who can be induced to regard teaching as a profession in life, seem to be native Christians; the wives of schoolmasters in certain Provinces; and, under certain conditions, widows. A considerable supply is obtained from the first-mentioned class by Missionaries, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. But the services of such teachers are almost entirely absorbed by the schools of the religious agencies which train them; although in Madras there seems to be a reasonable prospect that other schools will in time obtain a supply of female teachers from this source. They form, however, an important element in the extension of female education on the basis of grant-in-aid. Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions are now in a position to look forward to increasing the number of their female teachers in proportion to the demand for them in their own schools. Nor does the objection to male teachers appear to carry so much weight with the Protestant Christians as it does among other sections of the native community. 627. Female Education; Schoolmasters’ Wives as Teachers.—This latter source of supply would be capable of wider application, if it could produce the requisite number of teachers. The experience of the Education Department in Bombay and the Central Provinces has a special bearing on this subject. Many of the young schoolmasters of parts of India do not seem to object to their wives engaging in school work. An excellent female Normal school at Jabalpur carries on its operations in the same town as the male Normal school; and a number of the youths who are being prepared as teachers, send their wives to undergo a corresponding instruction in the female school. The latter derives its pupils from all available sources; but we refer to it specially in regard to this branch of its work. The young women live a strictly resident life within their own school, and, after going through a course of instruction, take part in the actual work of teaching a girls’ school attached to the institution. When duly qualified, they are sent out as mistresses of schools in the village or town to which their husbands are posted. In this way, a certain number of localities have been supplied with both a boys’ and a girls’ school, conducted respectively by the husband and wife. The special success of the female Normal school at Jabalpur is due to the tact and admirable powers of management of the Lady Superintendent. But the experiment has also succeeded elsewhere, and schoolmasters’ wives are now recognised as a hopeful source of supply for female teachers. In some parts of India, however, schoolmasters object to their wives taking public employment of this sort. As the pecuniary advantages of the arrangement become more widely understood, and as the sentiment that married women should never work for their livelihood loses its influence among the higher castes, the number of female teachers of this class will probably increase. 195

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628. Widows as Teachers.—Our particular attention has been given to suggestions which have been made with regard to the more extended employment of native widows as teachers. The lot of the Hindu widow is so hard, that we should rejoice if it were possible to provide a scope for her useful employment in infant schools and in the education of her countrywomen. But here again native public opinion in many Provinces stands in the way. The Hindu widow, although deprived of any earthly career, beyond household drudgery, forms an integral part of the family, and is, in an especial manner, subject to family control. At present it does not seem likely that respectable Hindu families would permit their widowed members to engage in so public a labour as that of a schoolmistress, in numbers at all proportionate to the demand. The Education Department has done something to encourage movements in this direction. Certain of its efforts have failed to produce favourable results, owing to the peculiarly exposed position in which a Hindu widow finds herself, when she steps outside the strictly guarded routine of family life. On the other hand, several such experiments have proved that success is possible. The Female Training College at Ahmedabad shows what can be done in this respect. While deriving its students from all classes, it has so won the confidence of the native community that it obtains a fair number of widows, who resolve to adopt teaching as their work in life. The success of this institution, as in the case of the female Normal School at Jabalpur, is in a special degree due to the high personal qualities of the Lady Superintendent. But as native public opinion advances, we hope that an increasing number of training institutions will obtain female students from the same class, and that every encouragement, pecuniary and otherwise, will be given to such efforts. If Hindu widows could be induced in considerable numbers to take up teaching as a profession, one of the chief difficulties in the extension of female education would be solved. An independent and interesting career would at the same time be opened up to a large class of women, whose lot in life is very hard. The total number of widows in India is 21 millions. Of these, 1½ millions are below 24 years of age, and are therefore within the period of life when they might be successfully trained as teachers, if they could be persuaded to adopt that profession. 629. Female Education; Difficulties of Female Teachers.—We do not, however, under rate the obstacles in the way of such a movement. Apart from the isolated position of a young Hindu widow who leaves the family circle, female teachers in India have great and special difficulties to contend against. In the first place, they hold a novel and an exceptional position which exposes them to unfriendly comment. In the second place, the Indian school mistress often finds two enemies ready made in the village to which she is sent. There is the old incapable male teacher whom she supersedes, and the youth who assisted him, but whose masculine dignity will not permit of his serving peaceably under a woman. Lady Superintendents of female training colleges, who sympathise with the difficulties of the situation, can do much to pave the way for the ultimate success of the young women whom they send forth. For example, the Lady Superintendent 196

REPORT OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION COMMISSION

of the Ahmedabad Female Training College never gives her consent to a widow teacher being posted in a locality, until she has secured for her the countenance and support of the leading native families. No doubt other Lady Superintendents of female training colleges take the same precautions. But in spite of all such kindly safeguards, the position of a female teacher, especially if she be a widow, is still a difficult one in an Indian hamlet. Many of these difficulties would, however, disappear if arrangements could be made for employing trained female teachers in their own villages. 630. Training of Female Teachers.—In the general review of the situation which precedes our Recommendations, we shall summarise the limitations and conditions which apply to the various classes from which female teachers can be derived. We are not hopeful of any sudden or immediate expansion of the supply. We once more repeat that in this, as in other matters connected with female education, if an expansion is to be genuine and lasting, it must depend upon the growth of native public opinion. Government can, however, by rendering liberal aid to training colleges, by an extended system of stipends to the students in such institutions and by a generous scale of grants for schools which employ certificated female teachers, do much to draw forth all the capabilities of the existing sources of supply. It would not be easy to improve the course of instruction in some of the female training colleges which we have visited. In our Recommendations, therefore, we make no suggestions in regard to the course of instruction, and merely advise that liberal inducements should be offered alike to Native, European, and Eurasian young women, to qualify themselves as teachers for girls’ schools. 631. Female Education.—The Table on the following page shows the expenditure from all sources on female education, in the year 1881–82, so far as can be ascertained by the Commission. It deals only with schools for natives and is therefore exclusive of the general expenditure on European and Eurasian girls. 632. Different Sources of Funds.—The most noteworthy feature of the foregoing Table is the very small proportion which the fees levied in girls’ schools bear to the total expenditure. In round numbers, the pupils in such schools pay only one-twentieth part of the cost of their education. On the other hand, the charitable and philanthropic element comes strongly into play in the support of girls’ schools in India. The sums derived from missionary bodies, native societies, endowments, and philanthropic agencies or individuals interested in female education, exceed one-half the whole expenditure on the work, as indicated in columns 5 and 6 of the foregoing Table. The allotments from the Provincial revenues contribute more than a quarter, and the assignments from Municipal or Local Funds, together with the fees, amount to a good deal less than a quarter. The day when female education can be safely left to fees, or to exclusively local support, seems still far distant in India. 633. Suitability of the Grant-in-aid Rules.—Conclusive evidence has been placed before the Commission, that female education cannot at present be 197

1

Assam. . . . . .

1,07,889

1,509

1,698

14,150

21,985

5,752

2,540

51,619

44,539

24

2,931

1,601

17,772

9,518

12,693

R

4

Expenditure from fees

4,42,665

270

110

3,239

4,930

47,187

38,873

1,26,637

67,790

1,53,629

R

5

Expenditure from other sources

8,47,971b

3,524

230

5,604

25,959

1,04,928

79,082

2,23,768

1,78,707

2,26,169

R

6

*Total expenditure on female education

* Excluding expenditure on Schools for Europeans and Eurasians. † Including expenditure on Professional and Technical Institutions and on Schools for Europeans and Eurasians.

2,52,878

643

Central Provinces

TOTAL FOR INDIAa .

6,879

Punjab . . . . .

120

32,825

North-Western Provinces and Oudh

1,745

32,856

Bengal . . . . .

Haidrabad Assigned Districts . . . . .

76,819

Bombay . . . . .

Coorg . . . . . .

51,211

49,780

Madras . . . . .

8,636

3

R

2

R

PROVINCES*

Expenditure from Local or Municipal Fundsb

Expenditure from Provincial Funds

a

7 R

3·54

1·00

·59

1·14

3·98

4·45

2·44

2·96

5·11

3·66

8

Percentage of expenditure in columns 2 and 3 to total expenditure† on education from Public Funds

29·82

49·51

52·17

11·47

26·46

31·28

41·54

34·33

27·86

22·64

9

Percentage of Provincial expenditure in (column 2) to total expenditure in column 6

3·57

·74

·91

·45

1·90

5·21

3·54

2·90

4·37

5·22

10

Percentage of Provincial expenditure in column 2 to total expenditure on education† from Provincial Funds

4·65

·99

1·01

1·80

3·85

6·44

3·84

3·56

5·21

6·52

11

Percentage of expenditure in column 6 to total expenditure on education†

12

REMARKS.

a Excluding British Burma and all Native States that administer their own system of education. b Excluding the expenditure on Female education in Ajmir, amounting to Rs. 635.

1,01,82,684

3,24,381

20,293

2,05,076

5,28,802

12,31,047

15,77,695

26,80,510

19,82,535

16,32,345

†

Total expenditure on education from public funds (Provincial, Local and Municipal.)

EXPENDITURE ON FEMALE EDUCATION IN BRITISH INDIA IN 1881–82.

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subjected to the same strict conditions as those which regulate grants-in-aid to boys’ schools. In the first place, there is not the same efficient demand for the instruction of girls by the people themselves; and consequently there is not the same willingness to pay for it in the shape of fees. In the second place, the schoolgoing age among girls is, as already stated, of much shorter duration than among boys; and even during a girl’s brief years at school, regular attendance is not considered so strictly in the light of a daily duty. It follows, therefore, that it is difficult to maintain the same degree of discipline in a girls’ school as regards uniform progress, or the average on the rolls, and unfair to insist on the same standards of instruction. In the third place, the managers of girls’ schools have in many parts of India to provide not only for the instruction of the pupils while in school, but also for their safe conduct under female surveillance to and from their respective homes. A staff of nurses or old men has to be maintained for this purpose, and a class of expenditure, for which the Grant-in-aid Codes for boys’ schools very properly make no provision, thus becomes a legitimate and necessary charge in girls’ institutions. In some Provinces the Codes sufficiently recognise these distinctions; in others they do not. The practical results of the sufficiency or insufficiency of State aid to girls’ schools in the various Provinces have been tabulated in Chapter VIII, paragraph 480, pages 421–3, and we need not again enter into the subject here. But it will be seen from the Table on page 423 that the rate of State aid given to girls’ schools is, notwithstanding a theoretical liberality of the Rules, practically smaller in almost every Province than the rate given to boys’ primary schools. Finally, it must not be forgotten that native public opinion in the matter of girls’ instruction is very much in the same stage as it was a generation ago in regard to boys’ education on the modern system. If rigid financial tests had been applied to the extension of boys’ education in India forty years ago, it would have expanded much more slowly than it has done. We think that female education is a proper subject for a still larger expenditure than heretofore from Provincial, Municipal, and District Funds; especially by liberal encouragement to agencies that have shown a genuine interest in the cause. We have, therefore, in our Recommendations provided for a liberal treatment of girls’ schools as regards finance, and for a patient consideration of their difficulties as regards results. 634. Grants-in-aid to Girls’ Schools.—We desire that, in revising the Grantin-aid Codes, it should be borne in mind that, if female education is to receive any large extension, the school-system must be placed as much as possible in accord with the customs of the country and the feelings of the people. For many years to come, the respectable native community will desire to shelter their daughters from public observation, and to seclude them from contact with males not belonging to the family. The problem is how to reconcile school-life with these popular feelings. Our Recommendations endeavour to provide, so far as it is possible for general proposals to provide, for such an adaptation. Female teachers, female inspectors, female surveillance on the way to and from school, and arrangements sufficiently liberal to permit of the boarding-house system being extended in girls’ schools, will help towards the solution of the problem. But we hope that apart 199

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from Recommendations of a general character, such as it is the function of this Commission to make, no opportunity will be lost of taking advantage of special adaptations, applicable to individual localities, or suited to the views of particular classes of the people. 635. Inspectresses for Girls’ Schools.—In the summary immediately preceding our Recommendations, we shall briefly state our opinion as to the unsuitability of male inspection for girls’ schools. But we think it well that the practical objections to male inspection, as felt by female teachers in India, should be distinctly realised Miss Collett, the Lady Superintendent of the Ahmedabad female Training College, whose careful supervision of her students after they have gone out into the world has already been mentioned, gave important evidence on this point. After expressing her opinion that there should be at least one European Lady Inspectress for the Bombay Presidency, she thus describes the actual working of the system of male inspection now in force: “The present Deputy Inspectors are, in most cases, men who are willing and anxious to do their best, but who are quite unable to enter into, or to understand, the difficulties which beset female teachers. In the first place, the peculiar circumstances under which women in India are brought up, tend to make them very timid when they come in contact with men who are strangers to them; they have been accustomed to such a system of repression, and dependence on others, that in nine cases out of ten they will rather suffer injustice than make a stand for themselves; consequently they need a peculiar kind of treatment and encouragement, quite unnecessary in the case of male teachers. Besides this, female teachers are a new element in most villages, and their conduct is subjected to close scrutiny, and anything but benevolent criticism. I have known of cases where the Deputy Inspectors, instead of going to the girls’ schools to inspect the records, have ordered the women to bring them to their offices or houses; now the fact of a mistress going to the residence of a Deputy is quite enough to raise an evil report about her. I only instance this to show how delicate a matter the treatment of female teachers is. Again, when women are sent to village schools, they, in most cases, go to replace men who have been in charge of the schools for many years, and who are naturally enough annoyed at being turned out to make room for a female teacher. These men generally hold an influential position in the village, and they do what they can to stir up the residents against the new-comer, so that the poor mistress has, at the very commencement of her career, to contend with and overcome a good deal of smouldering animosity. Then the male assistant considers it infra dig. to be under a woman, and is often insubordinate and insulting to her, doing what he can to subvert her authority and lower her in the eyes of her pupils; when at last she is driven to report his conduct, the Deputy considers her discontented, and does not understand why she should begin by making complaints against her assistant who got on well enough with her predecessor.” 636. Female Education, School-fees.—The foregoing Table shows the small amount contributed to girls’ schools in the shape of fees. Out of a total of Rs. 200

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8,47,971 expended on female education in 1881–82, only Rs. 44,539, or little more than one twentieth, were paid as school fees. We do not, after a careful review of the evidence before the Commission, believe it possible to make any immediate or rapid change in regard to this unsatisfactory aspect of female education in India. We find that many of the most successful of the girls’ schools or colleges were compelled for many years to abstain from levying fees at all, while a large proportion actually paid the pupils for attending. Both these practices exist at the present day, although the stronger institutions have discontinued them. They first found it possible to give up paying the girls for attendance, then by slow and cautious degrees they began to levy fees. We look forward to a time when it will be practicable to insist upon adequate fees in girls’ schools, and we think that managers of girls’ schools should be encouraged to take steps in that direction. But we do not think that the time is yet come for any hard and fast rules on this subject. While, therefore, in the summary preceding our Recommendations, we approve generally of the principle of requiring fees we do not think it essential at present that they should be levied in girls’ schools as a condition of grant in aid. Much less do we think the time is ripe for laying down any general rule as to the rate of fees in girls’ schools. Even when the practice of requiring fees becomes more general, we are of opinion that liberal exemptions should be made in favour of poor girls of promising talents. 637. Prizes for Girls’ Schools.—Indian girls show keen emulation in class, and their faculties seem to develope at an even earlier age than those of boys. Prizes or rewards for progress in school are not only treasured by the girls themselves, but are a source of very great pleasure in their family circle. Liberality in the distribution of prizes to girls’ schools, acts, therefore, as an incentive, which those who are anxious to extend female education should not disregard. This is well understood by the native managers or committees of management of girls’ schools. In some Provinces there is a tendency to make the visit of any officer of position an occasion for a distribution of gifts to the girls. It is often difficult, however, to find books in the local vernacular suitable for this purpose. A girls’ literature has still to be created in India, and the prizes for girls’ schools often consist of what are really lesson books, or even blank copy books, rather than interesting tales. Many substitutes for books are from time to time adopted, such as pencils, trinkets, and above all, sweetmeats. When a benevolent native wishes to give a treat to a girls’ school, the first step which suggests itself to his mind is to issue a wholesale order to the village confectioner. On special occasions, a distribution of clothes is made. Such distributions of sweetmeats, or pieces of cloth, are made with an equal hand to the clever and stupid, to the industrious and the idle. But they serve to stimulate public interest in female education, and donations of sweetmeats were found useful in starting the movement, and in drawing an attendance to schools whose managers have since been able to discontinue the practice. We hope that the production of attractive books suitable for prizes in girls’ schools, will receive the attention of the native associations in different parts of India who are now evincing so much interest in the education of their countrywomen. 201

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638. Scholarships in Girls’ Schools.—There is, however, one form of reward which, even in girls’ schools, should be distinctly recognised as won by merit, and as intended to enable the pupil to make still further progress. We refer to scholarships. We believe that scholarships should be given on easier terms in girls’ than in boys’ schools, but they should be given not as charitable doles, but by competition or as the rewards for good work. We have already provided for another class of aid for poor girls, by liberal exemptions from the payment of fees. We are anxious that scholarships should be used, not only as a means for raising the standard of instruction, but also as an inducement to the most promising girls to remain longer at school than at present. We have, therefore, recommended that, while special provision be made for girls’ scholarships, a certain proportion of them shall be reserved for girls not under twelve years of age. Such scholarships, like all others, should be given as readily and as liberally to schools under private managers as to departmental schools. 639. “Artificial Stimulants” to Girls’ Schools.—We are aware that some of the suggestions in the foregoing paragraphs, and several of the specific Recommendations which follow, will be held to create what have been called artificial stimulants to the progress of female education. We can only reply that, after a careful consideration of the evidence collected throughout India, we find that girls’ schools have been started only with the aid of such encouragement, and that it is in many places still required for their maintenance and extension. We hope that the time will come when the demand for female education may be as efficient and as widely spread as the demand has now become for boys’ education. But we again repeat that the evidence proves that that time has not yet arrived, and meanwhile we think that it would be unwise to neglect any of the harmless methods of encouraging female education which have been found successful in the past, and which are in accord with native custom and public feeling at present. It should, however, be noticed that it is chiefly in the hands of private managers that these “artificial stimulants” can be used with good effect. 640. Summary.—Before enumerating our specific Recommendations with regard to girls’ schools, we desire to briefly review the situation as disclosed in the foregoing paragraphs. It will have been seen that female education is still in an extremely backward condition, and that it needs to be fostered in every legitimate way. In some Provinces, the sympathies of the people do not yet run sufficiently in this direction to induce local bodies to devote to female education any of the funds at their disposal. Hence we think it expedient to recommend that public funds of all kinds—local, municipal, and provincial—should be chargeable in an equitable proportion for the support of girls’ schools as well as boys’ schools; and that the former, being in an earlier stage of development, should receive even something more than what might appear to be a strictly impartial share of encouragement. Public opinion in this matter cannot yet be accepted as the standard of what ought to be done. We do not think it necessary to define the classes of girls’ schools which should receive encouragement. The principle of religious neutrality 202

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prevents aid from being given for religious teaching as such, but we see no reason why such secular teaching as is actually given, if only incidentally, in schools intended mainly for religious teaching, should not be pro tanto rewarded. If a girl, in learning to read a religious book, acquires the power of reading the vernacular, it is at least something accomplished, and may serve as a basis for something more. There are so many obstacles to the progress of female education that we think the conditions on which aid is granted to it should be made as easy as possible. It is, moreover, right that more liberal aid should be given for the education of those classes who cannot pay for it themselves, and whose children are often required to help in household work. For these, rules requiring regular attendance should be easy, lest they defeat their own object. Generally, the maintenance of a girls’ school is more expensive than that of a boys’ school. Servants have to bring the children from their homes, and the number that can be expected to attend is smaller. Hence it is sometimes found that rates of aid even 50 per cent. higher than those for boys, fail to cover the additional expenditure required. Again, the short time that girls are allowed to remain at school leads to a very large percentage of the pupils being in the lowest stages of instruction. As these need as much attention as those more advanced, it is only just that allowance should in some way be made for them. One great objection made by the native public to the instruction of girls, is that it is of no practical use to them. Too much stress should not be laid on this, as the value of education to a woman must of necessity be unknown to those who have no experience of it. But it ought not to be taken for granted that the instruction which is suitable for a boy must necessarily be good for an Indian girl. In purely literary subjects, girls need not go so far as boys, and there are subjects of a practical kind to which girls might at least be introduced during their school course. It does not appear that much attention has hitherto been given to the production of books suitable for girls, and in some cases the books used have not been selected with sufficient care. 641. Summary—continued.—We approve of the principle that education should to some extent be paid for by the recipient. But the desire for girls’ education has at present to be fostered, and in many parts of the country it has yet to be created. Hence, we would not make the taking of fees an essential condition of obtaining grants, although we would guard against unfair competition in this respect between rival schools. To extend the period given to the education of girls is obviously desirable, and we think that one important means of attaining this object will be the offer of scholarships. If some of these be reserved for girls beyond the usual age to which school attendance extends, there may gradually arise a desire for more knowledge than can be attained within that narrow period. This points in the direction of secondary education for girls, in which a beginning has scarcely been made. We propose that the opportunities for such instruction should be judiciously extended, but only where private effort indicates that the desire for it exists. There are many difficulties in the way of young women attending a school at any distance from their homes. For this reason we think that in 203

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special cases it might be well to encourage school-managers to make provision for boarders. It may perhaps be found that Municipal and Local Boards are not in all cases prepared to undertake the management of girls’ schools; to force it upon unwilling persons would not be likely to lead to satisfactory results. But where a Board does undertake the management, we think its authority ought to be real and effective. It ought to be able to appoint any mistress it selects, provided, of course, that she is in the judgment of the Education Department qualified for the work. Nor would we deprive the Board of the power of promoting or removing its own teachers, although to check arbitrary or hasty action the Department ought to have a veto in such cases. It should also be borne in mind that as the available funds are limited, and as results are greater and more capable of being tested in girls’ schools than in zananas, the former have higher claims than the latter on State aid. 642. Summary—continued.—We have seen that one of the principal obstacles to the extension of female education is the difficulty of obtaining suitable teachers. There can be no doubt that women are preferable for this purpose to men; and while we would not altogether exclude male teachers from girls’ schools, we believe that female teachers should be gradually and cautiously substituted for them. In order to induce girls to look forward to teaching as a profession, it seems desirable to encourage pupil-teachers wherever the system is practicable. The pupil-teachers should furnish material for Normal schools, and for Normal classes in connection with ordinary schools where there is sufficient teaching power. The careful and sympathetic management required for such classes, renders them peculiarly suitable for private agency to superintend; and when established by this means, they should be liberally aided. Among other ways of assisting them, the grant of a bonus for each pupil finishing the course, commends itself. At the same time the aid given them should not depend too largely on such success at the final examination. There does not seem to be good reason for confining certificates for teachers to those who have been trained in Normal schools. Fitness to teach should be recognised wherever and in whatever way it may have been acquired, although a Normal school training will always have a special value of its own. The number of young women qualified to teach is so small, that it seems necessary to recruit it by special inducements offered both to the pupils and to those who may instruct them. In some places the wives of schoolmasters are almost the only class available as schoolmistresses, and it is expedient to attract as many of them as possible to the work. In other places young women of mixed parentage may be largely employed, if only they can be persuaded to qualify themselves by a sufficient knowledge of the vernacular. By the different plans here indicated, something may be done gradually in the way of raising up a class of women fitted to educate the girls of another generation. What no sweeping measure could at once effect, may be accomplished by a multiplicity of minor plans, each contributing a little. 643. Summary—concluded.—But in the existing circumstances of the women of India, the mere establishment of schools will be by no means 204

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sufficient to bring about the general spread of education among them. Public sentiment keeps them secluded in zananas, many from their infancy, and many more from the age of eleven or twelve. From this it follows that the education of girls of the better classes cannot be carried on in schools to anything like completion, and that in the case of many it cannot even be begun. Some plan is needed for conveying instruction to those who cannot leave their homes to seek for it, and for prosecuting further the teaching which may have been begun in schools. Agencies for zanana teaching are conducting this work with considerable success. Actuated in many cases by religious motives, zanana teachers have brought some measure of secular instruction into the homes of those who would otherwise have been wholly debarred from it. We see no reason why this secular instruction, imparted under the supervision of ladies worthy of confidence, should not be recognised and assisted, so far as it can be tested by a proper inspecting agency. Rules for aid to zanana teaching should be drawn up in consultation with those who conduct the work, and should be such as to assist them substantially in extending their operations so far as concerns secular teaching. Associations have arisen in some places, aiming at the extension and improvement of female education. These also might be encouraged so far as they produce secular results. In order that these results may be fairly estimated, it seems necessary that the services of sympathetic and well-qualified inspectresses should be more largely made use of. In the present condition of female education in India, the visits of Inspectors are sometimes not only futile, but a positive hindrance to progress. And even where this is not so, a woman is generally much better able to deal with little girls than any man can be. With respect to the management also of girls’ schools, it seems most desirable to obtain the help, wherever possible, of ladies who take an interest in the subject, whether Native or European. Nor is the object likely to be attained unless interest is promoted among Native gentlemen by giving them a share in the supervision of the schools. Those who show their sympathy by sending their own daughters to school are more likely to assist in directing the movement, and in rendering it popular among their neighbours. 644. Female Education: Recommendations.—Our Recommendations are— 1. That female education be treated as a legitimate charge alike on Local, on Municipal, and on Provincial Funds, and receive special encouragement. 2. That all female schools or orphanages, whether on a religious basis or not, be eligible for aid so far as they produce any secular results, such as a knowledge of reading or of writing. 3. That the conditions of aid to girls’ schools be easier than to boys’ schools, and the rates higher—more especially in the case of those established for poor or for low-caste girls. 4. That the rules for grants be so framed as to allow for the fact that girls’ schools generally contain a large proportion of beginners, and of those who cannot attend school for so many hours a day, or with such regularity, as boys. 205

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5. That the standards of instruction for primary girls’ schools be simpler than those for boys’ schools, and be drawn up with special reference to the requirements of home life, and to the occupations open to women. 6. That the greatest care be exercised in the selection of suitable text-books for girls’ schools, and that the preparation of such books be encouraged. 7. That, while fees be levied where practicable, no girls’ school be debarred from a grant on account of its not levying fees. 8. That special provision be made for girls’ scholarships, to be awarded after examination, and that, with a view to encouraging girls to remain longer at school, a certain proportion of them be reserved for girls not under twelve years of age. 9. That liberal aid be offered for the establishment, in suitable localities, of girls’ schools in which English should be taught in addition to the vernacular. 10. That special aid be given, where necessary, to girls’ schools that make provision for boarders. 11. That the various Departments of Public Instruction be requested to arrange, in concert with managers of girls’ schools, for the revision of the code of Rules for grants-in-aid in accordance with the above Recommendations. 12. That, as mixed schools, other than infant schools, are not generally suited to the conditions of this country, the attendance of girls at boys’ schools be not encouraged, except in places where girls’ schools cannot be maintained. 13. That the establishment of infant schools or classes, under schoolmistresses, be liberally encouraged. 14. That female schools be not placed under the management of Local Boards or of Municipalities unless they express a wish to take charge of them. 15. That the first appointment of schoolmistresses in girls’ schools under the management of Municipal or Local Boards be left to such Boards, with the proviso that the mistress be either certificated, or approved by the Department; and that subsequent promotion or removal be regulated by the Boards, subject to the approval of the Department. 16. That rules be framed to promote the gradual supersession of male by female teachers in all girls’ schools. 17. That, in schools under female teachers, stipendiary pupil-teacherships be generally encouraged. 18. That the attention of local Governments be invited to the question of establishing additional Normal schools or classes; and that those under private management receive liberal aid, part of which might take the form of a bonus for every pupil passing the certificate examination. 19. That the departmental certificate examinations for teachers be open to all candidates, wherever prepared. 20. That teachers in schools for general education be encouraged by special rewards to prepare pupils for examinations for teachers’ certificates, and that girls be encouraged by the offer of prizes to qualify for such certificates. 21. That liberal inducements be offered to the wives of schoolmasters to qualify as teachers, and that in suitable cases widows be trained as schoolmistresses, 206

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care being taken to provide them with sufficient protection in the places where they are to be employed as teachers. 22. That, in Districts where European or Eurasian young women are required as teachers in native schools, special encouragement be given to them to qualify in a vernacular language. 23. That grants for zanana teaching be recognised as a proper charge on public funds, and be given under rules which will enable the agencies engaged in that work to obtain substantial aid for such secular teaching as may be tested by an inspectress, or other female agency. 24. That associations for the promotion of female education, by examinations or otherwise, be recognised by the Department, and encouraged by grants under suitable conditions. 25. That female inspecting agency be regarded as essential to the full development of female education, and be more largely employed than hitherto. 26. That an alternative examination in subjects suitable for girls be established, corresponding in standard to the Matriculation examination, but having no relation to any existing University course. 27. That endeavours be made to secure the services of native gentlemen interested in female education on committees for the supervision of girls’ schools, and that European and native ladies also be invited to assist such committees.

Notes 1. Bombay Provincial Report, page 55. 2. A letter from the Bishop of Bombay on this subject, dated October 31st, 1882, was laid before the Commission. 3. See Note E on the fourth page of Table 1b at the end of this Report.

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4. The methods of instruction, and the languages and subjects in which the pupils of these several institutions are instructed, Methods and subjects of will be most conveniently discussed under the instruction following divisions:— (a.) Religious schools. (b.) Partly religious schools. (c.) Secular schools. The main object of the Veda schools of the Hindus is to teach young Bráhmans to recite mantras and portions of the Vedas, and thus to fit them in after-life to assist at the various rites and ceremonies of the Hindu Religious schools. household. The instruction given in these schools is limited to the correct recitation of the sacred text. The pupil reads each passage aloud to the guru, who carefully corrects his mistakes, and when the youth has accurately apprehended the words, he commits them to memory. No detailed explanation is given of the subject-matter; and much of what is learnt is not understood by the pupil. The curriculum in the Borah Madrasa at Surat used to be an extensive one; but all study has now virtually ceased in the institution. The teaching of the other Madrasas of this class is chiefly directed to the interpretation of the Kurán, but incidentally the pupils’ studies extend to Arabic Grammar. At the Jijibhái Dádábhái Pársi Madrasa the studies of the pupils are confined to the writings of Zoroaster in the original Zend and in the later Pehlvi and Pázend version. The curriculum is of 2 or 2½ years’ duration and comprises chiefly the Pársi moral, sacrificial and ceremonial laws (Yasná and Vandidád); the Pársi liturgy (Báj and Afringán) and a book of psalms and invocations (Visperád). But, just as in the Hindu Vedashálá, the Pársi pupil too often learns much of this literature by rote without understanding it. The method pursued in the Muhammadan mosque-schools is somewhat similar. There are doubtless examples to be found 208

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of a Mulla, who is well versed in the Kurán, expounding it to his favourite pupils. But as a general rule the pupils simply learn to read the words of the Kurán and to commit portions of it to memory. In rural districts the school children are to be seen seated before the Mulla on the raised verandah of a mosque, all reading aloud at the same moment from the books in front of them and swaying their bodies to-and-fro as they read. The noise and confusion of this performance does not seem to strike the teacher as objectionable. But this is not perhaps to be wondered at, as he is usually an almost illiterate man, being barely able to read and wholly unable to write. Some mosques received a Government grant which has been continued to them since the time of the Muhammadan rule, and in them the Kázi is expected to teach the Kurán as part of his official duty. In such cases the teaching is of a somewhat more intelligent type than that just described. The Hindu Sanskrit schools teach grammar, logic, medicine, and philosophy and are confined to Bráhman pupils. With the exception of those who study medicine, the pupils usually become Purániks, and practise as such in the temples or in the houses of rich men. The Muhammadan schools, besides Partly religious schools. teaching the Arabic Kurán, give elementary instruction in Persian and in Hindustáni or Arabic-Sindhi. The pupils, however, are rarely taught anything except reading, writing, and notation. Arithmetical tables and the four simple rules of arithmetic, which constitute the greater part of the curriculum of the Hindu primary secular schools are almost universally neglected. So also are grammar, geography, and history. Still the central fact that a moral and literary work like the Kurán forms the chief subject of study in every Muhammadan school, should not be overlooked; for there can be little doubt, that if these schools could secure more intelligent teaching they would become the germ of an intellectual revival among the Muhammadan community. The partly religious schools of the Pársis are both of a primary and of an advanced order. The primary schools give a course of secular instruction in Gujaráthi, which is very similar to that prescribed by the departmental standards; and the girls who attend such schools are also taught needle-work and embroidery. Religious instruction from the Kordeh Avesta (a selection of prayers in Zend and Pázend) is given by a separate teacher who is usually a Mobed or priest. In an advanced institution like Sir Jamsetji Jijibhái’s Zend Madrasa or the Mulla Firoz’s Madrasa the curriculum embraces instruction in the Zend Avesta and in Pehlvi, Sanskrit, Persian, and English. In Pelhvi the pupils read the Dinkárd (a work that is partly an exposition of the Zoroastrian religion); Adárbad’s Pandnámá (a book of moral precepts); the Ardáiviráf (an allegory resembling the Pilgrim’s Progress); Bundaheshni (a treatise on cosmogony); and Pehlvi translations of Vandidád, Yásná, Visperád, and Khordeh Avesta. The instruction given in Persian, Sanskrit, and English is fully up to the requirements of the University entrance examination; and on the whole this institution may be described as the most flourishing Madrasa in the Presidency. The Goanese schools give elementary instruction in Goanese and Latin; and the pupils are further instructed in the Christian religion by the Goanese parish priests. 209

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These institutions, which, as we have shown, are peculiar to the Hindus, are all primary vernacular schools, in which the medium of instruction is Maráthi, Gujaráthi, Banya-Sindhi or Kánarese, according to Secular schools. the province in which the schools are established. The subjects of study vary considerably in different schools. Many schools teach only writing; others only writing and multiplication-tables; but in many towns the larger schools have extended their programme and more or less follow the departmental standards of instruction. A school belonging to the last-mentioned category teaches the native multiplication-tables, mental arithmetic, involving simple accounts, slate-arithmetic up to simple division, reading and writing the script and printed vernacular character, and the geography and history of the province or zilla. A pupil in a school of this description will go through the course somewhat as follows:—For the first two or three months he learns to count from 1 up to 100 and to write the numerals on a sanded board or on the ground. He then begins the native multiplication-tables. These are of two kinds. The integral tables go up to 20 × 20 and to 10 × 30 or 40; they also include a table of the squares of all numbers from 1 to 100, and concrete tables of money, weight and capacity. The fractional tables consist of multiples up to 100 times of ½, ¼, ¾, 1¼, 1½, 2½, 3½, and 7½. This formidable array of figures takes a boy from two to three years to commit to memory. But during this time he is also learning to read and write the simple and compound letters of the alphabet and easy syllables and words. Such is the first stage of his studies, on completing which, the boy proceeds to learn the four simple rules of arithmetic and the practical application of the fractional and integral tables to simple problems in mental arithmetic. Much time is also devoted to exercises in handwriting; as a rule the whole morning of each day is spent copy-writing and in learning to read and transcribe proper names and the formal preambles and endings employed in private and commercial correspondence. When a boy has attained some readiness and fluency at these various exercises, he enters upon his third stage, which consists of more advanced exercises in mental arithmetic, writing and reading, with the addition of geography and history. In a few select schools in Gujaráth and the Deccan, the mental arithmetic at this stage is of an extensive character and involves the learning of rules and formulæ for the calculation of practice, interest and discount. The writing-exercises consist chiefly of copying out manuscripts, many of which the pupil laboriously learns by heart, as he spells them out word by word. To some extent the exercise is also a reading-lesson; but the first and second departmental reading-books are chiefly used for this purpose, and in teaching them some attempt is made to impart the first rudiments of vernacular grammar. It is now, too, that the departmental wallmap of the zilla is studied and followed up by oral instruction in the history of the province. A pupil takes at least five years to go through the complete course even under an excepttionally good teacher. But as a matter of fact very few boys ever go through the whole curriculum. It must also be borne in mind that this curriculum is confined to select town-schools, the masters of which have felt the necessity of advancing with the times and of borrowing from a system that has proved 210

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attractive in the people’s cess-schools. The large majority of Pantojis teach only the multiplication-tables and the reading and writing of the script vernacular character, though they have begun to extensively use the lithographed Modi-reading books that have been published by the Educational Department. The ordinary daily routine of a Hindu indigenous school is nearly the same in all the parts of the Presidency. Each morning at about 6 o’clock the Pantoji, who is in some cases a Bráhman1 and the priest of many of the families whose children attend the school, goes round the village and collects his pupils. This process usually occupies some time. At one house the pupil has to be persuaded to come to school; at another, the parents have some special instructions to give the master regarding the refractoriness of their son; at a third, he is asked to administer chastisement on the spot. As soon as he has collected a sufficient number of his pupils he takes them to the school. For the first half hour a Bhupáli or invocation to the Sun, Saraswati, Ganpati, or some other deity, is chanted by the whole school. After this the boys who can write, trace the letters of their Kittas or copy-slips with a dry pen, the object of this exercise being to give free play to the fingers and wrist and to accustom them to the sweep of the letters. When the tracing-lesson is over the boys begin to write copies; and the youngest children who have been hitherto merely looking on are taken in hand either by the master’s son or by one of the elder pupils. The master himself generally confines his attention to one or two of the oldest pupils and to those whose instruction he has stipulated to finish within a given time. All the pupils are scated in one small room or verandah, and the confusion of sounds, which arises from three or four sets of boys reading and shouting out their tables all at the same moment, almost baffles description. One of the Educational Inspectors writes: “Each pupil recites at the top of his voice, and the encouragement to noise is found in the fact that the parents often compute the energy of the master from the volume of sound proceeding from the school. This is no exaggeration. I have myself heard villagers complain that our Government schools lack the swing and energy of the indigenous schools.” The school breaks up about 9 or 10 o’clock, and re-assembles at 2 in the afternoon. The concluding lesson is given at 4 P.M. For this the boys are ranged in two rows facing each other, while two of the older pupils are stationed at one end between the two rows and dictate the multiplication-tables, step by step, for the rest of the boys to shout after them in chorus. When this is over, the school is dismissed and the master personally conducts the younger children to their homes. The school nominally meets every day of the week, Sundays included. But the frequent holidays on account of Hindu feasts and fasts, and the closure of the school twice a month on Amávásyá or new-moon day and Paurnimá or full-moon day, fairly take the place of the weekly and other holidays in English schools. In harvest-time also, many of the rural indigenous schools are entirely closed. It is still the practice in some indigenous schools, though the custom is rapidly dying out, for the pupils on the eve of Amávásyá and Paurnimá to perform the ceremony of Pátipuja or slate-worship. A quarter of an anna, a betel-nut, half a seer of grain, 211

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a little saffron and turmeric, and a few flowers, are laid upon the slate of each pupil as offerings to Saraswati, the Goddess of learning. Before these each boy reverently bows down, and then places the slate for a few minutes on his head. The master afterwards appropriates the offerings. Crowded, noisy and ill-regulated as the school-room is, the majority of these schools fairly accomplish their main object, which is to teach reading, writing and the native multiplication-tables. Our returns show that nearly one-third of the pupils are able to read and write and that about one-sixth know their tables. These statistics, however, are not based on any actual examination of the pupils, but on the opinions of the Pantojis themselves. It appears to be generally agreed that the punishments inflicted upon the pupils of indigenous schools are less barbarous and severe than they were 20 years ago. There is still, however, considerable room for improvement in this respect. 5. We have shown in paragraph 2 of this section that the indigenous primary schools have slowly but steadily increased in numbers since 1842, and that last year they contained about 12,000 more scholars than in 1855. There is also a general improvement observable in their management The effect of the operations and method of teaching, which is both directly and of the Educational Department indirectly due to the operations of the Educational on indigenous schools. Department. The departmental cess-schools are admitted by all to have greatly raised the intellectual level of the upper and middle classes; and indirectly this has forced the indigenous schoolmaster to improve his school or yield to a more intelligent rival. But the direct effect of the department’s operations has been greater still. The indigenous schools have never flourished in the rural districts; but in the towns they have of late years steadily increased in efficiency, and this result is unanimously attributed by the Educational Inspectors to the stimulating influence of the urban cess-schools, which are extremely well equipped and popular. The Inspector’s reports all testify to the fact that the old aversion to printed books and to the teaching of elementary grammar, geography and history is dying out. The information which we have collected from the indigenous schoolmaster’s own statements amply confirms this view. Our returns show that 17,000 scholars, in more than one-fourth of the indigenous schools, now use the printed departmental books and that most of the larger institutions profess to teach the elements of vernacular grammar and the geography and history of the zilla or province. But there is another reason for this change that has come over the indigenous schools. In the year 1870 Mr. Peile completely assimilated the standard of instruction in the two lowest classes of the cess-school with the indigenous school-course, the immediate effect of which was to place the indigenous schools in organic relation with the department as ancillary institutions and to assure their stability and popularity. To this stroke of policy the indigenous schoolmaster is now slowly responding by extending his curriculum on the lines of the departmental system of instruction. He is also showing an increasing disposition to avail himself of the special grant-in-aid rules, which Mr. Peile framed for the indigenous schools in 1870. So long as the Pantoji regarded the neighbouring 212

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Government school as a modern rival that he could never hope to equal, it was natural that he should cling all the more closely to his ancestral modes of teaching, which gave his school a distinctive character and appealed to wholly different tastes from those which the Government school satisfied. But now that he has begun to see that the people freely use his school as a preparatory institution to the higher cess-school, and that his position, instead of being threatened by the action of the cess-schools, is strengthened and improved, his desire for isolation is fast disappearing. At the end of the year, 73 of the larger indigenous schools were receiving grants-in-aid; and there can be no doubt from the evidence and other information lately received by the Commission that many more schools are prepared to accept the rules, if slightly modified. As regards the higher indigenous institutions it is generally believed that they have diminished both in numbers and efficiency during the last 50 years. The Sanskrit schools have yielded place to the new order of colleges inaugurated by the University. The Vedic schools and Madrasas, which were almost purely religious institutions, have lost ground from causes which are only remotely due to the operations of the Educational Department. An increasing carelessness in the performance of the complex rites and ceremonies of the Hindu religion is generally admitted on all sides; and by Hindus themselves it is believed to point to a time not very remote, when the services of a priest, well acquainted with the sacred mysteries, will no longer be in any great demand. Already the employments to which the pupils in these schools used to aspire are much fewer and less lucrative than they once were. 6. The tuition-fees charged in indigenous schools vary considerably, not only in each district, but in almost every town or village. So far as there is any fixed scale, it appears to range from 6 pies up to Rs. 2 per mensem. But this is exclusive of payments in kind which are often considerable. The average rate paid in a villageschool is probably not more than four annas; while in urban schools it is somewhat higher. The master sometimes receives all his Fees and other sources of emoluments in kind instead of in cash, but more income. frequently in both forms. Occasionally he occupies a private house rent-free; or his school is accommodated in the village-chavdi or in a temple or mosque. In some villages in lieu of fees he receives a fixed annual income from the villagers, or if a Muhammadan from the mosque-funds. It is also a common practice for the master to agree to instruct a pupil in certain subjects within a given time for a lump payment, which is sometimes as much as Rs. 100. We have already referred to the presents which some masters receive at the time of Pátipujá or the slate-ceremony. It is also not uncommon for the master to receive a present in money, clothes, or grain, when a pupil begins to learn his multiplication-tables, and again when he begins the alphabet; and similar presents are made on the occasion of the boy’s marriage and thread-ceremonies. In most mosque-schools it is a standing rule that each pupil should pay the master one pice and a cake of bread every Thursday, though this rule is often modified so as to enable the master to receive the bread by daily instalments. On the whole it is estimated that the master of a rural school seldom receives more than Rs. 8, and 213

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in the smaller villages more than Rs. 5 per mensem in money and kind, and that in urban schools a master receives on the average about twice the latter sum; while in the largest schools his monthly income is in some instances as much as Rs. 50. It should be added that in rural districts the indigenous schoolmaster is very irregularly paid. Not unfrequently he fails to recover his arrears and is compelled to break up his school and remove elsewhere. In the smaller villages of under 700 inhabitants he has never yet succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing; and it is also important to note that he is generally compelled in his own interest to exclude children of the poorer classes who are unable to pay tuition-fees. The rate-supported schools, which admit all classes and instruct from 20 to 45 per cent. of the pupils without charge, are the only schools which have hitherto had the least chance of becoming permanent in such villages. In the higher indigenous institutions no fees are levied. Most of such schools are permanently endowed, and those which are not so supported are maintained by charitable persons who can afford to be independent of tuition-fees. 7. A consideration of the position which indigenous schools ought to fill in a complete organization of primary education cannot be separated from the whole question of the relations of Government to private Recommendations. enterprise, the duties of municipalities, and the relative advantages of the Bombay cess-schools. The whole subject must be looked at from several points of view and the arguments arranged on each side. This part of the section must therefore be somewhat long, but it will enable us to treat subsequent recommendations with greater conciseness. The first question to be considered is that of the ways and means of primary education and the liabilities with which the several funds available are already charged. The second part of this section will involve a comparison of indigenous and cess-schools. In the third we shall treat of our recommendations. The ways and means of primary education consist mainly of the cess contributions (or rural educational cess as it may be called), municipal grants, both of which are aided by tuition-fees, and the assignment Ways and means of primary from provincial funds, which we regard as a granteducation. in-aid to primary education. The liabilities of the cess-income are sufficiently recognized and distinct. District committees are bound by law and equity to expend the local cess for the benefit of the cesscontributions in the district in which it is raised. In considering the whole subject we lay particular stress on this consideration. We are impressed with the conviction that the wishes and interests of the cess-payers must be the leading factor in deciding whether cess-funds should be spent on cess-schools or on indigenous schools. The case of the provincial assignment is more difficult. We regard the provincial assignment in the spirit in which it was viewed in the Government of India Resolution No. 60, Home Department, dated February 11th, 1871, namely, as a grant-in-aid of local resources raised for elementary education. We therefore lay down the principle that cess-funds are entitled to their full share of this provision in proportion to the cess-income, and that municipalities or towns cannot justly 214

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claim a larger share than is proportioned to the municipal expenditure on primary schools, which consists of a small portion of cess-income raised in the town and of a municipal grant or voluntary contributions Funds for primary education with the addition of the school-fees. If this princiare unfairly distributed. ple is affirmed, very important results will follow. We shall show presently (page 102) that in 1881–82, 156 municipalities received a grant from provincial revenues of Rs. 2,17,272 in aid of their own resources which were Rs. 1,34,580. On the other hand, the rural cess-schools received but Rs. 29,418 in aid of their cess-income of Rs. 7,08,327. This inequality of distribution, which bears no proportion to local sacrifices and resources, cannot in our opinion be justified.We advocate the entire separation both in finance and in administration of rural and urban primary education. This separation seems a necessary corollary to the measures which his Excellency the Governor of Bombay in Council has taken in connection with the local self-government scheme. When the severance of administration has been completed, the provincial assignment should bear a strict proportion to municipal or rural expenditure on primary education. The further question, however, arises whether the introduction of the new policy should not coincide with a re-adjustment of the existing grant. Such a readjustment would reduce the ways and means that are now applied to urban primary instruction and pro tanto increase those available for rural elementary schools, which could be spent either in aiding indigenous schools or extending cess-schools. Arguments are not wanting against a change of this sort. Two of these arguments must be stated. The first is that the introduction of self-government and the transfer of the control of primary education in towns to town-committees is an experiment. It may not be politic, even under cover of redressing an anomaly, to transfer to town-boards a charge without the corresponding income which has hitherto met that charge. The association of responsibilities with increased liabilities on the threshold of a great political experiment may prejudice the popularity and success of that experiment. The second argument for leaving to the municipalities the funds which are now assigned to urban-schools is, that experience has shown the elasticity of urban expenditure on primary education. It is in the towns that the elementary cess-schools are crowded with hundreds of scholars, and thelargest indigenous or private schools are calling out for help. If the State is so liberal as to start the new experiment with ample means, it can fairly lay down the principle that the inevitable extension of primary education in the cities and towns must be met from municipal or local resources, until in the course of years the inequality of which we complain has reduced itself. According to this view the expenditure will inevitably increase, whilst the provincial assignment will remain stationary, and the increasing cost will be met by increased local resources. We recognise the force of these arguments. We appreciate the inconvenience of reducing a grant just when the corresponding expenditure is transferred to municipal committees, and we believe that the inequality will disappear in the course of the next decade in the larger towns. In the smaller towns, however, we fear that the committees will only spend up to the income now transferred without 215

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making greater sacrifices or increasing their local contributions. On the other hand, the witnesses who have been cross-examined by us (Mr. Sorabji Shapurji Bengali, C.I.E., in answer to Mr. Lee-Warner’s first question, page 8, and the Honourable Mr. Badrudin Tyabji and other witnesses) who represent in a special sense municipal feeling, honourably admit the injustice and disparity of the present assignment. Public gratitude is usually not long-lived. In a year or two the concession now granted will be forgotten, and the necessary sacrifices, which ought to be made by municipalities to provide for urban primary education, are more likely to be made at the outset whilst public sentiment is stirred to a sense of its new dignity and responsibilities than later on. As soon as the charges of instruction increase, fresh demands will be made on the State, and their refusal will put out of mind the liberality of Government in starting municipal committees with excessive grants at the expense of rural committees. The matter must also be viewed from the stand-point of the district committees, and exclusive consideration must not be paid to urban committees. The district or taluka committees are already sensible of the injustice done to them, and demand the re-adjustment of the provincial assignment which they have long awaited with impatience. We have shown that for the past 12 years the levy of a non-agricultural cess or a municipal education-rate has been discussed, and the rural committees regard the present opportunity as favourable for a settlement of their own claims. Between these conflicting claims the opinion at which we arrive is as follows. If it is considered impossible for Government to increase their assignment for primary education, we hold that the inequality of distribution should at once be rectified. The fund available for rural primary education must henceforth be entirely separated from the ways and means of urban education. The cess income, which will continue to form the main local resources of the former, must be supplemented by a proportionate share of the provincial assignment: and the municipal grant, together with the portion of cess funds paid by the residents in towns and other local contributions, can only claim to receive its proportion of the provincial assignment. But we strongly press on Government the need for a larger assignment of public revenues in aid of local expenditure on primary education. This might in part be provided by an imperial grant which we are unanimously of opinion should be annually made to each local government or administration. In part also it might be provided by an addition from provincial revenues. How inadequate the present grant is will appear at a glance. Excluding the cost of colleges for training masters from which both town and village schools benefit, and the shares of the cost of inspection and direction, the total cost of maintaining the departmental schools and school-houses for primary education in the British districts of Bombay for 1881–82 was Rs. 10,89,597, of which the provincial assignment was only Rs. 2,46,690. In other words local resources, which were Rs. 8,42,907, were aided by a grant of 23 per cent. by the State. But the disparity of the assignment of this contribution of 23 per cent. to towns and villages respectively will appear from these figures. 156 municipal towns provided Rs. 1,34,580

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for primary education in the shape of fees, cess contributions, and municipal grants. They received from the State Rs. 2,17,272, being 88 per cent. of the total State grant-in-aid to primary schools for boys and 161 per cent. of urban resources. The rural districts provided Rs. 7,08,327 for primary education in the shape of local resources, and received from the State only Rs. 29,418, or less than 12 per cent. of the whole State assignment, being a grant-in-aid of local effort of 4 per cent. It is of course open to the department to argue that the cess income and the assignment form one single fund, and that it is not fair to regard any particular expenditure as made from cess funds or the Rural funds, as well as provincial assignment separately. But this view of urban, have a claim on the prothe case will only strengthen our argument. If the vincial grant. great deficiency between the urban resources and the urban expenditure is regarded as supplied direct from cess funds, then the expenditure of the contributions of village cess-payers in towns, where those contributors do not reside, only accentuates the complaint of unfairness, and almost deserves the charge of an illegal appropriation of cess money. Therefore we have preferred to take the view, which is quite arbitrary, but more favourable to the department, that the provincial assignment is a sum voted by Government for primary education, which according to the discretion of the Education Department is spent in towns or villages according to the wants of either. We have shown that of the assignment 156 municipalities receive more than 88 per cent. and the rural schools less than 12 per cent. We have further shown that this distribution bears no proportion whatever to local resources. The towns are aided by a grant-in-aid of 161 per cent. of their own resources, and the rural schools by a grant-in-aid of only 4 per cent. Our charge of unfairness and our claim for a re-adjustment depends, then, upon the question whether the provincial assignment is really a grant-in-aid or merely a free grant from Government to primary education unfettered by any liabilities or charges whatsoever. We are unanimously of opinion that it was intended as a grant-in-aid and considered as such until a recent date. The proceedings of the Government of India in the Home Department, No. 60, dated February 11th, 1871, leave on our minds no doubt of the intention of Government. We extract these sentences:—“The fact is that primary education must be supported both by imperial funds and by local rates.” “This does not lessen the obligation of Government to contribute as liberally as other demands allow, to supplement the sums raised by local effort. The true policy will be to distribute the imperial funds so far as such funds are available in proportion to the amount raised by the people from each district.” It is permissible to assign from the provincial grant funds in aid of schools mainly supported by contributions from local cesses or municipal rates. A rule, however, should be laid down that the State contribution is not to exceed one-half of the aggregate contributions from all other sources or onethird of the total expenditure on education in the school concerned.” How far

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this rule is observed, if the provincial assignment is considered to be assigned specially to urban schools in the proportion which we have shown needs no further comment. Paragraph 6 of the Government of India’s remarks is even more explicit. A special exception to the general rule is admitted in poor and backward districts “where the population is large, and the rate, owing to the poverty of the people, insufficient to give the required quota.” This exception cannot apply to the municipalities which we have noticed. Their annual income in 1880–81, exclusive of opening balances, which amounted to Rs. 17,09,678, was Rs. 59,78,201, and there can be no doubt that the inhabitants are as a rule better able to contribute an educational cess than the peasant proprietary of rural Bombay. We are therefore of opinion that the ways and means of urban and rural primary education must be kept distinct, and the town contributions must not receive a larger proportion of the grant-in-aid Urban indigenous schools than the cess funds. If Government are not premust be a charge on the urban pared to raise their grant or if the Government of fund. India are not prepared to make a special assignment for primary education, we advocate a re-adjustment of the aid now given and a consequent increase of the funds available for primary education in rural districts. The deficit in the towns must be made good by municipal taxation. It is not a case of robbing the urban school to pay for the rural school, but of restoring to the latter what belongs to it in justice and equity. If, however, the grant can be increased, the increase should go to the village schools and the towns might then be allowed to retain the funds that are now applied to urban primary education, leaving it to the course of time and the natural development of town schools to effect a gradual re-adjustment. According to this view of the case the towns will either lose a part of their present grant, or else retain it, if the rural fund is supplemented by a more liberal provincial grant. But henceforth the towns will never be able to put their hands into the cess-payers’ pockets, as they have hitherto done. The best indigenous schools are in the towns, and the town-fund2 must help them, if they are to be helped. The cess fund will only be available to help rural indigenous schools, and a consideration of the claims of indigenous schools involves at the outset separation of urban indigenous schools from such institutions in the villages. A comparison between the value of education in the Bombay cess schools and in the indigenous schools is the next step towards answering the question, whether the additional funds, which will either be granted or Comparison of indigenous set free for extending primary education, should be and cess-schools. expended in opening new cess schools, or in aiding and creating indigenous schools. The arguments on each side of the question are set forth below—

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Government Cess Schools.

Indigenous Schools.

1. The cess school gives the cheapest education to the contributors. The fee to a cess-payer varies from ½ to 2 annas according to the class of instruction, and to a non-cess-payer from 2 to an average of 6 annas rising in rare cases to 1 rupee. The average cost to cess-funds is only 6 annas per head per mensem, and yet 20 to 40 per cent. of the poorer boys are taught gratuitously.

1. The fee in indigenous schools varies from an average of 4 annas to Rs. 2 a month. Where the fee is less than 4 annas it is supplemented by presents to the master. Very few, if any, pupils are exempted from the payment of fees. Education is therefore more expensive to all, and the cost is prohibitive to the poor and dull boys who in a cess school would be taught free.

2. Not only are no classes of the rural community excluded from cess schools, but the Muhammadans have taken special advantage of them. There are 2,862 Mahárs and low-caste boys and 2,176 Aborigines now in Government schools.

2. No indigenous school dare receive a low-caste boy: yet the Mahárs and Rámoshis own land in every village and pay the cess. Indigenous schools are unknown in the wild forest tracts, and in Berár, where liberal grants are offered, none have been established for the Aborigines. The secular education of Muhammaduns was almost entirely neglected in Gujaráth and elsewhere until cess schools were opened.

3. The cess school is a permanent institution. If the master falls ill or dies, he is replaced. The demand for education once aroused and supplied in any village will always be supplied.

3. The indigenous school-master except in towns is a bird of passage. Directly famine or accident temporarily affects the attendance he moves off. His illness or death also closes the school.

4. The average attendance in a cess school is 64, which is both a cause and result of its superior efficiency. The facilities of inspection and examination are in proportion to the concentration of pupils, and it is easier for the masters in a large school to divide their teaching power according to the wants and capacities of the various children. The boys are taught regularly and the stupid children not neglected.

4. The average attendance in the indigenous schools throughout the Presidency is 20, and in rural villages it cannot exceed 10. It is a well-known fact that the clever or richer boys are taught to the neglect of the stupid children. Yet, notwithstanding this concentration of attention we cannot find that a single boy has ever passed the public service examination from an indigenous school.

5. The returns of attendance, and the efficiency of teaching in the cess school are subjected to every possible test and can be relied on.

5. Experience has suggested grave doubts whether reliance can be placed upon the returns of attendance sent in by indigenous masters.

6. The popularity of the cess schools is such that constant applications are received for opening them in villages which have to be refused.

6. In towns some indigenous schools are popular, but in the districts we have only heard of one which could hold its own against the cess school. Villagers often are so dissatisfied with the indigenous school that they apply for a Government school to surpersede it.

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Government Cess Schools.

Indigenous Schools.

7. The masters of cess schools are trained or else men of whose capacity to teach practical proof has been given.

7. Some of the masters of indigenous schools are clever men dismissed from the department or unable to find employment in it. But the ordinary village-master is described by the witnesses before the Commission as grossly ignorant.

8. It is not true that the course of study in the cess school is too ambitious and too unpractical. Mr. Apte, the great advocate of indigenous schools, admits at page 29 of his evidence, that not a single practical subject is taught in an indigenous school which is not taught in a cess school. The cess school has in fact adopted many changes of curriculum to suit the popular demand. The fact that in towns the cess schools are filled with the sons of the most influential citizens proves the value put on them. In villages they are well-filled and an average of 64 boys to a school could not be maintained if the instruction were not useful and valued.

8. On the other hand, the indigenous school is specially favourable for the contract system or for a special want. The shop-keeper who wants a special system of accounts taught to his son, the parent who wants his son crammed in a fixed time for a special test, the father of a troublesome boy who despises the mild discipline of the Government schoolmaster but has a wholesome dread of the rod of “plagosi Orbilii,” all find the indigenous schoolmaster ready to adapt his system to their special wants. Lastly the cess schools in towns are over-filled, and there is no money to open a village cess school. The State system has created a demand which it cannot satisfy and the indigenous schoolmaster profits by it.

9. In the great majority of instances the Government school-house is entirely satisfactory in a sanitary point of view.

9. The school-room is almost always illventilated and in the hot season injurious to the health of the pupils.

10. The extension of cess schools is a mere matter of funds. The organisation exists and masters are ready for employ. They also stand the strain of famine or other agricultural disaster.

10. Indigenous schools have grown with the growth of education. Yet even now in British districts with their 24,598 towns and villages there are only 3,954 such schools. A famine at once closes all except the town schools.

The above comparison and the testimony of nearly every witness establish the fact that the cess schools are more popular and efficient than indigenous schools. Yet there may be two arguments in favour of the latter—their greater cheapness to the State, and the advantage of encouraging private enterprise. We shall presently examine these points, but here we wish to state that we can find no evidence to prove that education in the indigenous school is more practical and more useful than it is in a Government school. The Government schools have the disadvantage of the fetters of a system which must meet all wants, but they appear to have marched abreast of the wants of the time. In some respects they have even borrowed from the indigenous schools without advantage. The Government school is opposed to the contract-system, and looking 220

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to the various classes which attend it, it cannot be expected to meet special wants. But that it meets fairly well the general wants of society and does not educate over the heads of rural society is, we think, proved by the increase of 93 per cent. in the attendance at primary schools since 1871, at an increasing cost of 18 per cent., and by the universal demand for increasing the number of cess schools. The indigenous school will never give a cheaper education to the cess-payer than the cess school, but it may cost cess funds less than the cess school, and therefore enable cess funds to go further in extendThe question of economy ing education. We proceed to lay before the Comdiscussed. mission some facts which will enable an opinion to be formed on this matter. It is only necessary to remember that the department are practically trustees administering through local committees the local cess,and they are bound to consider the claims of the contributors to receive the most efficient education at the least cost. We have no reason to believe that for many years to come indigenous schools could reach the standard of efficiency and cheapness which after 15 years’ steady perseverance the department has ensured. But, assuming for argument that no risk of impaired efficiency were incurred by trusting to indigenous agency, the question narrows itself into this—whether the indigenous agency is so much cheaper to cess-funds that a far greater extension of primary education would be practicable under it, and thus enable more cess-contributors to participate in the expenditure without much addition to the cost to them of educating their children. The present grants-in-aid have been condemned by many witnesses as too illiberal. We therefore take them because they will represent the least possible assistance which the State must render. We find that a Government primary school with an average attendance in this year of 121 pupils cost the department Rs. 449 after deducting the fees for tuition. In its last examination these results were obtained:— Number Standard presented 9 40 40 30

IV III II I

No. passed in 1st Head.

No. passed in 2nd Head.

No. passed in 3rd Head.

No. passed in 4th Head.

9 32 35 26

5 25 31 30

7 31 32 30

6 27 36 26

Such results would have earned under the existing rules Rs. 281-8-0, and if the grants were increased to the scale recommended, Rs. 376. In other words, the cess income would save either Rs. 167-8-0 or Rs. 73, as the case might be, which would be available for assisting an indigenous school in another village, and thus enabling other cess-payers to derive a direct benefit from the cess. But looking at the matter from the cess-payers’ point of view, it may be doubted if the disadvantages would not outweigh the advantage. Those who now benefit by the 221

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cess-school would lose the advantages they possess of low fees, the percentage of free-studentships, and the guarantee of permanent and continued efficiency, in order that their loss of these advantages might save a fraction of the cost of aiding another school in another village. The cess funds would thus cover a wider area, but the general efficiency of instruction would be impaired, and education would cost more to the cess-payers, since fees would be raised. The question has yet to be viewed from the point of the encouragement which would be given to private enterprise. Indigenous schools, if liberally aided, would doubtless improve, and perhaps in The advantage of encouragthe towns would lower their fees. But it has taken ing private enterprise. many years of uninterrupted effort to bring the scheme of elementary instruction in the cess schools to its present efficiency, and as the machinery for extending it through indigenous schools does not yet exist, progress would be arrested in the necessity for creating it. There is no analogy between the case of Bengal, if we understand the position of affairs there, and Bombay. There is no vast organisation here of indigenous schools waiting to be brought under the influence of the department. In the whole area of the Presidency proper with its 24,598 villages there are but 3,189 such schools, most of which are in towns. There is a not single indigenous school for the aboriginal population, and not one which can or dare admit a low-caste boy. The best schools are already aided, the rest are either urban or rural schools. If urban, they only do not receive aid because the present inequality of expenditure would be aggravated by greater expenditure in the towns, and because they can support themselves. If they are rural, they are not helped because they are worthless, ephemeral, and even unpopular, being mere make-shifts till the cesspayers can claim a school of their own. Private enterprise must justify its title to a share in the cess payers’ contributions. It is not proved to our satisfaction that indigenous village-schools would re-pay attention. The experience gained in Berar where the system has been tried hardly favours the attempt. Still, there is a wide difference between adopting a system exclusively and adopting it as an alternative and as an experiment. If private enterprise can provide the cesspayers with a good and reasonably cheap education than the cess school, it should certainly be encouraged. We are not sure that the experiment has yet received a fair trial, and though the Bombay cess-payers would never be content with the inferior schools which seem to satisfy the Bengal rayat, it has not yet been proved that the Bombay indigenous or private schools could not be raised in time to the level of the cess schools. Whilst therefore we are of opinion that not a single cess school should be closed and that any increase of ways and means should be devoted partly to an increase of cess schools, we should also like to see the indigHow indigenous schools can enous school encouraged and assisted. In considerbe encouraged in towns. ing the ways and means of primary education we have proposed a distinct severance of the fund for town schools from the fund for village schools. The town fund will be administered by municipal committees, 222

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and they should be required to assign a proportion of their fund for grants-in-aid to indigenous schools on the payment-by-results system, except in the case of Muhammadan and female schools, to which we should apply another system. The special rules for indigenous schools might be made more liberal by raising the minimum from Rs. 10 to 20 and the maximum to Rs. 60. An average attendance of 15 boys should be insisted on. The aid given by results might be raised by 20 per cent., the submission of a monthly abstract of attendance discontinued, and in its place one annual return of the attendance on March 31st required. The system of recording the daily attendance should be encouraged by a special grant of 1 rupee per mensem for keeping it. The condition prescribed that our text-books and method should be introduced should be cancelled. Experience shows that if the system be good it will gradually be adopted. No school should be declared ineligible because it taught religion. We would even admit reading a passage of the Koran, the Granth or the Bible, as a test for reading, provided the passages were carefully selected so that a bare explanation of reading would not involve any exposition of religious doctrine. All examinations should be conducted in situ, and if the present staff of inspectors proved inadequate we should recommend the appointment of an indigenous schoolmaster as Assistant Deputy Inspector. If the schools increased, prizes should be given annually at a convenient centre to the successful boys. For village schools the special rules above alluded to would not afford sufficient encouragement, and for many years to come How indigenous schools may the aid by results would hardly be applicable. We be encouraged in villages. should therefore suggest that certificated masters be sent out with a guaranteed salary of Rs. 5 per mensem on condition that they secured an attendance of 15 boys, and continued to maintain their schools in efficiency. It has been pointed out as an objection to this system that the masters would exclude low caste boys and charge high fees, and that any attempt to guard against this would involve such an interference as would ruin the success of the scheme. We should lay it down as a rule that as the pay of the master was supplied from cess funds all cess payers’ children should be admitted, but we would make no rules about the fees, For Muhammadan schools and girls’ schools in towns we would adopt the same system, because the supply of such children who will attend school even in towns is so small that the system of payment-by-results would practically be inapplicable. As the rural fund is also administered by local committees in the same way as the urban fund is managed by municipalities, it would be necessary to make it compulsory on these committees to render assistance under the rules proposed. In course of time it might also be necessary to prescribe what proportion of the whole fund should be expended on indigenous or private schools, but at first it would be better to leave each committee full discretion in the matter, merely prescribing the rules under which aid can be claimed without defining any limit to the assignment which would be required. Local and town boards would then be free to develop whatever system they preferred, subject only to the recognition of 223

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the rights of indigenous schools. In the towns the results system would prevent any excessive demand on the municipality, whilst the number of girl’s schools or Muhammadan schools aided on the system of paying the master’s salary would not be large. In the rural districts the masters who would receive Rs. 5 a month would require certificates from the Educational Inspector, whilst the condition of teaching 15 boys would be another safeguard against any inordinate and sudden demand being made on the cess funds. If the system extended with satisfactory results, the least efficient cess schools could be closed to make way for the indigenous school. Any indigenous schoolmaster could at any time claim to come under the results system and give up his salary. Such are the measures which we should recommend for assisting and encouraging indigenous schools. In the towns Legislation necessary. these schools could easily be made efficient, and, as their assistance would depend on results, the municipal fund would not be liable to charges for indifferent schools. In rural districts the requirement of a certificate would be a guarantee that the master could teach; and if the master was not a certificated teacher he could register his school for aid under the special rules or under the results system. It has been suggested that the ways and means for, and the administration of, grants-in-aid should remain with the department, although cess schools are handed over to municipal and local boards. The grounds for this suggestion are the fear that these boards will crush out private enterprise, and according to the religious views which preponderate on the board exclude from assistance private or indigenous schools which teach religion. But there are two objections to such a course. In the first place, the indigenous and private schools in towns will always be the most numerous and efficient. Their assistance would absorb a larger share of the Government grant than the town-fund is entitled to. The indigenous agency is doing the work of the municipal board and should be paid for by an assignment from the board’s revenues. Another objection is that the transfer of primary education to the management of local boards would be incomplete. It seems to imply a want of faith in self-government to hand over to these boards cess schools, and not also transfer to them the administration of all other institutions which are carrying on concurrently the work of primary education. We recognise the necessity for legislation to protect and secure legal rights to private enterprise, but subject to this safeguard we would leave the control of all branches of primary education to municipal and local boards, subject to such conditions as will be noticed in Sections J and K. As regards other agencies besides zenana missions, we have noticed the reserve which induces several managers of female schools to remain outside the department. The Pársi Girls’ Schools Association is the Female schools unrecognized. most important of these agencies. It was established in 1858 to impart instruction in Gujaráthi, and it took charge of the Pársi girls’ schools previously conducted by the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society,

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which still manages the Hindu girls’ schools and receives aid from the department. But the Pársi girls’ schools are supported by adequate endowments and subscriptions, are taught entirely by female teachers, and give instruction to nearly 600 girls. They prefer to manage their own institutions, and it is said that an objection is entertained to instruction in English, which the parents fear would unsettle the minds of their daughters and unfit them for the discharge of their domestic duties. We are unable to state the number of schools and scholars which remain outside the department. But we believe that they are not inconsiderable and are not confined to the Pársi community. In connection with the subject of female education, a brief notice must be given of an important society started in Poona, called the Arya Mahilá Samáj, or Indian Ladies’ Association. Our notice must be brief, Arya Mahilá Samáj. because the reserve, to which frequent allusion has been made, compels us to withhold names and avoid even allusion to facts which in the present infancy of the society its members are unwilling to publish. On May 31st, 1882, the well-known Brahman lady3 Panditá Ramábái addressed a meeting at Poona in the premises of the female college in Shukravár Peth. She dwelt on the position of women in the present state of society, and contrasted it not merely with what it ought to be, but with the precepts taught in the Shástrás. She appealed to men to assist women in obtaining knowledge and the liberty which it brought. Not merely the lofty tone of her address, but the encouraging reception which it met afford every hope that the leading citizens of Poona are enlightened enough to understand their own interests, and strong enough to pioneer the reforms which a true perception of them involves. But it is a mistake to precipitate any social revolution or to attempt to force it prematurely into unnatural grooves. The ladies and gentlemen, who in answer to Pandita Ramábái’s appeal at once rallied round her, may be left to choose their own method for reaching the little girls whom our system does not at present attract. Their method may be quiet and unostentations, but it must not hastily be condemned. The rules which the Arya Mahilá Samáj adopted will give some indication of the objects of the society. They were as follows:— 1. That the society be called The Arya Mahilá Samáj. 2. That its principal objects shall be— (a) To diffuse education among females. (b) To take steps towards the removal of many injurious customs, such as early marriages, that are impediments towards our progress. (c) To improve the social, moral, and religious condition of native women. 3. That the society be composed principally of native ladies residing in any part of India. 4. That European or other foreign ladies who may lend a helping hand to this society be nominated corresponding members. 5. That females only be admitted as members of this society.

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6. That all the members of the society shall possess equal rights and privileges, no distinction being made of caste, family, rank, wealth, and social position. 7. That all propositions brought before the meetings be decided by a majority of votes. 8. That a minimum annual subscription of Rs. 6 be paid by every member, payment of a higher sum from those who can afford to do so being thankfully accepted. 9. That such of the ladies as may be too poor to pay even Rs. 6 per annum be admitted as members on payment of a minimum subscription of Rs. 3 per annum. 10. That the fund of the society, after the defrayal of the necessary expenses, be deposited in the Government Savings Bank in the name of the association. 11. That every intending member be required to make the following declaration: “I will assist to the utmost of my power in carrying out the object of the association without prejudice and partiality.” 12. That members failing to act up to the declaration or violating the above rules be removed from the association. It is of course very easy to exaggerate the importance of the movement begun in May last, and its value can only be tested by its fruits. But the mere conception and institution of such a society as we have described actuated by the motives adopted at a public meeting, in which there was not a single European officer present, is not the work of a passing impulse. It must have been prompted by earnest conviction, and affords every promise of a useful and successful career. We may also notice another agency which is doing quiet work. Mrs. Sorábji, the Superintendent of the Victoria School, Poona, has charge of an aided school which is chiefly Eurasian. But she also receives native children, and makes a point of visiting her old pupils in their homes after they have left school. In her evidence before the Commission (page 6) she bore testimony to the assistance given to her by native gentlemen who have no connection with her school, and it may therefore be concluded that her visits are appreciated by the native community. 6. With the exception of a rare instance now and again, the names of female scholars do not figure in the matriculation examinaResults of examinations. tions.The results of the departmental expenditure on female education, so far as mere examinations test them, must therefore be sought in the Inspectors’ examinations. According to them steady progress in the efficiency of all classes of schools may be observed. The table given below will show what these results are, and renders further remark unnecessary. When we consider the difficulties with which little Bombay

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girls who are engaged in household work have to contend, the results will, in our opinion, appear very satisfactory:—

EXAMINATION-RESULTS IN 1881–82. TABLE 1.—Primary Schools. Ratio between the number passed in all heads and the number examined. Ratio between the number passed and the total number in average attendance.

Total number passed.

966

514

253 115

·53

·29

246

154

91

44

15

4

557

·52

·19

Inspected . . . .

2,4003 1,288

403

161

86

45

14

4

713

·55

·29

11,72312 5,866 1,615

829

438 204

57

22 3,160

·54

·27

Corresponding 10,00306 5,542 1,528 figures for 1880–81

741

389 201

52

12 2,923

·53

·29

...

...

TOTAL RESULTS IN 1881–82

Increase per cent in 1881–82 on results of previous year

17·19

584

28

Standard VI.

Standard III.

6,371·9 3,510 2,950·92 1,068

Standard V.

Standard II.

Government . . . Aided . . . . . .

Standard IV.

Standard I.

CLASS OF SCHOOLS.

Number of pupils examined.

Number of pupils in average attendance.

NUMBER PASSED UNDER ALL HEADS.

14 1,890

5·69 11·87 1131 149 961 8333

8·11

194

235

227

244

119

42·81

Ratio between the number passed and the number in average attendance.

Needle work.

History. 114

Percentage on the total number of pupils examined.

214

Writing.

278

English.

445

Mathematics.

Total number examined.

Aided AngloVernacular Girls’ Schools

Total number in average attendance.

CLASS OF INSTITION.

NUMBER PASSED IN

Total number passed in all heads.

TABLE II.—Middle Class Girls’ Schools.

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7. No part of the administration of female education exercises so perceptible a result upon the popularity of girls schools as the appointment of proper teachers. The opinion, at which the most experienced Training of teachers. observers in Bombay have arrived, is that a suitable female teacher is in every respect preferable to a master, but that the difficulties of obtaining the former are very great. Unmarried women or widows have to contend against the prejudices of native society, when they leave their homes to undertake work in a part of the country where they are not known. Physically women are more subject to illness than men, and their isolated position also makes it difficult for them to perform their duties cheerfully and efficiently when they feel that local opinion does not sympathise with them. The position of a female teacher superseding a master, who perhaps has friends in the town or village, is often very difficult. Still some of them have won the confidence and respect of parents in a remarkable way. A young Brahman widow named Mahalakshmi Chaggan, who was appointed to a girl’s school in Surat, became so popular that, when she lost her property by a robbery, the people of the city subscribed and replaced her losses. The well-known Brahman lady, Ramabai Pandita, is not more famous for her intellectual power than for her moral courage and high character. These, however, are exceptional cases, and the general feeling is that until female teachers can be trained and educated in the widest sense of the word or the wives of masters induced to submit to a course of training, the department must continue to rely very much upon a careful selection of experienced and elderly masters. There were formerly three training institutions for women. That in Hyderabad (Sind) was closed because as a general rule the women trained there would not serve in towns away from Hyderabad, and one or two, who were sent to Karachi, somewhat discredited the system. The girls’ schools, however, in Northern Sind, especially at Sukkur and Shikarpur, are not only popular but very efficient, and it is probable that, when the present schoolmistresses retire, their places can be filled by some of the more advanced of their pupils. In the rest of the Presidency there are two training colleges—one at Poona, the other at Ahmedabad. The Poona College has turned out 34 mistresses since 1872, of whom 18 are married. The majority have found employ in or near Poona, but some have accepted service in the Native States even as far off as Baroda and Kathiawar. The Ahmedabad College has turned out 31 trained teachers, and seven more will, it is expected, shortly be ready to go out. As a rule, the women who attend this college are the wives of young men who are being trained as masters, but respectable widows are also admitted. At the present moment there are 32 female students in the college, of whom 18 are Brahmans, 3 Kunbis, 5 Pársis, and 6 Native Christians. There is no difficulty in finding situations for the women, and the Native States are always anxious to secure any for whom there may be no immediate vacancies in the British districts. The success gained by the Poona and Ahmedabad Colleges has induced the Lady Superintendent of the girls’ schools at Kolhápur to

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attempt an extension of the system to that part of the Presidency. There are 320 girls at school in Kolhápur and eight of them who have passed the 5th standard wish to be formed into a training class. The Kolhápur schools are attended by the daughters of Sirdárs and the local native gentry. There can be no doubt that, if the experiment succeeds, a great stimulus will be given to female education in the Southern Division, where, owing to the absence of railway-communication and the distance from Poona, trained mistresses are unwilling to accept service. With three training colleges for women the Presidency will be well served, and the zenana missions are also turning their attention to providing trained mistresses for their own institutions. The experience which these missions have gained and the experience of the Pársi Girls’ School Association, to which reference has already been made, confirm the opinion which we have expressed that the gradual substitution of trained women for male agency will materially assist the progress of female education. [MISSING TEXT] 9. With two exceptions, no fees are levied in the primary schools for girls which are managed by the Department. The exceptions are in Bombay and Ahmedabad. In Bombay Island the fee varies in Gujaráthi schools from one anna to four annas rising to eight annas in one Fees. school which is almost exclusively attended by Pársis. In the Maráthi schools in the Island the fee varies from one to two annas, except in a boy’s school at Máhim where the girls pay the same fees as the boys, viz., from one to eight annas. In Ahmedabad a small English class is attached to the training college and attended by the daughters of the richer native gentlemen, who pay a fee of Rs. 2 per mensem for instruction in music as well as English. With these exceptions no fees are charged by the Department either in girls’ or boys’ schools giving primary education to girls. In aided institutions of the middle class the fees nominally vary from four annas to Rs. 2 and Rs. 5 per mensem, but liberal exemptions are permitted. The Dápoli orphanage charges no fees and another institution which professes to charge eight annas has none but free students. In the case of primary schools eight schools in the city of Bombay charge fees varying from four annas to 16 annas, but allow numerous exemptions; ten other schools in the Central Division do not profess to charge any fees at all. In the American mission school at Ahmednagar a fee of one anna per mensem is charged, but speaking generally no fees are levied for primary instruction in Government or aided institutions, established outside the Island of Bombay. 10. A system of scholarships is hardly necessary where education is free and does not proceed beyond the primary course. Still private generosity or the liberality of local fund committees has Scholarships. endowed a few institutions with scholarships. In the North-East Division there is a scholarship of Rs. 2–8 annas a month tenable in the Government school at Ahmednagar. In Ahmedabad the Infanticide

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Fund contributed last year Rs. 436 for scholarships in departmental girls’ schools, and the municipality made a grant of Rs. 50 for a similar purpose in the aided schools. The local fund committee of Surat voted Rs. 180 for a similar object to be applied to Government schools. In the Northern Division these scholarships are considered useful in encouraging regular attendance, and the system is likely to be extended throughout that division. In the Central Divisions, however, except in Ratnágiri, local funds are probably too poor to give, and in point of fact, do not give any assignment for scholarships. In the other Divisions also it may be said generally, that there is no scholarship-system. The aided schools have a few scholarships and the Indian Association sets a good example of impartial encouragement by giving scholarships which aggregate Rs. 21 per mensem and are tenable in any school, Government or aided. The scholarships, however, in the present state of education are rather prizes than scholarships, and are not intended to assist deserving pupils in their progress through a course of education from one class of school to another. 11. Prizes are either given by small grants assigned for the purpose by local boards, or by endowment funds, as for instance, the interest on Rs, 1,000 invested in Dhárwár by Mr. Jardine, C. S., Prizes. encouraging female education in that district, or out of funds casually raised by local subscription. A mámlatdár’ Mr. Mulé, has also given an endowment of Rs. 200 to the Ahmednagar girls’ school for an annual prize of books. In the Bombay Gujaráthi schools as many as 84 per cent. of the children receive prizes, but the general average of pupils so rewarded is about 35 per cent. Books, small articles of dress or ornament, and work-boxes are the chief prizes. Municipalities contribute but little to this object, and it seems to us one which should rather be the care of individuals interested in female education than of corporate bodies. On the whole, private liberality at present does all that is necessary or desirable in rewarding the girls who deserve it. 12. Female education in Bombay is probably not more backward than in any other part of India, while in some respects it would Recommendations. seem to be more happily circumstanced than in most other provinces. We have shown that there is a general want of appreciation of English instruction, a reserve in submitting schools to outside inspection, and an exclsive attention in Government schools to primary education. Female education is, therefore, proceeding with timidity, and its effects are still viewed with some popular misgiving. An advanced municipality like Poona, which is the head-quarters of several native associations has hitherto offered no witnesses who have given evidence before the Commission have almost without exception recommended that Government should not hand over girls’ school to local boards. But whilst indifference and reserve are salient features in the present attitude of society, there are other circumstances which promise well for the future. Women in this Presidency are allowed a liberty of action which is unknown in the north 230

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or east of India; the various classes of the community will meet together in school without objection; and children are allowed to remain at school even after marriage. The principles of association adopted by the Arya Mahilá Samáj are a striking proof of the existence of a liberality of feeling which must one day bear good fruit. Some classes of the community, like the Pársis, have organized a satisfactory system of girls’ school without any aid from the State, and nothing but financial pressure has driven the Hindu school of the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society to place themselves under obligation to the department. Observing these facts, we consider that the appointment of one or more Private enterprise preferred. inspectresses of female schools is demanded, and a careful development of the system of training wives of schoolmasters to enable them to take charge of schools. We advocate the employment of female agency in every department of female education and inspection. We also consider that female primary education stands on an entirely different basis from the education of boys in the cess-schools.This is especially a field which promises greater success to private enterprise than to State agency. The assistance offered by the State should be given on the grant-in-aid system by results, and should be much more liberal than it is. A school which does fairly well should certainly be able to earn one-third of its expenditure. A good school should be able to earn half its cost. Special grants should be given for trained pupils, and if they passed an examination of equal difficulty with the training college examination they should receive a certificate qualifying the holders for service under Government as schoolmistresses. In any towns or districts where an inspectress could not be provided, we should advocate the special appointment of a lady, whether European or Native, who might be found qualified and willing to do the work. A small honorarium should be paid according to the work required. We see no objection to giving a grant-by-results for home-education. The inspectress could examine ladies taught at home, and with a proper code of rules and exclusive regard to secular results the scheme could be worked without difficulty. We propose therefore to look primarily to private enterprise to develop and extend female education. The department would of course inspect and supervise. We have shown that the standards of instruction for Departmental control must girls’ schools are not so severe or advanced as for be sympathetic. boys’ schools. But a sympathetic administration is even more important than any rules or system can be. It is difficult to secure sympathy, even if female agency is substituted for male agency under mere rules. We notice that even in England constant cries are raised against the severity and irregularity of the Inspectors’ or Examiners’ tests. All therefore that we can do is to dwell on the exceptional difficulties which surround a little Indian girl in trying to acquire knowledge in the midst of household-duties. The statements of Pandita Ramábái, Miss Collett, and the Schoolmistress Vithábái Sakhárám illustrate these difficulties, and they have only to be read in order to be appreciated. But whilst we trust to private enterprise, we would not overlook the good work done by the department, which, as we have shown, fills up voids in districts where there is no 231

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private agency to take its place. The school-committees for girls’ schools are carefully selected, the revenue and district officers never lose an opportunity of visiting and encouraging these girls’ schools and of giving prizes. The State-schools must therefore be continued until local bodies are willing to take charge of them. We are not inclined to trust these schools to municipalities, unless they specially wish to take charge of them. The success of female education depends entirely on sympathetic administration, and the cause would be injured if it was transferred to local boards which felt and evinced no interest in the matter.

SECTION G.—Provisions for Physical and Moral Training. 1. Gymnastics are encouraged in the Government colleges; and the Deccan College at Poona has a successful boat-club supported by 60 subscribing members. Cricket is played with some spirit by the Physical Training. pupils of the St. Zavier’s college and school. At the Free General Assembly’s college and school no special provision has as yet, we believe, been made for the encouragement of physical exercise among the students. Gymnastics are practised in almost all the Government high schools and several of them have well-ventilated gymnasia fitted up with English and Indian apparatus. There are also gymnasia in St. Stanislaus’ School near Bombay, the Free General Assembly’s school at Alíbág, and at the Poona Native Institution. In the Elphinstone, Surat, Ahmedabad, Rájkot, Ahmednagar, and Karáchi high schools cricket and other games are played with considerable zest. The cricketclub at Elphinstone high school consists of 110 members, and has earned the distinction of making the game thoroughly popular with Hindu as well as with Pársi students. Cricket-matches between rival school-clubs are now of common occurrence in many parts of the Presidency, and at Bombay itself scores of school boys are to be seen every afternoon playing at cricket on the general parade ground. But besides this there are three public gymnasia in the city, which are attended daily by some hundreds of boys, and on the premises of one of them is a swimmingbath to which the pupils of the neighbouring schools largely resort. In the primary schools a great deal has been done of late years to encourage Indian games and gymnastics. A large number of schools have been provided with simple gymnastic apparatus, such as clubs, climbing-poles, &c., which have not unfrequently been presented to the schools by the parents of the pupils. In some villages open places near the school-house have been hedged round for a gymnasium or arena, and loose earth or sand thrown over the levelled ground. In the Deccan, where the Maráthas have always shown a fondness for out-door games, very little organization has been found to be necessary for the encouragement of athletic exercises in the schools. The Inspector of the Southern Marátha country also reports that the encouragement which has lately been given to Indian games in his division has attracted to the vernacular schools many little children who would have otherwise stayed at home; and that it has made all the pupils more cheerful at their lessons as well as more regular in attendance. 232

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The physical well-being of the students of the training colleges is carefully attended to. Daily exercise in the gymnasium is a compulsory part of the college routine; and no student is granted the college training certificate, who has not satisfactorily passed through the course prescribed by the gymnastic instructor. The course comprises exercises on the horizontal bar, parallel bars, ladders, swings and stirrups, climbing-pole, clubs, &c., with running, jumping, and wrestling. All the students live in the college under proper supervision, and in the matter of their diet and hours of study and recreation, the college-arrangements are well calculated to secure to them bodily health and vigour. 2. In considering the sufficiency or otherwise of moral instruction given in Government schools, it is necessary to bear in mind the restrictions which are imposed on the State by its solemn declaration of A moral text book. religious neutrality. We do not share the opinions of those who have held that an absence of religious instruction is synonymous with the inculcation of irreligious or atheistic teaching. Nor do we feel that strict neutrality is a cloak either partially or wholly for an attack on all religion. It is not unlikely that, when the time arrives for the State to retire from the direct management of schools, those institutions will fall into the hands of teachers who will not be content with teaching natural religion or the fundamental morality common to all civilized nations, but will openly appeal to distinctive religious sanctions. But until that day arrives, the State cannot, in our opinion, proceed without caution and a due recognition of the fact that its schools contain boys of different religions and different religious sects, which view each other with extreme jealousy and mistrust and lay greater stress on their differences of doctrine than on the fundamental truths which uniformly underlie every religious system. The Right Reverend Dr. Meurin, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bombay, has suggested in his evidence that the State should gather together these fundamental doctrines common to all religious systems, and incorporate them in a moral text-book, in which instruction should be compulsory in every State or aided school. We are inclined to doubt if such common agreement can be secured, and although we support his suggestion, that Government might offer a prize for the production of such a textbook, we should prefer to see it adopted by aided institutions before its introduction into Government schools. We doubt if the world’s history has reached such a point that a universal moral text-book would command general acceptance. The cherished doctrines of different religions do not admit of compromise, and the so-called fundamental truths, which precede and underlie all sectional doctrine, borrow insensibly from the expansion and development which they subsequently undergo. If it be remembered that a day is approaching when Government will withdraw in favour of local bodies, then it seems to us better not to discount the future or attempt to shape the natural course which events will then take by “rough hewing” a text-book of universal religion. Meanwhile, although in Government schools and colleges separate hours are not devoted to instruction in ‘right conduct,’ yet Moral Training we have unmistakable testimony that the general 233

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moral tone of native society has improved in the last ten years. This improvement has shown itself in the public service, at the bar, in professional or commercial employment, and in domestic life. Part of this result is due to the leavening influence of association with Western civilization and English officers, but a great part is due to instruction in our State schools and colleges, and to the influence exerted out of school by upright native gentlemen who have passed through the same course of training. In our schools the moral training of the pupils is secured through the system of discipline to which they have to conform,4 through the exposition of the lessons in the text-books many of which have a direct moral tendency, and the example of their teachers. These three forces make up the moral atmosphere of every high school. We are unwilling to introduce unnecessary comparisons; but as the question has been raised whether the pupils trained in institutions of a professedly religious character are not morally superior to those trained in Government schools, we may add that we are unable to perceive any difference between the results. Without, however, entering into the question of the relative value of these two classes of institutions, we are able to affirm on the evidence which has been laid before the Commission, as well as on our own experience, that the moral influences which operate in Government schools are sound in their tendencies, and that the good fruits of the system are plainly visible among the educated classes of the native community. We have shown in previous sections of this report that the text-books used in Government schools inculcate reverence for the Supreme Being, parents, rulers, and the aged, as well as regard for law and order, truth, honesty, diligence, cleanliness, and other similar virtues and good habits, and that the schoolmasters as a body are upright men and in other respects well-fitted to instruct the young. On this latter point one of the Educational Inspectors writes: “In our training colleges the greatest regard should be paid to the moral teaching of the students, who may carry the lessons learnt there into the distant villages, where it may be their lot to serve. In the course of instruction laid down, no special lessons are inculcated, but in the instruction given in the method of teaching, proper self-control, patience, kindness and firmness in the teacher are insisted on. * * * * The order and regularity which have prevailed in the training college for many years are in themselves guarantees of the system of moral discipline prevailing; and while among so many there must always be those who are radically bad and vicious, yet taken as a whole, I am of opinion that our village-masters are an honest, quiet and hard-working set of men, and that their honesty, sobriety and energy are greatly due to the system under which they have been educated. In secondary schools and specially in high schools much must depend upon the head-master and his personal influence, and this is no less true in India than in England. * * * * Our head masters are usually men whose education and training have been such as to fit them to use their influence rightly, and I believe that as a rule it is used for good, and that every year sees less of deceit and under-hand dealing, and more of open and honest purpose among both masters and boys. In this Division where the men of the department are often invited to serve in 234

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Native States, it is no small credit to the department that almost invariably the men so serving have obtained a reputation for honest work conducted with clean hands. If this is true and is the effect of our educational system, then that system has not been in vain, and its moral training has been indisputable, though unaided by the stimulus of religious enthusiasm.” The testimony of Sir Michael Westropp, late Chief Justice of Bombay, has already been quoted; and we would refer to similar evidence given before the Commission by Sir W. Wedderburn, Professor Wordsworth, Professor Bhándarkar, and others, in proof of the actual results of the system that has been pursued in Government schools and colleges. 3. Before concluding this chapter, we may notice a complaint which has been made by more than one witness in Calcutta and elsewhere, that some of the Government college professors introduce into their lecUniversity influence tures questions of morality and religion which they treat in an anti-religious spirit. We have mentioned the obligation of Government to maintain religious neutrality, and no Government servant would wish to be placed in circumstances under which he must more or less be drawn into controversies which are inconsistent with the maintenance of such neutrality. The Universities hold in their hands considerable power, and, although they are independent of Government and of the department, we think they should jealously watch any tendency to depart from the policy laid down by Government, or to place college professors in an equivocal position. In the subjects prescribed for logic and moral philosophy for the degree of B. A. in Bombay we notice Sidgwick’s Method of Ethics. This able compendium can hardly be called a classical or original treatise, and its tendency is not distinctly neutral. Taught in an English University, the views which it pronounces would be subject to free discussion outside the lecture-room. But the conditions of Indian education are widely different from those in England, and it is open to consideration whether a better selection might not have been made from the standard and original works on ethics, in which the literature of philosophy is so rich.

Notes 1. The masters of indigenous schools are distributed by race or caste as follows:— Bráhmans . . . . . . Orher Hindus . . . . Muhammadans . . . Pársis . . . . . . . . Others not returned .

. . . . .

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. . . . .

. . . . .

903 1,005 328 8 1,662 3,906

2. Whether the town or rural fund can claim an additional grant for assisting indigenous schools will depend, 1st, on the provision assigned to it by Government, 2nd, on the view which is taken of the character of the contract on withdrawal, which is discussed in Section D. In our opinion a separate and carefully considered financial arrangement must be specially made with each municipality at the time of transfer.

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3. As this lady in her evidence before the Commission gave an account of her early life and history we have not repeated it here. 4. This is a point to which the department has devoted considerable attention, and it may be mentioned that the protect-system of the English public schools has been worked with success in the Elphinstone high school for the last seven years. (See pages 126–127 of the Report on Public Instruction for 1875–76.)

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12 EXTRACTS FROM PAPERS RELATING TO TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN INDIA 1886–1904 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1906), 1–4, 29–34, 50–54, 83–85, 116–117, 131–133, 246–249, 251–253

MEMORANDUM ON TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN INDIA PRIOR TO 1886. Letter No. 7/211–18 A dated the 23rd July 1886. From—A. P. MACDONNELL, Esq., C.S., Officiating Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, To—All Local Governments and Administrations (except Madras).

In continuation of Home Department Circular letter No. 10/284–202, dated the 16th September 1885, I am directed to forward the accompanying copy of a memorandum which has been drawn up in this Department on the subject of Technical Education in India. 2. The Governor General in Council would be glad to know whether the suggestions made in this Memorandum . . . . . . . . meet with the concurrence of _______________; and, if so, what steps, having due regard to financial considerations, _______________would propose to take in order to give effect thereto.

MEMORANDUM. His EXCELLENCY the Viceroy has expressed a desire that a memorandum on the condition and prospects of Technical Education in India should be prepared and submitted to him. The following Note is an endeavour to fulfil His Excellency’s commands. 1. The Education Commission, in reviewing Introductory: Division of progress in education into three periods. the history of education in British India, divide 237

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the subject into three periods. They observe that each period is marked by a distinctive character of its own, which is common, more or less, to all the provinces of the Empire. 2. The first period embraces the years of educational activity prior to the Court of Directors’ well-known despatch of 1854, when a new departure was taken. During this period the responsibility of the State for the education of the people was unacknowledged, and much of the good work then done was due to the endeavours of missionary and other philanthropic bodies, sometimes with, sometimes without, official assistance. The distinctive character of this period was, as far as State efforts were concerned, the attention which was paid to collegiate education. 3. The second period in the educational history of British India was ushered in by the great despatch of 1854, and lasted till 1871. Public instruction now became a recognized State obligation; but administratively the distinctive character of the period was the extension of secondary education, that is, of schools in which English is the medium of instruction, and the final standard aimed at is the University Entrance Examination. 4. The third period covers the interval between 1871 and the present time. It dates from Lord Mayo’s decentralization scheme, and is contemporaneous with the control of Local Governments over educational matters in their respective provinces. Its distinctive character is the attention which has been paid to elementary instruction among the masses of the people. 5. This broad division of the educational history of British India into three periods loses sight, however, of some well-marked and interesting stages; and to give due prominence to these, the first period Sub-division of first period. might well be sub-divided into three. The first subdivision would end about the year 1825, when effect was given to that provision of the Charter Act of 1813 which appropriated a lakh of rupees annually for educational purposes, and when the first nuclei of committees of public instruction were established in the three presidencies. The distinctive character of this subperiod was the great activity of missionary bodies in the cause of education, and the small recognition afforded by the Government, always immersed in war, of its duty in the same cause. The second sub-period may be considered as ending about 1840, after the publication of Lord Auckland’s famous minute, by which the great controversy1 between the “Anglicists” and the “Orientalists,” was finally decided in favour of the former. This period was marked, not only by the controversy just referred to, but by the consolidation and extension of educational boards and committees which, in the previous period, had struggled into existence. The third and last sub-period ended in 1854 with the reception of the Court of Directors’ great educational despatch of that year, and was, as the Education Commission say, distinguished by the attention paid to higher or collegiate education. Funds were scarce; and Indian administrators during this period were satisfied with the “downward filtration” theory of education. 238

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6. Thus from the commencement of this century,—and, as far as Public Instruction is concerned, this practically means from the commencement of British rule,— education in India has passed through five cycles, each cycle covering a period of about Sixteen years. First, there was the stage of missionary activity and State quiescence; then a stage of spasmodic and unsystematized official effort; next, systematic administration directed mainly towards the promotion of collegiate education; fourthly, the recognition of public instruction as a State obligation and an effort to fulfil it by the extension of secondary schools; lastly, the systematic development of elementary education among the masses of the population. 7. In the preceding sketch of the progress of education in British India, it will be observed that no reference has been made to technical instruction. It is, indeed, true that in the despatch of 1854 a pasOrigin of technical education. sage, quoted in the margin, occurs which might almost be construed as an encouragement and direction to establish technical schools. And, having regard to the history of the question, such a construction could be scarcely regarded as strained. The great “Our attention should now advantages of technical instruction had in 1854 be directed to a consideration, if possible, still more important, been brought home to the public mind in England. and one which has been hith- A Select Committee of the House of Commons erto, we are bound to admit, too had in 1835 enquired into the best means of much neglected, namely, how extending among the manufacturing population a useful and practical knowledge knowledge of the principles of art and design; and suited to every station in life may be best conveyed to the a “Government School of Design” established in great mass of the people who London, with a system of grants-in-aid to similar are utterly incapable of obtain- schools in the manufacturing districts, had grown ing any education worthy of out of that enquiry. The progress made, however, the name by their own unaided was small, until the International Exhibition of efforts; and we desire to see the active measures of Govern- 1851 drew public attention to the deficiencies ment more especially directed as regards art of the English workman, and as for the future to this object, for regards science of the English manufacturer. The the attainment of which we are result was the creation in 1853 of the Department ready to sanction a considerable of Science and Art, which three years later came increase of expenditure.” under the control of the Department of Education. It is, therefore, a not altogether improbable inference that the enlightened man2 who drafted the despatch of 1854 had, by the passage quoted in the margin above, intended to suggest a far-reaching scheme of technical and industrial instruction for India. 8. But if any such intention was entertained, it was not fulfilled—a result which should surprise no one, seeing that for Government employment the market then was not overstocked, while there were in India at Growing necessity for techthe time but few of these mining, manufacturing, nical instruction in India. and other industrial enterprises which now afford such strong inducements to Technical training. Since then things have greatly changed. The supply of eligible candidates for Government service has far outrun 239

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the demand. The Bar, the Medical, and the Engineering professions absorb only a small portion even of our University graduates. Our schools and colleges are yearly adding to the crowd of young men whom our system of education has rendered discontented with the sphere of life to which they were born without fitting them for another. The difficulty is a growing one, and its seriousness is appreciated by all sections of the public. The following extract from a Native newspaper, The Mahratta, of May 9th, is a fair sample of the opinions which, at the present time, find constant expression in the Native Press:— We have had, roughly speaking, but a very short experience of the English liberal educational system; for a period of 25 or 30 years counts for little in a nation’s life. And yet even in this short existence our experience has been rather costly. We have had educated in the various institutions supplied by Government hundreds of young men who have for the past few years found that their energy has been uselessly taxed; for their learning and labour make no difference in their position and prospects, or have rather changed these for the worse. We see on all sides a crowd of young men who have received a more or less liberal education, and who are whiling away their time in applying to the heads of several departments for employment. They curse their fate, which has left them unprovided for after a bootless labour of some ten or twelve years. They have a smattering knowledge of several subjects, but they have gone deeply in none, and even that smattering knowledge of theirs proves of no avail to them in the severe struggle for life that is going on around us. They find that their knowledge is of no help to them in the world where practical training is all that is respected. We do not mean to disparage liberal learning. Its importance and value have been for ages recognized by all men. It is not for us to speak ill of it. It is beyond our power. We do see its benefits in our midst. How can we then speak in a disparaging tone of it? But we can say that liberal education is a costly thing, and, for those who have to labour very hard for winning their bread, it is useless. It is an ornament, and as such those only who are in easy or affluent circumstances can derive advantages from it. The greater majority are doomed to walk in humbler sphere of life which demands high training of a special kind, and hence, after an experience of the last 25 years, people are now beginning to see that greater attention must now be paid to this practical training which will fit men to their avocations in life, and which will, moreover, enable them to introduce improvements in industries and handicrafts. A wave is passing over the country, agitating the minds of the people and drawing their attention to this subject. There is a stir on all sides—a stir which promises to result in some practical steps being taken to remedy the evil. The Bengalee, the Madrasee, and the Bombayite, each is now trying, to the best of his power and ability, to suggest a solution of 240

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this great educational problem of the day. But the movement is stronger on the Bombay side. Why, even ordinary men, from whom you would never exact any active interference in the public movements of the day, are coming forward with proposals for the establishment of technical schools. 9. Most questions of importance regarding education in India are fully and lucidly handled in the report of the Education Commission, but the subject of technical instruction is an exception to the rule; The Education Commission for technical instruction was one of the few maton technical education. ters connected with education on which the Commission was not required to report. It is true that in the resolution appointing the Commission, attention was called to the one-sidedness of the existing system of secondary education, and that the Commission, in The other matters were the response to that call, proposed a bifurcation of the Universities and the education curriculum in high schools,—one course leading of Europeans and Eurasians. to the University, and the other fitting boys for commercial pursuits; but this is only touching the outer fringe of the great question with which it is now proposed to deal. 10. Although the Education Commission were thus not required to discuss the subject of technical training, their comprehensive report could not entirely ignore a question which was rapidly growing in importance in public estimation. Accordingly 3 Recommendation of the in the Commission’s Report certain observations on the subject occur, which it is desirable to quote in Education Commission regarding practical training in schools. this place:— Throughout India high schools have hitherto been regarded, not only or chiefly as schools for secondary instruction, intended for pupils whose education will terminate at that stage, but in a much greater degree—it may almost be said exclusively—as preparatory schools for those who are to become students of the University. It has been seen that middle schools comprise two well-marked classes,—those in which the scheme of studies is, and those in which it is not, governed by University standards. With one exception,4 which will be presently noticed, no such distinction exists in the case of high schools, in all of which the course of instruction is determined by the matriculation standard, which, again, is arranged solely with a view to subsequent University studies. One of the questions put to witnesses before the Commission ran as follows: “Is the attention of teachers and pupils in secondary schools unduly directed to the Entrance Examination of the University?” The replies to this question are singularly unanimous. It has been felt in all provinces, and urged by many witnesses, that the attention of students is too exclusively directed to University studies, and that no opportunity is offered for the development of what corresponds to the “modern side” of schools in Europe. 241

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It is believed that there is a real need in India for some corresponding course which shall fit boys for industrial or commercial pursuits, at the age when they commonly matriculate, more directly than is effected by the present system. The University looks upon the Entrance Examination, not as a test of fitness for the duties of daily life, but rather as a means of ascertaining whether the candidate has acquired that amount of general information and that degree of mental discipline which will enable him to profit by a course of liberal or professional instruction. In these circumstances, it appears to be the unquestionable duty of that Department of the State which has undertaken the control of education to recognize the present demand for educated labour in all branches of commercial and industrial activity, and to meet it, so far as may be possible, with the means at its disposal. The Honourable Mr. Justice West, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, has expressed his views on this point in the following terms: “The preparation for ordinary business may with advantage proceed up to a certain point along the same course as that for literature and science. It is a defect of our system, as I understand it, that it does not provide for a natural transition to the further studies which may be the most proper for a man of business, nor even propose to encourage and conduct such studies. When a boy reaches the age of about fourteen he may have plainly shown that he has not the gifts that would make him a good subject for literary culture. His tastes or his circumstances may disincline him to be an engineer or chemist. He ought not then to be forced on in a line in which failure is almost certain. He should be put to work on matters that he really can master, unless quite exceptionally dull, such as arithmetic, rudimentary economics, mercantile geography, the use of manures, or others determined by the locality of the school and its needs. . . . The extension of this knowledge should be along those lines where it will be grasped and incorporated by the interests and teachings of active life. Still it should be education, aiming at making the mind robust and flexible, rather than at shabbily decking it with some rags of ‘business information’ or low technic skill. For these different aims, the present system makes no sufficient or distinct provision.” We do not attempt to define the course of instruction which might be imparted in schools of the kind suggested. The Departments in many provinces have dealt satisfactorily with the question of independent courses in middle schools; and it may well be left to them, in consultation with school managers and others interested in education, to determine the character and constitution of similar schools of a more advanced kind. Indeed, to attempt to fix a course for “independent” high schools would be to fall into an error of precisely the same character as that against which the proposal is directed;

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it would be to substitute one uniform course for another. But what is now chiefly needed is variety; so that the educational [The italics are not in the system as a whole may be such as more fully original. The present writer differs from the view expressed in to meet the needs of a complex state of sociso far as he is convinced that the ety. Nor would the introduction of the proposed bifurcation should take place alternative course into high schools involve any earlier. On this point he agrees great expenditure; for the bifurcation of studies with the Madras Government, need not take place until the student is within as will appear later on.] two years of the Entrance Examination, that is, until he has been eight or nine years at school. His studies in the middle department will be sufficiently practical to prepare him for those he will take up in the modern side, sufficiently liberal to fall in with those of the academical side. It may be added that, with the establishment of these schools, full recognition would be given to the salutary principle that the course of instruction in schools of every class should be complete in itself. The Madras Provincial Committee draws attention to the fact that little more than half of those who pass the matriculation examination of that University proceed to the First Arts standard; and though the disparity is less conspicuous in other provinces—in Bengal indeed, it is stated that more than 90 per cent. of those who matriculate are admitted to colleges,—yet it is probable that in all provinces the institution of the alternative standard would meet the popular wishes and answer a real need. We therefore recommend that in the upper classes of high schools there be two divisions,—one leading to the Entrance Examination of the Universities; the other of a more practical character, intended to fit youths for Commercial or non-literary pursuits. Further on in their report the Commission recommend that a certificate of having passed by either of the alternative courses should be regarded as qualifying for the public service in its subordinate grades. 11. The preceding extract expresses the Commission’s view as to the general direction to be followed in grafting a system of practical training on our present scheme of secondary instruction; but it will be Policy of the Government of observed that the training recommended was of India on the subject of practical a general or preparatory, and not of a technical, and technical training. character. The Government of India however, in reviewing the Commission’s Report, was desirous of giving the recommendation the fullest significance which could be attached to it; and, therefore, having previously secured the consent and support of Local Governments, His Excellency the Viceroy in October 1884 sanctioned the publication of a Resolution, from which the following passage is quoted:— The bifurcation of studies suggested by the Commission is of special importance at the present time. Every variety of study should be encouraged which may serve to direct the attention of Native youth to industrial

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and commercial pursuits. To be of any value, the bifurcation should be carried out, as the Commission advise, in the High School course. To postpone it till after matriculation at the University, as proposed by some authorities, would to a great extent render its advantages futile. The Government of India commends the other general recommendations of this chapter to the adoption of Local Governments. * * * * * Efforts should be made to call forth private liberality in the endowment of scholarships not only in Arts colleges, but for the encouragement of Technical Education. Such was the policy which the Government of India, after a careful examination of the facts, promulgated on this question. That policy enforced the necessity of making the course of study in High Schools more practical than it was; and it recognized the desirability of encouraging technical instruction. Beyond such a recognition, however, the Education Commission or the Government of India did not then go. No indication was given of the direction in which, or of the means by which, such technical instruction might be imparted. In this note an effort is made to supply such an indication. In only one out of eight first grade colleges in Madras, and in only one out of six in Bombay, have Law classes been established; while since the foundation of the Madras and Bombay Universities,5 only 238 degrees in Law have been conferred by the former, and only 132 degrees by the latter. The case is far different in Bengal where Law is taught, and well taught in eight colleges, and where 1,328 degrees in Law have already been conferred by the University. Even in the North-Western Provinces, three out of the total number of five colleges have Law Schools attached. 67. There is a wide career of usefulness open all over the settled districts of India for trained lawyers. The Bench absorbs a large number, with the result that the administration of justice is greatly improved. And besides this improvement, there is another gain in the better tone and morale of the native civil judiciary, consequent on the criticisms to which they are exposed at the hands of an instructed and independent Bar. It seems therefore that the establishment of Law classes in some or all of their first grade colleges is one point to which as opportunity offers the attention of the Governments of Madras and Bombay might with advantage be directed. On this head the other Presidencies or Administrations do not seem to stand at present in need of suggestions from the Government of India. 68. In regard to University education in Medicine, the organizations in the three Presidency towns seem to be all that the circumstances of the time demand. It may be admitted that degrees in Medicine should only be awarded when a high standard of professional education has been attained; and this seems only possible in cities where the services of an adequate teaching staff can be secured, and where the existence of large hospitals affords satisfactory opportunities for clinical and pathological instruction. The number of degrees in Medicine conferred by the 244

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Calcutta University (567) is very satisfactory; and the Bombay number (172) is encouraging. The Madras University Medical graduates are indeed few; and if we were not assured that the paucity in their numbers (which all told amount to only 45) is due to some extent to the preference of students of the Madras Medical College for British degrees, one might be disposed to suspect inefficiency in the teaching, or excessive strictness in the examination tests. 69. In the Lahore Medical College recent improvements and additions to the teaching staff have brought the Medical School abreast of the requirements of the time and province, and no further suggestions seem to be called for here in regard to it. The Medical School at Agra, on the other hand, does not rank as a college. It is a school of third rate rank, both as regards teaching power and the character of the diplomas conferred. Having regard to the fact that Agra is the only centre of Medical education for a large and demsely peopled tract of British and tendatory territory, it is worth considering whether its teaching power should not as funds admit be strengthened, and whether the school should not be raised to the same footing as the College at Lahore. A review of medical teaching in India at the present time would be incomplete without some allusion to the great impetus which is being given to the medical training of women, by the organizations connected with Her Excellency the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund. On this occasion, however, no more than a passing reference is required. 70. The facilities afforded for University training in Engineering appear, as far as mere teaching goes, to be as extensive and complete as the circumstances of the time require. The colleges at Calcutta, Madras, Poona, and Roorkee are wellequipped, and the theory of Engineering is as well taught as perhaps in England. The defects seem to lie in the too theoretical nature of the teaching, in the complete isolation of these colleges, and in the want of facilities for practical instruction at Madras and Roorkee. The first mentioned defect seems almost inseparable from any system we can devise: but it can be greatly minimized. The workshops at Seebpur and Poona do much towards making the instruction in these colleges of a practical character: and it is suggested that an effort be made towards turning to similar use the important workshop belonging to the Local Government near Roorkee, and towards establishing a connexion with the Railway workshops in Madras. A year’s work in these shops would form a very useful adjunct to the existing college course. The second defect is due to the entire want of Elementary and Secondary Schools of a technical character leading up to the college courses. At present the college is the alpha and omega of instruction in Engineering. This is a defect which equally exists in connexion with Schools of Art. 71. So much for the general condition of Technical training of the higher or collegiate [******]tion; we now come to technical training in schools. First, there are the Medical Schools devised to impart a knowledge of Medicine and Surgery calculated to place its possessors above the mere empiricism of baids, hakims, kobirages, and other ignorant native practitioners. The great danger in these schools is a system of instruction too theoretical for the purpose in view. This danger was perceived some time ago in the Bengal schools, and steps taken to obviate it by simplifying 245

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the lectures and making them more tutorial, by insisting on more frequent examinations, and by more practical demonstrations. These improvements will it is hoped, have the desired effect, but it would seem that in other provinces of the Empire as well as in Bengal the evils thus guarded against operate to a very great extent. It is desirable therefore that other Local Governments should be invited to consider the mode of instruction in these schools, with a view to rendering it more practical and intelligible to the class for whom the schools were devised. In neither Bombay nor Madras do these Medical Schools seem to be as popular as could be wished, and it would be gratifying to know that this apparent want of popularity is not due to defects of system, or to inefficient teaching. The matter is one to which the attention of these Governments might with advantage be called. Attention has been called to the fact that the flourishing town of Rangoon is without a Medical School. So long ago as 1883 the want was felt; and in the May of that year the Chief Commissioner expressed the intention of soon supplying it. The want is still unsupplied; and the Administration of Burma may now reasonably be asked to attend to the matter. 72. As it is very desirable that medical aid for the people should be disseminated as widely as possible, attention may here be called to the fact that, while Bengal with its comparatively few large cities possesses seven Medical Schools, the North-Western Provinces and the Punjab with their many great cities are content with two schools. In the single city of Dacca in Bengal there is one Allopathic and two Homœpathic Schools, and the competition is only productive of good. The Medical profession even in its lower grades affords to fairly educated men an excellent opening and independent career. 73. The success which has attended Survey Schools, wherever they have been established, is an encouragement to extend the system. There is in every district in India ample employment for competent surveyors, for the qualifications of the ordinary amin leave much to be desired. If after suitable Survey Schools had been provided, our Civil Courts employed, by preference, surveyors or valuators who had certificates from such schools, not only would an impetus be given to this description of technical education, but a great boon would be in course of time conferred on the people in the provision of a more respectable class of professional surveyors and valuators. Local Governments and Administrations might, therefore, be asked to take into their consideration this question of Survey Schools. An educational qualification should be insisted upon before a student is admitted to such a school. The character of the students and the reputation of the profession would thus alike be raised in the public esteem. Local Governments might also be asked to consider whether by degrees the surveyorships and valuatorships to Civil and Revenue Courts and authorities should be restricted to passed students of these Survey Schools. 74. On the question of Agricultural Schools and Colleges some opinion has been already expressed. Here all that need be added is that if such schools and colleges cannot now be provided, we should at all events do what can be done by an extension as far as funds allow of that system of agricultural classes in Middle 246

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and High Schools which is found to answer in Bombay. There is room for hope that conjoined with a system of public examinations this plan will in time supply a demand for higher and more systematic instruction in agriculture. 75. We now come to Art Colleges and Industrial Schools. The previous remarks made on this subject will have suggested that if these Art Schools in the Presidency towns and at Lahore have not as yet made much impression on the Industrial life of the country, it is not so much because their aims are untrue, as because they keep no touch with the Industrial system they are devised to assist and improve. On the other hand, the so-called Industrial Schools, modelled upon no considered plan, and cut off from communications with the Schools of Art which should be to them sources of inspiration and guidance, never rise above mere workshops for the production of inferior articles at extravagant cost. For all purposes of practical training they are useless; and it is no exaggeration to say that of the 45 Industrial Schools which now exist in India, hardly one serves any true educational purpose. If, therefore, anything effective is to be done in the way of Industrial training in Indian schools, we must begin anew and construct a system of industrial education. The question for decision is then, upon what principle and by what adaptation of means to ends can such a system be constructed? 76. Authorities6 agree in thinking that the true principle from which to start is that Technical instruction must not be considered as something separate and apart from ordinary general education. On the contrary, it should be regarded as a development of such education. The scheme of general education should therefore be so arranged as without any break of continuity to lead up to the instruction which we call Technical. If this be the true principle on which to proceed, it is manifest that nowhere in India has our educational system given to that principle the prominence which it deserves. Leading, as it does, to University examinations and University degrees alone, our educational system has always concentrated attention on literary subjects and literary training. But as Technology is the study of the practical application of Science, a system of education which has for its aim the acquisition of literary knowledge only can never be a satisfactory introduction to technical instruction. As Science is the foundation of every branch of technical instruction, the principles of Science ought to underlie the education of those whose aim in life is the practice of the Industrial Arts. 77. Education will usually begin with “the three R’s:” and it is, of course, necessary that some advance should have been made with the elements of language and mathematics before progress can be made with even rudimentary Science. But all authorities agree that the study of drawing should be introduced at the earliest possible age; that it should be placed on the same footing as writing; and that it should be continued throughout all subsequent stages of the student’s educational career. The Royal Commissioners on technical education are at great pains to enforce this principle:— “Your Commissioners,” they say, “are of opinion that sound instruction in the rudiments of drawing should be incorporated with writing in 247

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all primary schools, both for girls and boys, by which also, according to the experience of competent authorities, the writing would be much improved. Something in this direction has already been done in many good infant schools, where children of the age of six draw triangles, squares, oblongs, etc., on their slates.” 78. When some progress has been made in “the three R’s,” attention should be directed to Elementary Science. “For the great mass of our working population,” write the Royal Commissioners, “who must necessarily begin to earn their livelihood at an early age, it is essential that instruction in the rudiments of the sciences bearing upon Industry should form a part of the curriculum of the Elementary Schools, and that instruction in drawing, and more especially in drawing by rule and compass, of a character likely to be useful to them in their future occupations as workmen and artizans, should receive far greater attention than it does at present. The importance of the first of these subjects has been so far acknowledged by the Education Department, that in all infant schools simple lessons on objects and the more commonly occurring phenomena of nature have been made obligatory. This system of instruction, if properly illustrated by the object itself or of diagrams or models of the same or by the simplest kinds of experiments, is an excellent foundation for the subsequent teaching of Elementary Science.” And again: Geography, if properly taught, is a branch of Elementary Science which need not be separated from Science generally, and can well be taught along with the other branches of Science by means of object lessons. In this way the connecting link between Science as taught in the Infant School and in the higher division of the Elementary School will be supplied. A preliminary education founded on the preceding principles would form the most appropriate introduction for all forms of technical instruction that could be devised, while it would help to give to the education of those not intended for Industrial pursuits that practical character which is now so wanting. Children under such a system would have their faculties of thought and observation trained, while now the only faculty that is trained is the memory. 79. Following on such a preliminary education, of which Reading, Arithmetic, Writing, Drawing, and Elementary Science would form the prominent features, would come that separation of studies which the student’s proposed career in life would necessitate. Those who were intended for the learned professions, 248

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the Bar or Medicine, would follow the literary courses which lead to the existing Entrance Examination of the University. Those who looked to Art or Engineering, or Commerce or Agriculture, would pursue the “modern” curriculum advocated by the Education Commission, and leading to an alternative Entrance Examination which the Universities should without unnecessary loss of time be invited to establish. Those who looked to Industrial pursuits would enter the Schools of Technical training, if indeed they did not select to push their preliminary education still further by going through the “modern” curriculum. These three divergent courses should take off from the common stem at the end of the Middle School course, as recommended by the Madras Government. The High or Zillah Schools would thus in all cases consist of a “literary” and a “modern” side, which is in full accord with the recommendations of the Education Commission and with the declared policy of the Government of India. 80. It will be observed that the Royal Commissioners recommend the introduction of Drawing and Rudimentary Science into the curriculum of Primary Schools. We must not, however, be misled by identity in nomenclature into thinking the enforcement of such a recommendation possible in all Indian Primary Schools. The Indian Primary School is a very multiform entity indeed. In Bengal, where primary education proceeds on the basis of controlling and by degrees improving Indigenous Schools, teaching in the old native plan, the introduction of Drawing or Science lessons into the Village School or pathsala would be at the present moment wholly premature and impossible. The schoolmasters are unfit to teach such subjects. In Bombay, on the other hand, where very many of the Primary School teachers have passed through training institutions, and teach on approved methods, the introduction of drawing, etc., into the school curriculum might possibly be enforced. What is suitable for one part of India may be unsuitable for another part: and we shall miss our end if we strive after uniformity which is not attainable. While making due allowance for such local peculiarities as those referred to, and while permitting the utmost freedom to provincial and local endeavours, it seems that for the present we should leave the Indian Primary School out of our consideration; and that in any change of system or addition to the carriculum that may be determined upon the Government of India should not aim at going lower down in the scale than the Middle school. But in every province we should operate through the Middle School (and à fortiori through the High School) whether it be founded on an English or on a Vernacular basis. We shall thus circumscribe our efforts, which in a novel undertaking is always desirable; and we shall appeal to a higher degree of intelligence in our students while counting on a more instructed class of teachers. 81. The Middle or High School student, who is able to read, write, and cast up accounts, and has been grounded in the rudiments of Science in addition to knowing something of Drawing, now looks about for a school in which to prosecute his technical education. It will simplify the difficulty of providing such a school if we first consider what should be taught our student in the school he is looking for. 249

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82. The various industries or professions which may be made the subject of technical education are classified by Professor Pedler, of the Calcutta Presidency College, under four divisions:— A.—Applications of Science. B.—Applications of Art. C.—Agriculture. D.—Commerce. With Agriculture and Commerce it is not now proposed to deal. The industries classed as “Applications of Science” admit of a further division into five heads:— (a) Industries dependent on the application of Chemistry, such as dyeing, printing, textile fabrics, paper-making, sugar-refining, glass manufactures. (b) Industries dependent on the application of Physical Science, such as electro-engineering, electro-metallurgy, etc. (c) Industries dependent on the Sciences—geology, metallurgy, mining. (d ) The textile industries which depend partly on physical, partly on mechanical science. (e) Mechanical industries, such as manufacture of cutlery, looks, screws, electro-plating etc. The training necessary for those who intend to follow the industries coming under the designation of Applications of Art may be sub-divided into— (a) (b) (c) (d)

training for architects, artists, draughtsmen, designers; training for engravers, wood-engravers; training for modellers and manufacturers of pottery; training for furniture and wood-work manufactures.

83. The preceding classification may be considered for present purposes to exhaust the subjects on which technical training will be in request for many years to come in India. Indeed, it is obvious that many of the industries are still questions of the future. Some of them, however, are matters of present interest; others of them, though of prospective importance, have now to be provided for; and the question is, how are we to establish the schools in which the necessary instiuction can be imparted to students desirous of making a livelihood by the practice of such industries? Putting out of consideration for the moment the important question of finance, two difficulties here present themselves—the difficulty of obtaining competent teachers, and the difficulty of incorporating the school when we have found our teachers with the educational system of the province. The Government of Madras hope to overcome the first difficulty by the operations of private enterprise. They 250

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expect, by the establishment of a system of public examinations, to create a demand for trained teachers, and by the effect of this demand to produce the necessary supply. It is probable that the expectations of the Madras Government will be largely fulfilled. This means of stimulating education should therefore not be neglected in provinces outside Madras; but other Local Governments should also be invited to supplement arrangements for training teachers by a system of examinations calculated to stimulate a demand for them. And in this connexion the question arises, whether efforts should not be made to induce the various Universities to undertake the examinations, and thus afford a further evidence that technical instruction has been made an integral part of the education of the country. This is a point to be referred to at greater length later on. Here it may be said that there is unquestionably great force in the view that examinations should be conducted by the Universities, and not by the Government through Bcards constituted for the purpose. The Universities have become a power in the land. They are looked up to and revered by the educated classes. If they can be moved to identify themselves with this movement in favour of technical education, their countenance will mere than any other influence tend to counteract and abate those feelings whose nature and force Mr. Kipling (a competent authority) thus describes:— The prejudice against manual labour which exists among the upper classes is still stronger than many of us are apt to think; and when we speak of Art, its beauties, refining influences, etc., we do not reflect that for centuries the most important subjects that our school teaches have been set down in the Kama Shastra among the 64 accomplishments— mostly trivial—in which the public women, or Hetairæ of the country, are supposed to be proficient; while philosophy, religion, poetry, belleslettres, administration, etc., were considered the only pursuits to which a man of position should seriously apply himself.— (REPORT ON MAYO SCHOOL OF ART FOR 1884–85.)

84. But, though we may agree to invoke the aid of examinations in the general direction indicated by the Madras Government, we should not trust to that plan alone. It is therefore most desirable to make all the use we can of existing Training Institutions, with a view to turning out compatent masters, and to spare no reasonable expense in the way of stipends while the teachers are at the Training Schools, and of good pay afterwards to attach them to our service. It is to the employment as teachers of persons, themselves untrained, to train others, that much of the discredit has arisen that now attaches to Technical Schools. 85. Having procured our teachers in one or another of the ways indicated in the preceding paragraph, we have now to see how our schools are to be established. For the establishment of schools the Madras scheme trusts much to private enterprise. The ultimate effect of private enterprise in creating such schools as we want may be considerable, but it is clear that the operation of that agency will be slow. In this matter of technical instruction the Government must pioneer the 251

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way, as it has pioneered the way in almost every enterprise which has changed the aspect of Indian life. If progress is to be made at once, the Government must, on fit opportunity and with due regard to local circumstances, establish in every division or district a Technical School or a Technical Department of a school to which the instruction imparted in the “modern” side of the Middle or High School will furnish a fitting introduction. 86. The school so established must be an integral part of the educational system of the province. If past experience proves anything, it seems very clearly to prove the utter hopelessness of expecting that from isolated Industrial Schools any general good can come. On this point special attention is invited to the opinion of Mr. Tawney, Officiating Director of Public Instruction in Bengal. What Mr. Tawney says of Bengal is equally true of every other province of the Empire. The institutions were isolated and out of connexion with the general system of education in Bengal. They had no prestige of any kind attaching to them, and were therefore unable to make way against the general current of native prejudice. They were insufficiently supplied with funds, and no bright prospects were opened, even to the most successful of their pupils, resembling those lying before the more distinguished pupils of the School of Naval Architecture and the Economic School of Mines. If they had been furnished with schools leading up to them, in which the head and eye were trained to do their work efficiently, and if they had been in any way connected with the system of education centralised in Calcutta, their fortunes might have been different. As it is, I cannot believe that these efforts have been completely thrown away. There can be no doubt that the horizon of young India is widening; that a great many of the more energetic of our native youths are beginning to be dissatisfied with a purely literary education and an official career under Government, and are eager to take part in undertakings which shall advance the economic welfare of their native land. They naturally look to the Government to give a definite aim to their aspirations, and to furnish the machinery necessary for their realization. 87. If, therefore, our Industrial Schools are to lead to any practical good, they must be an integral part of the Provincial educational system. The District Industrial School must be a department of the District High School; all the prestige which attaches to the High School must attach to it, and so on with all other Industrial Schools in their various degrees. Furthermore these Industrial Schools must be linked to a Central Institution, which should be the highest embodiment of instruction in the particular art or industry with which the school is concerned. This Central Institution, be it the Presidency School of Art or the Engineering College, must not only direct and control the teachings of the schools scattered throughout the province, but inspire them with new ideas and furnish them with good designs. For the schools which come under Division B on page 62 above, 252

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the various Schools of Art at the Presidency towns and at Lahore at once furnish the Central Institution which is required. For the schools which should fall under Division A, no Central Institution at present in existence may serve all purposes of control and direction; but the Engineering Colleges will, at all events, serve the purpose to some extent. 88. Even at the risk of repetition and prolixity, the present writer would most strongly urge the view, which is, indeed, confirmed by the experience we have had upon this question, that no system of Industrial Schools can possibly work in India which does not proceed upon the principle that all Technical Schools of a particular class shall depend on, and be subordinate to, a Central Institution. No Industrial School should be established except with the concurrence of the Director of Public Instruction and of the Principal of the Central Institution. These officers should decide whether in a particular locality an Industrial School is wanted, and they should prescribe its curriculum when the school is established. The Central Institution, whether we call it a School of Art or a Science and Art Department, should gather up in itself all that is best in the Art and Industrial traditions and workmanship of the province, and it should be enabled to attach to itself by stipends and scholarships all promising pupils, some of whom would doubtless adopt the profession of a teacher. The Central Institution should decide, in communication with Local Boards, District Officers, and Directors of Agriculture and Commerce, when a particular industry in a particular place needed encouragement and training; and the expense of the school then established might reasonably be in whole or part a charge on local funds. This scheme will, if approved, work in with the system of Economic and Industrial Museums, which has recently been engaging the attentions of the Government of India, and, among Local Governments, more especially of the Government of Bengal. 89. It has been said that the difficulty regarding teachers is one which cannot be overcome immediately. It is fortunate, however, that it does not arise so much in connexion with the training in the Central Institutions, and therefore the concession of liberal support to the Central Institutions is of prime importance at the present moment. Hitherto our Schools of Art and, it may be added, of Engineering have not been richly endowed; now they should be freely supported. No doubt public liberality and beneficence will, if appealed to, also largely help in this good work, as it has largely helped in the cause of Literary education. The advantages of Literary education are perceived by all, and not only has the Indian public come forward most generously to endow Literary Colleges and Schools, but private enterprise has seen in the establishment of such educational institutions the means of competent livelihood, and of an honourable and useful career in life. Indeed, it has thus come to pass that private enterprise in such educational undertakings is so well to the front, that there are not wanting indications that Government is occupying a field which, if abandoned, would be taken possession of by independent agencies. The Education Commission has advocated the gradual abstention of the Government from the work of higher education in India; and though this abstention must not be practised except where the interests 253

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of higher education can be safely entrusted to other hands, the accepted policy on the point must not be forgotten. It will be possible on suitable opportunities, in pursuance of this policy, to hand over some schools and colleges to private enterprise. Large funds may not be at first set free, for local bodies must be treated liberally in undertaking fresh responsibilities; but ultimately the entire cost of the schools and colleges transferred will be available for the promotion of technical education. 90. It has been stated above that the public examinations in technical and practical subjects which it is proposed to inaugurate should be conducted not by Government, but by the University in each province. This is also the opinion of Mr. Tawney, the Officiating Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, who in this matter is justly entitled to a respectful hearing. In a recent report which supports most of the positions contended for in the preceding remarks, Mr. Tawney observes as follows:— 1. I have always thought that the only way to make technical education really popular is to induce the Calcutta University to take it up. No subject that is not recognized by this body can in the long run hold its place in schools. It is idle to imagine that, when schools are made over to District Boards, these bodies will keep up teachers of subjects that the boys do not wish to study and their parents do not wish them to study. But the University can always create a demand for the teaching of any subject by simply introducing it into its examinations. Now there is one subject which all authorities on technical education consider indispensable, namely, Drawing. Messrs. Pedler, Schaumburg, and Monday would have it introduced into all schools. They are agreed that the training which this subject gives to the hand and eye constitutes the most useful preparation for technical instruction. Mr. Pedler would have it taught (as is, I believe, done in Germany) along with writing. On this point the late Mr. Locke wrote (report for 1878–79): “We have to begin—absolutely at the beginning—blackboard work with our new students, which is as though at the Presidency or Medical College the students had to begin their course by learning to read and write. This state of things will doubtless continue as long as simple outline drawing (of the most elementary kind) is not placed beside reading and writing as part of the instruction in every school, even the humblest, receiving Government aid. It has been so in England for the last twenty-five years. No parochial schoolmaster can get a certificate unless he can teach the drawing of simple figures on the blackboard.” I may mention that all the works on technical education in Europe that I have been able to consult hold similar language with regard to the importance of drawing. Now Government might perhaps induce managers of schools to appoint teachers of this subject by offering to pay their salaries and giving prizes and scholarships for proficiency in it. But the University can 254

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bring about the same result by simply paying a gentleman to examine in it. Examination is the central idea of Mr. Grigg’s system, and I am only imitating his example in insisting upon the great power of this agency in India. But I think it particularly important that the examination which I would introduce should be conducted by the University. I therefore recommend that the University of Calcutta be asked to institute an alternative Entrance Examination of a practical character, somewhat resembling the final examination in Schedule I of the Code for European and Eurasian Schools. I would propose the following subjects for this examination:— 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Mathematics as at present (including, be it observed, Mensuration). History and Geography as at present. Elementary Physics. Elementary Chemistry. Mechanical Drawing.

I would compel all students, who propose to take up Engineering, to pass this examination, but no others. Many would take it up to escape the technicalities of English grammar, and the much dreaded second language. It might be asked why I exclude English. I answer that I would have all the papers answered in English; but my experience teaches me that the study of a literary master-piece does not always give a command of ordinary every-day English, and that it is a great strain upon the students. I regard the play of Shakespeare in the final standard of Schedule I as rather unnecessary. But it is of course easier, or ought to be, for a European to get up Shakespeare than for a native of this country. The subjects I have introduced need, I believe, no apology. I would not prevent any one who passed this examination from going on to the ordinary First Arts Examination, if the University did not wish to provide an alternative course in this also. I believe that this proposal would meet with a ready acceptance in the Senate. It is possible that the Faculty of Medicine would prefer this entrance course to that now required as an introduction to the study of that Science. I may remark that at present every student must acquire a good knowledge of Physics in order to pass the First Arts Examination, and that the B course of the B. A. Examination is mainly scientific, though the subject of English literature is unfortunately still retained in it. Should the above proposal be accepted, it will perhaps be necessary to introduce some teachers of drawing into those Government Schools7 that are not immediately made over to District Boards. But it is clear that we shall never obtain a really high class of Technical instructors until the Central College recommended by Mr. Pedler is established. 255

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(a) Mr. Havell’s note on industries in Madras READ—the following letter from E. B. HAVELL, Esq., Superintendent, School of Arts (on special duty), to the Director of Revenue Settlement and Agriculture, dated Madras, 21st February 1885, No. 78, and endorsement thereon by the latter:— I have the honour, with reference to G. O., Mis. No. 2221, Public Department, 13th October 1884, to submit my report on the arts and industries carried on in the districts of North Arcot, Salem, Tanjore, Trichinopoly and Madura. 2. The general condition of these industries is altogether unsatisfactory. Hardly one of them can be said to be really flourishing. General condition. Many of them seem to be fast dying out. 3. Dealing with the weaving industry first, as it is by far the most important in respect of the number employed in it, I find that a Weaving. great variety of textile manufacture is carried on in these districts—silk and cotton cloths, cotton and woollen carpets, silver and gold lace, satin, reed mats, coarse cotton cloths and cumblies. 4. That this industry has suffered very considerably from the competition daily growing stronger and stronger of the cheap cotton and woollen goods which are being poured into the country and that many weavers have been forced to abandon their trade for other pursuits is already a well-known fact, and it will only be necessary to see to what extent it has affected each branch of the industry. 5. The European goods have their great advantage in point of cheapness, and consequently the native manufacturer who supplies the wants of the low caste and poorer classes has suffered most. 6. Two kinds of white cloth for personal wear are produced by the native weaver: first, a plain white cloth with a narrow border of White Cloths—for male wear. coloured cotton, and sometimes with a broader band woven across each end, which are worn by the low caste poor; and, secondly, superior cloths of fine texture in which the borders are broader and of silk, and generally embroidered with a simple pattern and the bands at each end either of silk or of silver lace. These cloths, originally intended for Brahmins only, are now indiscriminately worn by the wealthier classes of every caste. 7. The first of these has been almost entirely superseded for general wear by English long cloth, which is cheaper than the native cloth by about one half. Still the manufacture is carried on throughout the districts on a very small scale, for the native cloth is always worn, by those who can afford it, on occasions of ceremony, and by some it is preferred on account of its superior durability and thicker texture. 8. The manufacture of the finer cloths still occupies a very large proportion of the weavers and is extensively carried on in and around about Madura and Salem. The prosperity of this industry has also been affected to a less extent by the cheapness of European goods, in a similar way, that whereas a well-to-do native would formerly have four or six country cloths in constant wear, many now reserve the more expensive costume for the religious and domestic ceremonies 256

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at which a Hindu would expose himself to ridicule if he appeared in other than his traditional dress. But as these cloths are only within the reach of the wealthier classes, it is probable that the spread of Western ideas and mode of dress has had more prejudicial effect on the industry than the mere cheapness of European goods. Both in the fine, but more especially in the inferior cloths, the profits of the weaver seem to be reduced to a very low margin. The manufacture of female cloths is carried on on a very extensive scale, and has not declined to such an extent as the other, for Female Cloths. though the industry has suffered considerably in the inferior kinds by the competition of English and French cheap printed cotton goods, European manufacturers have not hitherto produced anything which can at all compete with the finer cloths of Tanjore, Kuttálam and Kuranád, and other places. While the more gorgeous beauties of the textile manufactures of the North, such as those of Benares, Surat and Gujerat, have been fully recognised, it is a pity that the more sober, though none the less remarkable, artistic qualities of these fine cloths and their adaptability in many ways to decorative purposes have not been better appreciated. 10. Artistically speaking a decline is only noticeable in the cotton female cloths, most of which have lost their characteristic beauty by the use of European dyed thread. The Madura female cloths, however, are an exception. 11. Before turning to another branch of the industry, I must allude to signs which show that however unsatisfactory may be the present condition, the native manufacture of cloths has nothing to hope for in the future. The great objection among Hindus to European long cloth, apart from its want of durability, is that the coloured and embroidered border of the native cloth is wanting. So, as I have mentioned before, on occasions of ceremony the native cloth is still used. But within the last year or two, cloths have been introduced into the market exactly similar in outward appearance to the common country bordered white cloth, and selling at two-thirds the price or less. Even the finer cloths with silk embroidered borders, which, on account of the combination of silk and cotton being difficult to work by machinery at a cheap rate, have hitherto escaped the competition of cheap and vulgar imitations, are now being closely reproduced with borders of coloured cotton exactly similar in design. Similarly the women’s cloths have until recently only had to compete with glaring printed cottons, which, though injuring native trade in cloths for low caste wear, cannot have affected the industry in the finer manufacture. But lately European cloths woven, instead of printed in imitation of some of the Kuttalám and Kuranád patterns, have been brought into the market, selling at prices with which the native manufacture could not possibly compete. 12. Owing to agents of European firms who have been busy lately buying up native cloths as patterns, the weavers, in nearly every place I visited, looked upon my inquiries with great suspicion; and in some cases refused to allow me to see their looms. 13. The effect of this new departure will no doubt tend to greatly hasten the decline in native weaving. In fact it is obvious that in no very short time the whole 257

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of the native industry in the low caste or purely cotton cloths must give way, and only a remnant of the finer manufacture in which silk is partly or wholly used will be able to hold its own to any extent against the cheaper, though vastly inferior in every way, European goods. 14. With regard to woollen carpets a great decline is also noticeable. Ayyampet, in the Tanjore district, was once an Woollen Carpets. important centre for the manufacture of the woollen mats or small carpets for which the district is famous, and about ten years ago 107 families were employed in the industry. Now twelve families only are engaged in it. Ayyampet. 15. The patterns and colours of the carpets now made are not, as far as I could judge from the few examples available, so good as those to be found in old carpets, but this is probably the effect rather than the cause of the decline in prosperity which is owing more to native preference for inferior European manufactures. 16. These carpets do not ever appear to have found much favour in the European market. The patterns and colours which are very bold and striking do not suit the taste of the many, who, in their painful anxiety to eschew anything vulgar or in bad taste, fall back on so-called “æsthetic” muddiness of colour and monotony of pattern. 17. The Tanjore district was also once well known for silk carpets of remarkable beauty. This industry seems to have disappeared Silk Carpets. entirely. At all events, I was not able to discover any workmen engaged in it. 18. At Wálajánagar, also an old seat of the industry, there are now only two workmen employed in it. Inferior designs and the Wálajánagar. use of aniline dyes are the only noticeable features in their productions. 19. Probably the proximity of Vellore Jail, which must have once competed strongly with local manufacture, has been the chief cause of Vellore Jail. the commercial ruin of the Wálajá carpet trade. The restrictions recently placed on jail manufactures, in this case, came too late. 20. In this jail the methods employed and the dyes used are purely native. But the patterns are too miscellaneous and not always good, and the arrangement of colours is altogether wanting in that essential of perfect harmony which is so conspicuous in unsophisticated native manufacture. 21. Cotton carpets are made at Arcot, Wálajánagar (North Arcot district), Ayyampet (Tanjore district) and Ranjangudi (Trichinopoly district); but the industry is declining commercially and artistically. The Cotton Carpets. patterns, in nearly all cases, are good and appropriate, but at Arcot and Wálajá aniline dyes have completely ruined the industry artistically. The Ayyampet carpets are good, and those of Ranjangudi are the best I have seen both in design and colour. It is worth noticing that country cotton is always used in this manufacture. 258

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22. Satin is manufactured at Ayyampet, Arcot, and Wálajánagar and at Ariyalúr, Trichinopoly district. It is a beautiful industry which has hitherto attracted little notice. The weavers seem to be of northern origin Satin. both from type of features and language, the latter a dialect strongly mixed with Gujerati. The material produced at the three first places is worn by Muhammadans for trousers the principal trade being with Hyderabad. The arrangement of colour is very bold and brilliant but always in good taste. The Ariyalúr satin is distinct in style and of remarkable beauty in colour, as well as tasteful in the simple patterns woven generally in stripes across it. The ravikkai (Hindi, choli) worn by native ladies is made of it. Only two men are engaged in this industry, which, as far as I am aware, has never been noticed before. 23. A kind similar in style but inferior in colour and execution is produced in the town of Trichinopoly embroidered with patterns in silver lace. 24. The only branch of weaving which has hitherto escaped European competition is the reed-mat industry carried on chiefly at Shiyáli and Wandiwash. Those made at Shiyáli are the best and are remarkable for Reed Mats. their fine designs and good dyes. The Wandiwash mats are familiar to the Madras bazaar. The patterns are also very good, but the common use of aniline dyes has had disastrous effect. 25. There are two branches of industry closely connected with weaving, cotton spinning and the manufacture of gold and silver lace, which have sunk from great importance to complete insignificance. Machine Cotton spinning. cotton is universally used in the manufacture of all Gold and Silver lace. but the coarsest kind of cloth and in cotton carpets; and similarly the gold and silver lace so much used in the manufacture of the finer male and female cloths is almost entirely European, though there are a few native workmen to be found in Madura and Arcot. 26. The industry of cotton printing is tolerably widely diffused throughout these districts, though it is in a sadly neglected condition. There are two distinct classes of work, the hand-painted or block-painted cloth, Cotton printing. used either for personal wear or as bed-covers (palampores) and the hand-painted representations of mythological subjects for adorning the Hindu cars and temples or for wall-hangings on festive occasions. The former are made at Kumbakónam, Nagore, Uraiyur (a suburb of Trichinopoly), Mána Madura, Permagudi, Pámban, Wálajánagar and Arcot; and the latter at Kálahasti, Salem, and Madura. At Kumbakónam and Nagore the cloths are all hand-painted. The best of them are exceedingly tasteful in design. The trade which is entirely an export one chiefly with Singapore and Penang has diminished enormously during the last twenty years, probably to the extent of 80 per cent. English printed cottons have supplanted the more costly native productions. 27. The cloths and handkerchiefs of Permagudi, Mána Madura and Pámban are also hand-painted, but quite distinct in style from the last. 259

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Their fine lace-like patterns when drawn or painted by hand with the first preparation of wax, with great dexterity and facility, are exceedingly effective. But owing to the fineness of the patterns they become almost indistinguishable after the cloth receives its deep red and blue dyes. However, there is one man working at Mána Madura whose designs are generally bolder and more suitable for the process. 28. At Uraiyur some good block-printed palampores are produced by some half-dozen families but the industry is declining Uraiyur. and the best workman has lately abandoned his trade and left the place. 29. The cloths of Wálajánagar and Arcot are all block-printed. The industry here must have been once very extensive and important. In nearly every house where the work is carried on, I found old blocks of very elaborate and beautiful patterns, many of them of Persian origin, piled up in corners or in the roof covered with dust, or in some cases cut in pieces and utilized for the patterns now in use, which are very poor and altogether inferior to the old ones. In one case there were as many as 72 blocks to form the pattern of one palampore. I was able to secure some 200 of these fine old blocks. 30. In this case also the trade is almost entirely an export one and the decline which has affected the industry artistically in such a remarkable way seems to have taken place within the last twenty years. The cloths now produced when finished are often so blurred that the patterns are altogether lost. 31. The second kind of painted cloth, used in Hindu sacred ceremonies, is very interesting and remarkable. The best are produced at Kálahasti in North Arcot. The quaint illustrations of scenes from the Hindu Kálahasti. epics, the Ramayanam and the Mahabarata are exact reproductions of the style of Hindu temple sculptures with the same richness of architectural frame-work and elaboration of jewellery. But apart from their interest the wonderful effect of the arrangement of colour gives them an artistic value of a high order. Similar ones differing only in colour but not drawn with the same dexterity are produced at Salem. In both these places a few good patterns of palampore without figures are made in which the sacred tree and swan or the lotus form the leading motif. Those of this latter kind made at Salem are excellent in design and superior in this respect to the Kálahasti ones. The Kálahasti palampores attracted some attention at the last Calcutta Exhibition, but those of Salem are, I believe, quite unknown. There is also one old man at Madura who formerly produced painted cloth of a similar character, but he has now given up the work as there is no demand for it. 32. With regard to metal-work, that in brass and bronze is the most extensive industry. Commercially it has declined little, except that kerosine lamps are fast taking the place of the old native oil ones. Metal-work. But the fine ornamental work for which the south is famous has become almost a lost art. Even the ornaments and vessels of the temple service, which have always, as in other countries, called forth the 260

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highest skill of the artificer, are now in the case of the former generally inferior in design and rudely executed, and on the latter entirely without ornamentation. 33. The Hindu custom of melting down all old vessels every two or three years has nearly destroyed all vestige of the work of previous generations, so that one must look for examples of the fine old work not in temples nor in the houses of the rich, but among the waste metal of the brass bazaar doomed to the melting pot, or in the houses of the low caste poor who generally look upon these with superstitious veneration and rarely consent to part with them. 34. The little demand which still exists is chiefly confined to the lower castes and the tendency being more towards cheap production than excellence of design or workmanship, it is not surprising that modern Tirupati. work is altogether inferior. The inlaid copper and silver ware of Tirupati is the only purely native work for which there is now any demand. It has degenerated completely in style and execution. 35. The encrusted work of Tanjore is probably not entirely of native origin. It is strictly fancy work, not always in the best of taste, Taujore. and as the demand for it is entirely European, consequently its prosperity does not appear to have been affected at all. 36. A few brass-workers there are who have found exercise for their skill in the making of locks and safes ingeniously contrived. Locksmiths. Dindigul. One man is at Dindigul who has acquired considMáyavaram. erable reputation, another at Máyavaram, Tanjore Ramnad. district, and a third at Ramnad. 37. The Madras Museum possesses some magnificent specimens of arms and armour which show to what a high state of perfection Iron-work. the ironsmiths of the south once brought their art. 38. Now three workmen at Sivaganga, in the Madura district, are the sole descendants who retain somewhat of the skill of their forefathers or who find any employment for it. And just as the skilled workman in bronze, brass and iron is now reduced to the level of common workmen, so Sivaganga. the wood carver is obliged to maintain himself in great part by doing the work of an ordinary carpenter, for it is no longer the fashion for the wealthy merchant to adorn the interior of his house with rich carvings, and the architectural decoration of the Rajah and Wood-carving. the Zemindar never aspires higher than an imitation of that bold and often grotesque travesty of the Italian style which characterizes Anglo-Indian buildings. 39. The goldsmith is still to be found at work in every town and village of importance, and his art has probably suffered least of all, for the women, more conservative, have not given up their traditional ornaments or exchanged them for European jewellery. On the other hand where, Goldsmiths. as at Trichinopoly, a European demand for his work has sprung up, he has become, artistically speakTrichinopoly. ing, completely ruined, and has not even attained to 261

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that high mechanical finish and polish which is the only excellence in the type of jewellery he strives to imitate. 40. Pottery of an ornamental character is made only at Kulgherry in North Arcot. Unfortunately the two men who produce it seem to have been made the subjects of the crude experiments of every EuroPottery. pean who has come in contact with them; and their Kulgherry. pottery is only remarkable for its inferiority to old Arcot ware and for its strange perversions of European forms. 41. A complete list of these and other minor industries I have attached to this report in Appendix A, and a notice of some of the processes in Appendix B. 42. I have already noticed to some extent the causes of the decline which is so clearly marked in nearly every branch of native art. The production of articles of necessity, such as the native cloths, has suffered most by direct European competition. Industries in articles of luxury, such Causes of decline. as wood-carving, carpet-weaving and ornamental metal-work, have been affected to some extent by the decline of many old native Zemindaries and States, but more from the spread of European education and ideas, which lead many of the better class of natives to throw aside their national dress and decorate their houses in a pseudo-European style with glaring Brussels carpets and ill-designed furniture, and either to look upon all native art as beneath their notice or with condescending benevolence to supply the workmen with designs called from the pattern books and catalogues of European manufacturers. In this way the native industries have suffered as much by loss of prestige as by European competition or from any other cause. 43. In the north of India the beauty of its industries has always commanded a certain amount of admiration with a few, but in this presidency it is only of late years that the idea has generally gained ground that there is any native art, much less that any good is to be found in what little there may be. The majority of Europeans know nothing of it, except those few who benefit by its commercial ruin, and the means of obtaining any information with regard to it are very scanty. It is a remarkable sign of the indifference with which it has hitherto been treated, that while South Kensington, the finest Art Museum in the world, has thought Indian and Oriental art worthy of the largest proportion of its space, neither in Madras, Bombay, or Calcutta has there been, until quite recently, even a small collection to represent to any extent the resources of the country in its arts and industries. The collection at the School of Arts, to which one would naturally look for an index to the industries of the presidency, consists principally of a mediocre collection of casts from the antique and details of Italian and Gothic ornament. 44. The specimens of native industry which I have purchased from the grant sanctioned for that purpose will make a beginning in the right direction; but I would strongly recommend that the survey which I have commenced may be continued; that provision be made for an annual grant for the additions to the collection which are needed; and that a museum be formed in connection with 262

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the school representative of all that is best in native art, and especially in that of Southern India. With regard to the question of its connection with the School of Arts, it is to be considered that there is ample space for a very considerable collection and a staff available, and that a large collection of the best examples of native design in every branch is absolutely essential for the future success of the school. Such a collection must, as is the case at the National Art Training School at South Kensington, be the most important teaching agency. To place this collection in any other building would practically render it of very little value to the students and add seriously to my work of superintendence, which is already very heavy. 45. That a museum of this kind would do much good to native industry can hardly be doubted. Indeed, I am convinced that properly directed its influence would be far more beneficial than that exercised by international exhibitions, which, though of great value in many ways, tend to lower the artistic standard by creating an indiscriminating demand. It would give a prestige to native art in the eyes of the natives themselves, and create an interest with regard to it by affording information in every branch of it, which now it is almost impossible for a European to obtain; it would be the means of preserving those examples of a period when art attained a much higher standard than is generally to be found at the present time, and which are daily being destroyed and becoming more difficult to obtain; it would thus create, and maintain among the artizans themselves a higher standard of a design and workmanship; and it would afford the means of enlightening that class of artistically ignorant AngloIndians, dilottanti, and manufacturers, who persist in attempting to teach where they have much to learn, and who, if they possessed but a little of the artistic instinct of the native artizan, would shudder at the mischief which they work.

No. 7.—Note on Technical Education in Madras. No. 123 (Educational), dated the 2nd March 1889. From—The Chief Secretary to the Government of Fort St. George. To—The Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department.

With reference to paragraph 2 of your letter, No. 219, dated 23rd July 1886, I am directed to forward, for the information of the Government of India, copies of the marginally-noted orders, recording the replies of the several officers consulted on the subject of technical education, and to make the following remarks on the suggestions contained in the memoG. O., dated 18th September 1886, No. 601. randum drawn up in the Home ” ” 6th May 1887, ” 228. Department and forwarded with ” ” 9th September ” ” 197, Mis. your letter above alluded to. ” ” 2nd March 1889, ” 127. I am to express the regret of His Excellency the Governor in Council that this reply has been so long delayed—a result which has been principally due to the length of time found necessary to obtain the opinions of the several Faculties of the University. 263

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2. During the interval which has elapsed since the receipt of your letter, the subject of technical education has received the attentive consideration of the Director of Public Instruction and of this Government, and the several directions the recommendations set forth in the memorandum and summarized at paragraph 92 thereof, have been carried out or considered and rejected as inadvisable. The exhaustive report of the Director of Public Instruction on the educational progress of the Presidency during 1887–88—a copy of which has already been forwarded to the Government of India—shows the general progress that has been made, and I am now to offer the following observations on the specific recommendations made in the memorandum of the Home Department of the Government of India, and to state how far they meet with the approval of this Government, and how far they have been, or can be, carried out. 3. The first recommendation affecting this Presidency is that greater facilities should be provided in mofussil colleges for the study of law and medicine. From the marginally-noted Proceedings G. O., dated 18th September 1886, No. 604, Edl. it will be seen that in the year 1885 ” ” 7th November 1888, ” 634, ” the Director of Public Instruction forwarded, for the opinion of the Honourable the Judges of the High Court, certain suggestions for improving the study of law. Of these, the second was that law classes should be opened in four of the mofussil Government colleges. But the High Court, with the exception of the late Chief Justice, was not in favour of this idea, believing that the instruction thus afforded would only be of a second-rate quality, and that it would be better to develop and improve the legal instruction provided in Madras town. This view, which has been accepted by the Director of Public Instruction, has also the concurrence of His Excellency the Governor in Council, who has recently expressed general approval of the Director’s proposals for the creation of a separate Law College at the Presidency town, to be presided over by a competent English barrister. The details of this scheme will be submitted to the Government of India when matured, but meantime this Government is not in favour of instituting mofussil law lectures. As regards mofussil medical schools, the Surgeon-General with Government, in his letter recorded in G. O., dated 6th May 1887, No. 238, expresses the opinion that the existing schools can turn out as many hospital assistants as can be provided for at the present rate of demand, and the Government agree with this opinion. 4. The next recommendation which affects this Presidency is that the instruction in all medical schools be made more practical than at present, and that facilities for practical training should also be provided at the College of Engineering. It will be observed from the letter of the Surgeon General with the Government above quoted that, while Dr. Bidie considers that practical medical knowledge must be mainly acquired by clinical practice in the hospitals rather than by class-room instruction, he is in favour of larger illustration by practical demonstrations of the lectures on Physiology, Pathology and Hygiene, and advises the provision of a properly equipped laboratory for teaching the last-named subject. He has now been called on to report what steps he has taken, or proposes to take, to carry out this programme. In regard to the College of Engineering, the rules of the institution had 264

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been thoroughly revised, after prolonged discussion, before the Home Department memorandum on technical education was received. The revised rules are recorded in G. O., dated 7th January 1886, No. 7 (Educational), and it will be seen that they require a practical course lasting two years to be undergone by all students of the Engineer and Engineer-Subordinate classes. This practical course is now in operation, the students being attached to the Public Works Workshops. The suggestion (paragraph 70) that the Railway workshops should be similarly utilized has the approval of this Government and will be acted on if opportunity arises. It will also be observed that the Engineering Faculty of the University has expressed the opinion that it would be well to require all candidates for the B.C.E. degree to produce a certificate of having passed through a practical course. 5. The seventh recommendation, which is the next affecting Madras, is that agricultural and veterinary schools, or classes in high schools, should be established where possible. This Government in G. O., dated 17th September 1883, No. 610, directed the introduction of a scheme of agricultural instruction into the Government high and middle schools, but the withdrawal of Government from upper secondary education has put it out of the power of His Excellency in Council to give effect to this resolution. 6. The ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth recommendations refer to the introduction of drawing as a compulsory subject, in all schools, the teachers of which are competent to teach it; its adoption as G. O., dated 9th February 1888, No. 100, Edl. a necessary qualification for all teachers ” ” 15th January 1889, ” 17, ” in middle and high schools; the inclusion of drawing and elementary science as compulsory subjects in the Middle School examination; and the introduction of the latter as a compulsory subject of instruction in all middle and high schools. His Excellency the Governor in Council is fully alive to the great importance of drawing as an instrument of technical education, and recognises the desirability of G. O., dated 18th September 1886, No. 604. encouraging, as far as possible, the study of elementary science. Both subjects are already included alike in the recentlysanctioned scheme of a Primary School examination, in the Middle School examination, and in the Higher Examinations in Science, Arts and Industries. Elementary Physics and Chemistry are, moreover, at present a compulsory subject in all high schools because they form a compulsory part of the Matriculation Examination of the University. They will also be included in the contemplated High School examination referred to below. But His Excellency in Council is compelled to agree with the Director of Public Instruction in considering that the recommendations made in the memorandum are too sweeping to be for the present practicable. There is no sufficient supply of teachers in these subjects for it to be possible to make them compulsory, and some time must elapse before this can be remedied. In the meantime, the importance of drawing and elementary science will not be in any danger of being lost sight of. 7. The most important of the remaining recommendations advocate that a “modern” side should be created in the High School course; that the University 265

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should establish a “modern” side entrance examination; and that a technical branch should be added to middle and high schools, leading up to the University test. With reference to these suggestions, I am directed to state that the whole question of encouraging technical education in middle schools, high schools and colleges is at present under the consideration of this Government. Proposals for the institution of a new examination with a technical side, to be called the High School examination, were submitted by the Director of Public Instruction in 1887. They were referred by G. O., dated 24th August 1887. No. 458, to a committee for report, and the committee’s report was dealt with in G. O., dated 11th July 1888, No. 401. The opinion of the University on this scheme and representations from several loading bodies of educationists are now before Government, a further report from the Director of Public Instruction being alone awaited. In these circumstances, it will be convenient to postpone any reference to these questions until a decision is come to on the High School examination scheme, and until a reply can be made to Home Department letter, No. 9–347, dated 18th September 1888. 8. Among other steps for the encouragement of technical education which have recently been taken in this Presidency may be mentioned the establishment of the Victoria Technical Institute, the creation of commercial classes in connection with Pacheayappah’s Aided College, and the range addition of commercial and industrial subjects to the list of optional subjects of the Middle School examination. From the letter, dated 4th August 1887, of the Secretary to the Victoria Technical Institute, recorded in G. O., dated 9th September G. O., dated 15th September 1887, Mis. No. 497, it will be seen that that institu1888, No. 516, Edl., with copy of tion has promised to aid the managers of high and memo. by Mr. John Adam. middle schools in such ways as may be found practicable, and so far as means permit, towards imparting instruction in technical subjects. From the marginally-noted orders, of which copy is enclosed, it will also be apparent that the Institute is likely to take an important part in fostering technical instruction in this Presidency, and in view of this, it has received a substantial grant-in-aid from this Government.

No. 9(a).—Resolution of the Government. of Madras. ORDER—dated 3rd June 1885, No. 377, (Educational). His Excellency the Governor in Council recognises, in the scheme now submitted by the Director of Public Instruction, another great stop towards a sound system of education for South India. The opening of a new outlet for ability is of the most paramount social and political importance. The Government approve of the notification and draft syllabus submitted by Mr. Grigg, and desire to place on record their high appreciation of the care and trouble taken in drawing up the present scheme. 2. The Director of Public Instruction will submit the names of those gentlemen he would wish to see appointed to the committee proposed for settling the final details as to the courses to be followed and the exact character of the syllabuses. 266

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The notification cannot, of course, come into effect until after the report of the above committee has been submitted. 3. The Government approve of the draft chapter of the Grant-in Aid-Code, but desire that it should be clearly laid down that grants-in-aid will be given for the erection of laboratories and the provision of apparatus. 4. The Government further approve of the gradual extension of work proposed in the Agricultural College and School of Arts. They do not, however, desire that any measures should be taken towards extending the scope of the work done at the Engineering College. That institution is now providing a sound engineering education, and its further development may be left to the future. The gradual encouragement of art classes in mofussil colleges is sanctioned, and the proposed carpentry class in the Rajahmundry College may be at once opened as an experiment. 5. The removal of the Normal school to Saidapet is approved. 6. Although the Director of Public Instruction specially requests the orders of Government with reference to making certain examinations a passport to employment in certain branches of the Government service, it is not quite clear what his suggestion is. He should state in detail the nature of his recommendations. 7. With reference to the communication from Mr. Symonds, the Government are of opinion that any enquiry of the nature he proposes would probably be of little avail so far as adults are concerned. The obvious remedy for the rising generation is, as he has observed, the technical instruction of the children, and this is what the Government hope will be provided by the present scheme. (True Extract.) E. F. WEBSTER, Chief Secretary. To the Director of Public Instruction. To W. A. Symonds, Esq.

No. 11 (b).—Extract from Sir A. Croft’s letter on technical education, dated the 20th February, 1889. 16. In connection with the Seebpore College, the general question of technical instruction fall also to be considered. In my No. 571, dated the 26th January 1888, I observed that I regarded “the development of the Seebpore College to the highest attainable point of efficiency as the best, if not the only present, means of promoting technical instruction;” and I deferred the submission of detailed proposals on the subject until the report of the Committee should be received, on the ground that they must take their shape from the Committee’s scheme. In giving an outline of what were then believed to be the Committee’s proposals, I stated:—“In addition to the classes for engineers, civil overseers or clerks of works, and foreman mechanics, it has also been proposed to establish classes for land and estate management, for veterinary practice, for telegraphic employ, 267

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for account-keeping, and for the scientific and practical instruction of superior artisans.” [A. class for draughtsmen should have been added to the list.] “If these proposals are carried out, the Seebpore College will acquire much of the character of a central technological institute, except that it will not concern itself with the training of workmen or managers for special manufacturing industries.” In reference to this programme it is important to notice that the maintenance of the shops at Seebpore was regarded by Mr. Spring as an essential part of the technical college which he hoped to see established there. “Let it be the aim,” he wrote, “of the new Technical College at Seebpore to be a training school for foremen and lending hands, of a class fit to be employed, by the public departments and by firms, for the supervision of all operations involving for their proper prosecution a thorough knowledge of principles and practical methods. For the present it will be possible to train such men for the supervision of only a very limited number of operations. There will be ordinary workshop practice, such as carpentry, fitting, smithery, founding, machine erection, engine and machine tending. Next will come masonry, earthwork, girder-erecting, the handling of weights, the manipulation of ropes and chains, and such other branches of practical knowledge as go to make a good foreman of civil works. Next will come surveying in all its branches, including mensuration and estimating and drawing. Then will come telegraphy, sufficient for the practical needs of the inspector and signaller classes. The College ought to make the training of platelayers and railway overseers a specialité; it ought, for instance, to be possible to procure a man from Seebpore who could handle his gang of platelayers, and take out and put in a set of points and crossings, or replace a damaged rail on a bridge.” He added that the training of all these classes of foremen should include, as it now does at Seebpore, a sufficient knowledge of theory, and a thorough knowledge of its application to work. All this, it will be observed, is confined to the technical training required for the supervision of labour, whether skilled or common. Other developments of technical instruction which Mr. Spring contemplated as part of the future Seebpore course were the following:— Managers of states, land stewards, and tahsildars; Accountants; Draughtsmen; Artisans.

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21. To get all the light that we can from the practice of other Provinces, I may observe that the Victorian Jubilee Technical Institute, lately opened at Bombay, is not a technological institute in the special sense just considered. The Managing Committee explain their programme in the following terms:—The Institute will at present give instruction in machine drawing, in steam, in mechanics, theoretical

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and applied, in physics, i.e., electricity and magnetism, sound, light and heat. The machine-drawing classes are applicable to all the important industries of the district where machinery of any form is employed. Students will be taught to draw to scale the constructive details of various machines; when thoroughly conversant with these and the principles of theoretical and applied mechanics, in which instruction will be given, they will be able to design machines as occasion arises in daily practice. The principal features of the instruction, as now proposed to be given, are (with which end in view the laboratories have been so designed) to afford students facilities for the experimental study of the relations which the principles taught in the lecture-room bear to the problems met with in actual practice . . . As far as possible, pupils will handle the instruments and apparatus employed, and make experiments with them . . . At the end of this period (three years) a student with ordinary intelligence ought to be a fair mechanical engineer capable of taking charge of engines or machinery . . . His qualifications can be tested practically in the workshops of the Institute. The Board has aimed to establish a systematic and enduring plan of classes in those science subjects which bear directly on the industrial occupations of the locality, as well as to provide a complete course of progressive study.” The theoretical course covers much the same ground as that now prescribed for the apprentice class at the Seebpore College (which, it will be remembered, the Committee propose to reduce), except that the Bombay course omits surveying and pure mathematics, and carries the subjects of machine-drawing, steam and applied mechanics to a higher point. The initial qualification required is that of standard V of the Bombay Code, which includes English, History, Geography and Arithmetic, with no higher Mathematics. For admission to the apprentice class at Seebpore a student must have passed either standard VII of the European Code, or the University Entrance Examination in English and mathematics, or a special test comprising English, Arithmetic, Euclid and Algebra. It is clear therefore that the Bombay Jubilee Institute is comparable with, and is established on the same general lines as, the mechanic class at Seebpore. It is not a technological institute in the sense of giving instruction in the principles and processes of special arts or handicrafts: its object is, like that of the Seebpore College, to prepare pupils for general employment in mills and factories where machinery is used, though it is probable that Seebpore could borrow some useful hints from the course which the Institute prescribes,—for example, in machine-drawing. 22. To return, then, to the technical instruction of artisans in the first of the two senses specified in paragraph 20, namely, to take men already practising handicraft and to educate their hands and eyes in drawing, modelling, and the like, so as to make them more capable and skillful workmen. Mr. Spring expresses the requirements of such a class in the following words:—“Were our school situated in Bow Bazár, or at Muttiabruj, or near any other densely populated native centre and were we to open a class, not to teach artisans their own proper work, but to teach them subjects cognate to their work, such as would make them better workmen—elementary geometrical drawing, for example, for carpenters, a thoroughly 269

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good training in the principles of drawing for draughtsmen, and various novel methods such as would be obvious improvements on existing practice, to other craftsmen—we should, I have no doubt, gradually obtain a supply of willing and intelligent adult pupils. The very difficulty of even suggesting anything at the start which could be taught to such persons, except drawing, is an illustration of the need which exists for caution before putting money into such a branch of technical education. Improved methods of working must be taught, as a general rule, not directly in a school, but through the foremen who will be educated at our College”—that is, in the class for mechanics. And again:—“I have no faith whatever in any attempt to establish a class beginning with much more than this. The great workshops which are now dotted all over India are the real schools for the improvement of the artisans, and our Seebpore foremen ought to be, as it were, the under-masters in these schools, and will, by degrees, I hope, succeed in disseminating the improved ideas which we have taught them widely throughout India.” And again:—“What I do believe in, as opposed to the idea of training up craftsmen fit to earn their living by the work of their hands, is the possibility of establishing classes at Seebpore as well as at factory centres, where the main fundamental principles underlying the successful practice of their craft can be taught to selected skilled workmen. Such a class must almost necessarily be a vernacular one. Beyond drawing, I would at first teach them little. The Educational Department have, if they care to avail themselves of the opportunity, ample scope, at the several great centres of labour, for the establishment of schools for the special teaching of our skilled workmen and of their children; and schools of this description, as well as the existing hill and other schools for railway employés’ children, ought to lay themselves out, deliberately, judiciously and thoroughly, for working their best scholars up to the renovated foreman class at Seebpore.” 23. These quotations will, I hope, help to clear our ideas as to the proper scope and limits of technical instruction. They lend support to the view that I have elsewhere advocated, that “the development of the Indian engineering colleges to the highest attainable point of efficiency is, for the present, the best and most practicable means of forwarding technical instruction.” They involve the retention of the mechanic class at Seebpore, and of the shops in which the apprentices can learn their work. They include also the establishment of drawing classes for operatives and their children at Seebpore and other factory centres and the affiliation of such classes, for the benefit of promising pupils, to the mechanic class at Seebpore. The first point, the re-organization of the Seebpore mechanic class, has been dealt with in the Committee’s report and in the earlier paragraphs of this letter. With regard to the second point, I beg to refer to my No. 6660, dated the 26th December 1888, in which I have advocated the establishment of drawing classes at Calcutta, Hoogly and Dacca; primarily for the standard in drawing of the University Entrance Examination, but secondarily, I would hope, for the benefit of operatives in the neighbouring workshops and factories, for whom special classes should be formed. These proposals may do for a beginning; but if Mr. Spring’s anticipations have any good ground, I hope to see them largely extended 270

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in future years. The projected industrial survey, as ordered by the Government of India, will show what local industries exist throughout the Province, in which of them increased skill is attainable, and by what means in each case the necessary improvement can be effected. It may be mentioned that 46 high schools in Bombay have drawing classes attached to them containing 2,874 pupils; that from these classes 1,320 candidates appeared at the examination of 1887—88; and that 315 obtained certificates of the first and 11 of the second grade. It may be inferred that these classes would not be so popular unless they were found to be attended with some practical advantage.

No. 20.—Extract from Resolution, dated 7th September 1894, upon Mr. A. M. Nash’s Report on the progress of education in India, 1887–88 to 1891–92. 14. It has for long been accepted that the educational system should comprise a secondary school course which should fit boys for industrial or commercial careers, and the need from a trade point of view of industrial education for developing the resources of India has also been recognized. Technical education is, therefore, supported by the Government of India as an extension of general education, and industrial education is countenanced so far as it is of a nature applicable to the service of existing industries. The Government of India, in reviewing Sir A. Croft’s Report, suggested that schools of drawing and design might be attached to the principal railway workshops, and that in large towns there would probably be found an existing demand for superior skill in industries. Local Governments were enjoined to carry out on an early opportunity industrial surveys which should ascertain particulars as to all important local industries, and to appoint committees of educational experts and professional men with a view to their recommending alterations in the system of public instruction according as the requirements at local centres of industrial progress might render advisable. Chapter VIII of the present Report deals with the subject of technical education. The Note prepared in the Home Department in 1886 recommended that drawing and introductory science should be studied in all middle and high schools; that there should be a practical or “modern” side in high schools; and that a “modern” University Entrance examination should be adopted as recommended by the Education Commission. It was suggested that special schools in the various departments of Arts should be established; that a technical branch to teach and improve a local industry should be attached in some places to middle and high schools; and that the whole body of technical institutions should be systematized and placed under central colleges to be affiliated to the University. 15. Drawing is now taught in all training schools in Madras, and special inducements are offered to all teachers to qualify in drawing; but it has not been made a compulsory subject of study in the schools. Elementary science is compulsory in high schools, and can be studied in middle schools. In Bombay drawing is taught in all Government High schools and Training schools; and, though it has 271

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not been made compulsory, the number of students of drawing has very greatly increased. Some branches of elementary science are required for the Matriculation Examination, and are therefore compulsory in High schools; and an examination alternative to the University Matriculation Examination has been instituted. It does, however, not lend up to a University curriculum; and on the point as to how far its character is modern and practical, as also regarding the projected appointment of an instructor of science to every High school, the information is defective. In Bengal drawing has been made compulsory in Training schools, but its introduction into schools generally is still in the experimental stage: introductory scientific instruction has long been imparted in Upper Primary, Middle, and High schools. A modern side has not been established in High schools, as the Local Government considers it impracticable to effect this change until the Senate of the University will consent to establish an alternative Entrance examination in practical knowledge. The University of Allahabad has agreed to establish an alternative final examination for High schools, which may also be a Matriculation examination for those who purpose to study science. The general appointment of drawing teachers in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh has been suspended until funds become available for the establishment of a School of Art. Neither drawing nor science is a compulsory study in the schools in the Punjab; but the University has determined to hold an alternative Entrance examination in practical knowledge, and also a clerical and commercial examination which will not lead up to a University course. In the Central Provinces drawing has been made compulsory in Primary schools and optional in Middle schools. Physical science is compulsory in Government Middle schools, and lessons on common objects are given in Primary schools. Manual training has been introduced, but it has been found advisable to render it optional only. In Burma drawing has recently been made compulsory in Government and Municipal schools. In Assam the subject appears still not to be taught: a certain amount of science is taught in Middle and High schools. 16. Passing from what are considered the preparatory stages to technical education itself it is remarked that amalgamated rules were published in Madras at the beginning of 1893. The rules prescribe examinations of three grades: elementary, intermediate, and advanced; the subjects embraced being Engineering, Physical Science, Geology, Biology, Sanitary Science, Agriculture, Vetorinary Science, Commerce, Music, Drawing, and the work of various trades (Jeweller’s, Printer’s, Shoe-maker’s, Lace-maker’s, Cook’s, etc.). Diplomas and certificates are awarded for passing at once in several of the subjects. The system is one of testing rather than imparting knowledge, and departs from the intentions of the Government of India in dealing directly with the actual work of various trades. Mr. Havell, Superintendent of the Madras School of Arts, conducted extensive enquiries, but a complete industrial survey has not been carried out in Madras, nor has agricultural instruction been introduced in Government High and Middle schools; industrial classes have been attached to a few schools. The Victoria Technical Institute, Madras, founded as a memorial of Her Majesty’s Jubilee, has an invested capital 272

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of Ɍ1,42,000; it is stated that, when the building is completed, a technical library and museum will be opened, and arrangements made by delivering lectures and holding classes to constitute it an Upper Secondary Technical school. Hitherto the Institute’s funds have been expended in giving stipends tenable by students at institutions where science and art are taught, and in providing certain lectures. The building referred to is a portion of the Counumara Fort Library building, and after construction is to be placed at the disposal of the Victoria Institute, the Government retaining the ownership. At the Madras School of Art the number of students has risen between 1886–87 and 1891–92 from 265 to 426, and the institution seems to be flourishing and useful. The Government of India are now considering, in communication with the Secretary of State, the position which should be assigned in the educational system to this and the other Schools of Art. The College of Agriculture at Saidapet has been re-organized, but hitherto the number of students shows a decrease. From the account given of industrial schools (often charitable institutions) in Madras it appears that in many of them boys are simply being trained to trades. In Bombay the “Reay Art Workshops” were in 1890 added to the School of Art, and speedily received numerous apprentices in wood-carving and other artistic industries. The Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute, founded chiefly with subscriptions to the Ripon Memorial Fund and with money designed to celebrate the Jubilee of the Queen-Empress, was opened to students in 1888. The course was calculated to train a student in three sessions to be a fair mechanical engineer. A large number of students were immediately obtained. The Ripon Textile School is attached to the Institute. In the Fifth Annual Report of this Institute (which is perhaps the most advanced in India) it is stated that there had been 1,148 students in all during four years, and that all the Textile and many of the Engineering students who had completed the course had found ready employment. The Institute is provided with buildings and apparatus for its Engineering and Textile branches, and is resorted to from all parts of India, and even from abroad; other branches are to be established whenever funds are available. The Bombay Government considered that it had sufficient information about local industries without ordering an industrial survey. The Poona College of Science contains classes in science, engineering, and agriculture, besides classes, independent of the University, for training subordinates of the Public Works and Forest Departments. The numbers in the agricultural classes have somewhat diminished since 1887, employment not being assured to the students. Apprentices in the industrial department have risen from 76 to 110, and more cannot be admitted. Agricultural classes are attached to some of the High schools and to two Training schools. A Veterinary college was established at Bombay in 1886. There were 16 Industrial schools in 1892, besides industrial classes attached to ordinary schools. The Government of Bengal deputed Mr. E. W. Collin in 1889 to make an industrial survey of the Province. He reported that, generally speaking, the industries were scattered and unimportant. His proposal for a school for mining students is said to be still under discussion. Other proposals by Mr. Collin related to the 273

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training of foremen for factories and workshops, and of artizans and mechanics; but he did not recommend the establishment of industrial branches of Primary or Secondary schools. Arrangements for accommodating apprentices to be trained in railway workshops are stated to be under the consideration of the Bengal Government, and a scheme was in 1891 directed to be prepared for the establishment of a silk-weaving school. The number of students of land surveying has risen greatly in Bengal, and they are said all to find employment with case. The Local Government has raised the qualification for admission to the Seebpore Engineering College and also the maximum age, has provided instruction and machinery to enable the students to undertake larger pieces of work in the workshops than heretofore, and has improved the prospects of the students by the guarantee to graduates in engineering of certain appointments in the Public Works Department. The number of students in the Engineer classes rose from 44 to 87 during the quinquennium. The Calcutta School of Art trains general and engineering draughtsmen, architects, modellers, wood-engravers, and lithographers. The course of instruction was revised in 1887. The students, who pay Ɍ3 each per mensem as fees, have increased from 152 to 181. Instruction in design is sometimes given in the school, but regular classes for this purpose have not as yet been formed. There are 21 Industrial schools in Bengal; they appear from the later reports received to be more flourishing than was believed by Mr. Nash, and the instruction is not in all of them confined to teaching trades, but the future of these institutions can hardly as yet be regarded as assured. The Government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh concluded in 1890 that the chief need was higher training in the new mechanical industries introduced by British capital into the Province. A Committee was appointed to deal with the question of training skilled mechanics. The practical recommendations of this Committee, which chiefly relate to the rules of the Thomason Engineering College at Roorkee, and to establishing a School of Art at Lucknow and certain schools for the children of railway and foundry artizans, are described in paragraph 183 of Mr. Nash’s Review. An Industrial school has been opened at Lucknow, and an Agricultural school has during 1893 been established at Cawnpore: the changes proposed in the Roorkee College have been reported to the Secretary of State. In the Punjab a Committee was appointed which submitted suggestions regarding agriculture as well as other topics, and also respecting the training of artizans. Standards for Industrial schools have been drawn up and grants offered to schools under private management teaching them; all the Industrial schools of the Province are under the supervision of the Principal of the Mayo School of Industrial Art. The number, however, is as yet inconsiderable. A Railway Technical school, intended for the sons of railway artizans, was opened at Lahore in 1889, and speedily filled; a new building has now been erected, costing Ɍ45,000, and capable of accommodating five or six hundred scholars. The aim of the institution is to give instruction preliminary to the practical training of the real workshop. An industrial survey was not carried out, as existing industries are little developed. 274

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Design and decoration are said to be well taught in the Mayo School at Lahore, in which the number of students has increased from 82 to 134. In the Central Provinces an industrial survey was carried out in 1888–89, but the industries were found not to be of such importance as to justify expenditure on technical instruction in connection with them. Fifteen technical scholarships are (it appears from the Report) offered by the Administration annually, tenable for two years in the workshops of the Bengal-Nagpur railway. An Engineering class was opened in July 1888 at Nagpur; the students easily find employment, but their number is still small. An Agricultural class was opened also in 1888 in connection with the Nagpur Experimental Farm. The course lasts two years, and includes practical work in raising crops, besides the principles of agriculture, elementary chemistry, and kindred subjects. Dr. Voelcker, Consulting Chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, on visiting Nagpur, considered this to be the best agricultural class he had seen, and ascribed particular merit to the plan of prescribing the practical work of raising crops. In Lower Burma an industrial survey has been carried out. Grants are offered to aided schools for teaching a number of arts or trades; but, according to the Report, technical training has not been taken up by any of them systematically. Eight stipendiary apprenticeships are given yearly in the State Railway workshops at Insein. There is little demand for technical education in Assam, and the establishment of certain scholarships to be held by Assam boys attending the Seebpore College in Bengal has been considered sufficient. 17. The agricultural aspect of technical education was considered in the instructive report on Indian agriculture which was prepared for the Government of India by Dr. Voelcker, and his suggestions were subsequently made the subject of examination by two Conferences summoned by the Revenue and Agricultural Department of the Government of India to deal with that report. The conclusions and recommendations made by Dr. Voelcker were thus stated in his report:— The spread of education will be an important element in the improvement of agriculture. It will do much to remove the prejudices attaching to “caste” and custom which prevent progress in agricultural methods, and it will give rise to a more intelligent farming class. In a country where, as in India, agriculture is the chief employment, agricultural education especially should be encouraged. Until lately the tendency of education has been in a purely literary direction, and has turned attention away from the land rather then towards it; the fault can now be best remedied by substituting agricultural education for a part of the present educational programme. The work must proceed simultaneously from above downwards and from below upwards. Elementary instruction should be given in Primary schools by means of “readers” and “object lessons” which introduce familiar agricultural subjects. In Middle schools the elements of physical science, the use of agricultural primers, accompanied by Illustration Plots on which the ordinary farm crops are 275

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grown, should form part of the instruction. In High schools more attention should be given to physical science and to agriculture, and Illustration Farms or fields should be attached to the schools. Agricultural classes should be established where colleges or institutions that especially teach agriculture do not exist, and these should have Demonstration Farms attached, and land on which the pupils can themselves work. Special attention should be directed to the agricultural education given in colleges, in order that the teachers supplied to High schools and to agricultural classes may be well trained men, and that the Land Revenue, Agricultural, and cognate departments may be supplied with subordinate officials who have studied Agriculture, both theoretically and practically. I do not consider it advisable to establish special Agricultural colleges, but I think that it would be better to utilize existing colleges of science and to form agricultural branches at them. Universities should encourage the study of Agriculture by making Agriculture an optional subject in the course for a degree, and the claims of men who have passed in Agriculture should be fully recognized for appointments in the Revenue and cognate departments. There is great need of Agricultural text-books suited to the circumstances of the different parts of India, and these should be in the vernacular as well as in English. That general education be extended among the agricultural classes. That agricultural education form a part of the general educational system, and be introduced as a prominent subject in the schools of the country. That text-books on Agriculture adapted to the different parts of the country be prepared as early as possible. That encouragement be given to the higher study of Agriculture by recognizing more fully the claims of men who have passed in Scientific Agriculture for appointments in the Land Revenue and cognate departments. Since the submission of these remarks sufficient time has not elapsed for much progress to be made, but there is a general tendency to modify the course of primary instruction which will meet some of the suggestions made by Dr. Voelcker. For example, drawing has been introduced and agricultural primers or readers have been prescribed. In some instances hand and eye training of the Kindergarten description and experimental gardens have been tried, but no substantial measure of success has been attained in either of these directions. Experimental farms, with schools attached, have been established in some Provinces, and in them greater success has been obtained. On the whole, the Government of India are of opinion that the question is one which cannot be forced, but should be dealt with gradually, and that greater success is to be expected from making instruction in the rudiments of agriculture part and parcel of the primary system of instruction in the country than from teaching it as a subject apart from the general educational 276

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programme. As a matter of fact, the Indian cultivator’s methods, though empirical, are well adapted to his environment; and, as Dr. Voelcker says, we ought not to look so much to teaching improvement in any particular agricultural process as to the general enlightenment of the agricultural classes, and that expansion of their minds which will enable them to perceive for themselves the small reforms which are within their means and opportunities. It will be the object of the experimental farms, which Local Governments and Administrations may as opportunity presents itself establish, to make those experiments in improved agriculture which, when successful, will no doubt gradually filtrate downwards to the cultivating masses.

No. 23.—Resolutions of the Simla Conference (1901) on technical education. I.—GENERAL PRINCIPLES 1. That Technical Education may be here defined as— (a) the study of the scientific methods and principles underlying the practice of any handicraft, industry, or profession; (b) the application of those methods and principles to the practice of the handicraft, industry, or profession in question. The first is the primary or technological aspect of the subject; the second is its subsequent and practical application. 2. That all technical instruction must rest upon the basis of some preliminary education of a simple but practical nature. 3. That this preliminary education is better communicated in existing schools and institutions, i.e., as a department of Primary or Secondary Instruction, than in Technical or Industrial Schools. 4. That it should, as a general rule, include such subjects in the Primary grades as the free hand drawing, simple hand-work, and the elementary principles of natural science. 5. That where it is considered necessary or desirable to give this education to artisans in connection with Technical or Industrial Schools, it should be provided for by special classes attached to them; and that a clear differentiation should be made between (a) literary, and (b) scientific and technical courses. 6. That the functions and activity of the Education Departments, both of the Government of India and of the Local Governments, should be devoted to the promotion of Technical Instruction, rather than to the development of trade; in other words, that a clear line should be drawn between educational effort and commercial enterprise. 7. That the supply or development of the existing Indian markets, in so far as this is likely to result from Technical Instruction, is of superior importance to the creation of new export trades. 277

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8. That in so far as the mercantile aspect of the question calls for separate organization or help, this should be provided for either by private enterprise or by special departments or officers distinct from the existing Educational staff.

II.—HIGHER FORMS OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 9. That Technical Education in India has hitherto been mainly directed to the higher forms of instruction required to train men— (a) for the Government Service as engineers, mechanicians, electricians, overseers, surveyors, Land Revenue officers, and teachers in schools; (b) for employment in railway workshops, cotton mills, mines, etc. 10. That the institutions which have been established for these purposes, such as the Engineering Colleges at Rurki, Sibpur and Madras, the College of Science at Poona, the Technical Institute at Bombay, the Engineering School at Jubbulpere; etc., the majority of which are affiliated to Universities, and train up to University courses, have done, and are doing, valuable work, and that their maintenance and further development are matters of first importance; but that the first call upon fresh Technical effort should preferably lie in other directions.

III.—SCHOOLS OF ART 11. That the true function of Indian Schools of Art is the encouragement of Indian Art and Art industries; and that in so far as they either fail to promote these arts or industries, or provide a training that is dissociated from their future practice, or are utilized as commercial ventures, they are conducted upon erroneous principles. 12. That the first duty of Indian Schools of Art should be to teach such arts or trades as the pupil intends to practise when he has left the school. 13. That these fall naturally into two classes— (a) such arts, as designing in special reference to Indian arts and industries, drawing, painting, illumination, modelling, photography, engraving, which may be taught either to those who intend to practise them professionally in the future, or to drawing masters in schools; (b) such art industries as are capable of being practised in the locality, and in which improvement is capable of being introduced by instruction of the pupils or workmen by means of superior appliances, methods or designs. 14. That the practice of these arts or art industries should be directed to the improvement of the skill and capacity of the pupil or workman; and thereby to their expansion, and should not be pushed to the point of competing with local industries organised upon a caste or trade basis, or of doing within the school what can equally well be done outside, or of usurping the sphere of private enterprise. 15. That samples of the wares produced in Schools of Art may legitimately be kept for sale or for orders, and may profitably be exhibited in public 278

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museums, but that it is undesirable to convert the schools into shops, or for Government Educational officers to be responsible for extensive commercial transactions. 16. That it is desirable that a register of the workmen or pupils should be kept on their leaving the Schools of Art, with the object of enabling any orders that may be received to be placed to advantage. 17. That teaching in the Schools of Art should be in the hands of experts trained as a rule in Indian colleges, or in Art Schools. 18. That the specialisation of a limited number of arts and art industries in the several Schools of Art should be preferred to the simultaneous teaching of a large number. 19. That free admissions and scholarships should, as a general rule, be discouraged, and should gradually be replaced by payment of fees; but that this is compatible with the assistance of necessitous cases, and with the payment of wages to the pupil or workman as soon as his work becomes of value.

IV.—AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS 20. That the existing Agricultural Colleges (Madras and Poona) have been organised upon a theoretical rather than a utilitarian basis, leading up to agricultural diplomas or degrees, and have been directed to the training of Government officials in the Land Revenue and cognate services, rather than to the teaching of practical agriculture to members of the land-owning class. 21. That the interest of both classes may be served by the institution of Agricultural Schools in which practical work is conducted on an experimental farm, pari passu, with simple veterinary teaching, and, where required, with instruction in surveying, village accounts and records, Land Revenue law and procedure, and the principles of agricultural science; that there may be two departments in these schools, one conducted in English, and the other in the vernacular, and that the vernacular department may conveniently be utilized for the instruction of village schoolmasters in the elements of agriculture. 22. That it is for consideration whether a School for the practical teaching of agriculture to land-holders might be instituted by Government.

V.—INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS 23. That a survey of the existing Industrial Schools in India leads to the conclusion that they have been wanting in definiteness both of methods and objects, that there has been no clear differentiation between general and technical studies in the , that they have depended for initiation and support upon the volition of local bodies rather than upon any sustained policy of Local Governments, that they have been insufficiently co-ordinated with particular local industries or trades, and that the impression produced by them either upon industrial development, or upon industrial educations, has been relatively small. 279

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24. That the instruction given in such schools should be technical in preference to general, specialised instead of diffuse. 25. That the form of Industrial School recommended by the Conference for future adoption where practicable, or for encouragement by grants-in-aid where it already exists, is a Local Trade or Crafts School, directed to the furtherance or development of a local industry, which appears to be capable of expansion by the application of superior methods or implements. 26. That such schools may be either country or urban, according as the industry in question is practised in the country or in towns. 27. That in country districts such schools will best be devoted to the study and development of single indigenous products: in towns to the development of manufactures; and that in towns it may be possible to collect several industries in a single building, and to give instruction in diverse branches of industry or manufacture. 28. That such schools, whether country or urban, should be primarily educational, and not commercial institutions; that they should be, as far as possible, self-supporting, but should not compete with established private trades. 29. That only such pupils shall be admitted as will proceed to practise the industry taught. 30. That the levy of fees is a proper feature of Industrial schools, but that it is dependent upon the position and means of the pupil and the stability and popularity of the institution, and cannot everywhere be enforced in the early stages. 31. That it will be a necessary preliminary to the institution of such schools to ascertain what are the industries or manufactures to which they may be applied, in the light of the Industrial Surveys already made. 32. That, where it is considered possible to open new or extended markets for the produce of the industry or manufacture thus developed, it will probably be found desirable to connect them with Commercial Museums, both in and outside of India. 33. That for the present the best available teachers, overseers, and foremen for these schools should be procured either in India or from abroad; but that in time it is hoped that they may be produced in larger numbers by institutions at suitable centres in India, where the investigations of products and industries can be carried on. 34. That in provinces where the suggested developments admit of wide or rapid growth, it should be for the consideration of the Local Governments whether a separate Technological Department of Government may in time be instituted, for their especial supervision and control.

VI.—STATE SCHOLARSHIPS 35. That it is desirable that the Government of India should institute a number of State technical scholarships, perhaps ten in number, with an approximate allowance of £100 a year, in addition to travelling expenses and fees, to be awarded 280

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annually in fixed proportions by the Local Governments, subject to the sanction of the Government of India, to selected candidates, who should be sent abroad to undertake definite courses of study in subjects connected with industrial science or research. That these scholarships might be held for an average duration of two years.

Notes 1. The “Anglicists” advocated education through the medium of English and the Vernaculars, in accordance with modern ideas; the Orientalists advocated education through the medium of the Oriental classics on old established rules. The controversy was decided in favour of English and the modern system, chiefly through the powerful aid of Macaulay, then Legal Member of Council. 2. Believed to be the late Mr. J.S. Mill. 3. Education Commission Report, pages 219–22. 4. The reference is to classes in drawing and agriculture attached to some high schools in Bombay. 5. By Acts XXVII of 1857 and XXII of 1857 respectively. 6. Report of the Royal Commission of technical education. Papers by Professor Pedler of the Calcutta Presidency College and Professor Monday of the Sibpur Engineering College. Reports of Mr. Grigg, Director of Public Instruction, Madras, of Mr. Tawney, Officiating Director of Public Instruction, Bengal, and of Mr. Lee-Warner Officiating Director, Bombay. A pamphlet entitled “How to introduce National Technical education into India,” by Mr. Dinshaw Ardisir Taleyarkhan (Baroda, 1884), contains some sensible suggestions. 7. Also in District Board Schools. This is essential as Aided and Middle Schools are made over to District Boards by the Bengal Self-Government scheme.

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13 WILLIAM LEE-WARNER, EXTRACT FROM THE CITIZEN OF INDIA (LONDON: MACMILLAN, 1900), 162–177

CHAPTER XII. FORCES OF EDUCATION. 110. A Choice of Benefits. A few years ago the writer was travelling from Poona to Bombay in the company of three gentlemen at a time when the Great Indian Peninsular railway was breached by floods near Thana. One of the travellers was a Brahman official, the second was a Parsi lawyer, and the third a wellknown Mahomedan citizen of Bombay engaged in commerce. A discussion was raised as to the various departments of the British administration, and the question was propounded as to their respective merits. The Brahman gentleman urged that the system of public instruction, and in particular higher education, had conferred more benefits upon India than any other measure of government. The lawyer thought that British justice was a more valuable gift than the university, colleges, and schools. The former laid stress on the coincidence that, when the British government was actually engaged in suppressing the mutiny, it found time and money to establish the first university in India. The latter pointed to the respect shown by the highest British officials to the majesty of the law. He considered that nothing was at the same time so strange to Indian ideas and so suggestive of justice as the fact that not even the viceroy or the governors would disregard a decree of a High Court, although the court itself had to rely upon the government to give effect to its orders even when they were opposed to the wishes and policy of government. At this point of the conversation the train was shunted, and an engine passed by, drawing a number of trucks full of workmen, tools, and a large crane, as well as sleepers and railway material, in charge of a British engineer. The Mahomedan gentleman jumped up and pointing to the train he said, “There, look at that; the strongest claim which the British have upon the people of India is their power of organization and resource. The break on the line occurred this morning, and now within a few hours an army of native workmen is on its way to repair the disaster under an officer who knows what has to be done and will teach the coolies how to do it. The public works of India are the best school in it.” 282

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111. Educational Agencies. The total number of children of both sexes under instruction in British India does not amount to 4½ millions, and out of every hundred of children who might be at school eighty-seven never enter that place of education. But it must not be supposed that a man learns nothing except at school. If the State does its duty, its whole administration in every department should be an object-lesson to its citizens. If a government is to draw out (for education means to draw out) the healthy feelings of the people into sympathy with their neighbours and sympathy with their rulers, it must give them proofs of its sympathy with its citizens. Does the government perform its duty towards me? is a proper question which every subject of the State should ask himself. In previous chapters of this book some attempt has been made to give material for an answer to that question. Does the British government make provision for the public safety? We have seen what it spends upon the army, the marine, and the police of the empire. If space allowed, an account might be added of the formation of fire brigades, of regulations for buildings in crowded streets, and of the wonderful tale of the Gohna landslip and the vast imprisoned lake which, bursting its bonds, rushed down harmlessly into the Ganges, because its dreaded approach was preceded by measures of precaution and telegrams that averted loss of life. Does the government take measures for the public health? The hospitals and dispensaries all over the country, the sanitary departments, the arrangements for vaccination, and the Dufferin fund, enable men and women to answer this question for themselves. Does it let the people starve? Ask the millions who have lately left the famine relief works, the operatives in mills set up by British capital, the labourers in the tea-gardens, and the emigrants to distant colonies, whether endeavours are not made alike in foul and in fair seasons to find employment for the working classes. Is anything done to encourage thrift or assist the raiyats in obtaining loans for their operations? This question touches on difficult subjects, but it is possible to indicate the direction in which material for an answer may be sought. In post-office and other savings banks more than 700,000 depositors hold eleven crores of rupees. It is not an enormous sum, but can any other country in Asia show even a single depositor in a similar institution? The Indian raiyat also knows from experience the value of tuocavee grants advanced by government, and experiments are being made in the Dekhan and in other parts of the country to deal with the difficult subject of indebtedness and exorbitant interest. Every stage, through which the Procedure Code has passed in its several revisions, reminds the public that the government is not indifferent to the subject of thrift and insolvency. The reader can, if he pleases, put to himself other similar questions, but the limits of this book will not permit of further additions to them. It is sufficient to remark that every act or negligence of a government is a lesson to its citizens and therefore an educational force. But for the purposes of this chapter it will be enough to select the following subjects—public justice, public works, postal and telegraphic communications, the press, and schools. The reader will bear in mind that something has already been said about the lessons in self-government taught by municipalities, local boards, port trusts, and cantonment committees, which administer in a single year an income of nine crores of rupees. 283

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We may therefore proceed at once to a consideration of the educative influence of the five subjects just enumerated. 112. Public Justice. Before the introduction of British rule India possessed no codes of law or procedure, which were equally applicable to all her citizens, whether Hindu, Mahomedan, or of European origin or others. The Indian Penal Code is in itself an education. But although the majority of the people have fortunately no personal acquaintance with its penalties, there is not a resident in the country who is not aware of the fact that there is a court within easy access which will give him redress against injury or wrong. He knows also that the highest official is not exempt from the obligations and penalties of law, and that there is a gradation of appeals and reviews by impartial judges and magistrates, with whose proceedings, according to law, the executive does not interfere. 2,294,431 suits were before the courts of civil justice in 1895, and in the same year 1,752,360 persons were brought to trial before the criminal courts. Not merely the parties and the persons accused, with their friends, but a host of witnesses, and some assessors were engaged in these judicial or magisterial proceedings, and they could see for themselves the cool and impartial manner in which the trials were conducted. When it is borne in mind that on all sides of the Indian frontiers rough tribal justice provides the only remedy for crime or injustice, the population of India cannot fail to be impressed by their daily experience of the administration of civil and criminal justice in British India, even though the best judges and magistrates are liable to err or are at times misled by false evidence. 113. Public Works. The public works constructed by the British government afford a striking lesson in their methods of administration, and in the benefits which the union of India with the United Kingdom has brought with it. No British architect has ever designed a building which surpasses in beauty the Kutab Minar at Delhi, or the Taj at Agra. The ruins of Bijapur, the rock-cut temples of Ellora and Ajanta, and the palaces of Agra and Delhi, attract to India wondering visitors from England and other distant countries. But not one of these travellers has any doubt as to the relative value of railways, dockyards, canals and bridges, as compared with the noble legacies left by previous rulers in marble and stone. The public works, built by the British government at the cost of the revenues paid by the taxpayer, make every taxpayer richer by the result. They are what are termed reproductive works. They cheapen the cost of transit, and so enable the people to buy their salt, cloth goods, and other articles at a cheaper rate. They allow the cultivators to send their cotton and other produce to a favourable market, and they add in numerous ways to the comforts and pleasures of life. A lesson too is to be learnt from the cost, as well as the choice, of public buildings. It is not without significance that the most beautiful buildings in the city of Bombay are the University Hall and the High Courts, the two temples of knowledge and justice. There is another point of view from which the public works may be looked at. They are themselves gigantic workshops for the instruction of thousands of skilled artizans and engineers in the construction and adornment of buildings, and the lessons taught to their builders are afterwards applied by them to the improvement of the private dwellings of the people of the country. 284

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Railways perhaps merit the first place in our consideration. It is often said that a government ruling over subjects of various religions and sects cannot alter their social customs and habits of thought, but that railways silently effect a revolution of ideas. At the end of 1896 there were 20,110 miles of railway open to traffic, and 4,282 miles were being constructed, or else sanctioned for commencement. The capital spent on the open lines was 248·6 crores, and from this expenditure the taxpayers receive a very valuable return in the shape of earnings. Some of the railways belong to the government of India, or to native states, and others have been built by companies under a guarantee of a certain rate of interest, or else in consideration of a subsidy. Any one who has travelled by them must have been impressed with the engineering skill applied to them, with the powers of arrangement and foresight required for working them without accidents, and with the regularity and punctuality which they rigidly secure to and demand from passengers. Surely it is not without reason that railways are regarded as a powerful agency in the education of the people. Irrigation Works deserve separate mention, whether they be canals or tanks. Long before British rule India had discovered the value of tanks and of wells. But canals of the magnitude of those constructed in the last fifty years required a condition of public tranquillity, and a command of science and skill, which India never before possessed. As instances may be mentioned the Upper Ganges canal, which at a cost of three crores of rupees, comprises 440 miles of main canal, and 2,614 miles of distributing channels, supplying water to 759,297 acres; and the Sirhind canal, which cost 3·8 crores of rupees, and consists of 542 miles of main canal, and 4,655 miles of distributing channels. There are 40,000 miles of canal open in India, and more than ten millions of acres are irrigated by them. The outlay of capital upon them has been 37 crores, and the taxpayers receive from them an annual income of 1·5 crores of rupees. The value, however, of irrigation works does not lie so much in their usefulness as a money investment, as it does in the benefits they confer upon the raiyats, especially in seasons when the monsoon fails. Civil Works are another branch of the public works of India, and there is not a schoolboy in the country who has not seen something of the buildings, and the roads, which government make and maintain out of the public purse. Schools, hospitals, public offices, jails, museums, and courts of law, are constantly rising on all sides of us, whilst our maps show how villages and towns are being joined together by metalled roads, which are not impassable when the monsoon rains descend upon them. Some 4·5 crores of rupees are annually spent by government in providing for these wants, from which the humblest citizens must benefit. If the British government does not spend the taxes upon magnificent works of architecture, like those which adorn Delhi and Bijapur, it at least endeavours to provide a multitude of public works for the practical use and convenience of the masses of the people. 114. Post-Office and Telegraph. The extent of India is so large that it will take many years before its postal facilities can be improved to the fullest extent. But enough has been done to make the oldest member of Indian society marvel at this one of the many results of the peace maintained in India by the British government. Was it ever before told in the history of India, that a humble raiyat or petty 285

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trader in Lahore could send a letter safely and quickly to Calcutta for the sum of half an anna? The government of India now conveys mails over 122,282 miles, and maintains 30,451 post-offices and letter-boxes. It carries safely 21 crores of rupees a year for the public in the shape of inland money orders. By means of the value payable parcel post it carries 1,878,000 parcels, and recovers from the recipients more than 2 crores of rupees which it pays to the senders. It even remits money in a few hours to the extent of a crore and a half by telegraphic money orders. The postal department sells quinine to the poorer classes, and pays pensions to the pensioners of the native army. The operations of the post-office are supplemented by a telegraph system of 46,375 miles of line, with 4,046 telegraph offices sending nearly five million messages a year. Can any one, who thinks of this vast network of communications between citizen and citizen, between province and province, and between India and the world beyond it, entertain any doubt as to its influence as a means of education? Something true or false is being diffused through the people by means of the millions of letters and packets carried by post and telegraph. Idle rumours are dissipated by an electric flash, and the first lesson which every nation and every individual must learn for himself is being taught, namely, the lesson not to believe without thought all you hear or all you read. The human faculties of intelligence and discretion are thus kept in exercise, and the waters of village society, which for centuries have run so still, are ruffled by the constant coming and going of the postman. Any one who has heard the jingle of the Dakwallah’s bells, waking the silence of the deep forests of Canara, and scaring away by the strange sound the wild beasts of the jungle, must have felt that the postman is a new and powerful influence in the land. 115. The Press and Literature are forces of which it is only possible to write in the future tense. There are, it is true, 204 newspapers and periodicals circulating in India, but they are very unequally distributed, and the poet who shall do for modern Hindi or Hindustani what Chaucer did for English, has yet to rise. In countries which have, enjoyed for centuries a free press, readers are intolerant of false intelligence or foolish arguments. To an intelligent public, able not only to read but to understand, a well conducted press is essential, and the editors of newspapers in an enlightened country receive salaries which but few of the highest servants of the State enjoy. When India can command for its press the picked men of its colleges and schools, and when the general public take to reading vernacular newspapers with interest and intelligence, the educative force of its public press will undoubtedly be felt. At present there is in many cases an absence of both of these conditions, and we must look to time and the department of public instruction to gradually supply them. 116. Department of Education. A government, which does its best to promote new industries and enlarge the trades and occupations of the people, is not likely to depreciate the value of schools and colleges. If the Indian taxpayer and ratepayer could provide twenty primary schools where there is now one, it would be a source of satisfaction to every one. But for the present the government is obliged to confine 286

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its attention to three objects. It provides a small establishment of higher education, which can supply the most pressing wants of the public services and the leading professions; its main object under this head is to establish institutions which shall serve as models to others. In the next place it gives grants-in-aid to all bodies or individuals who are willing to take part in instructing the people and managing schools or colleges. Thirdly, it requires local and municipal bodies to provide, as far as possible out of the rates and a grant from the taxes, for primary education. The operations of the department should be viewed from each of these points of view. 117. Models of Instruction. The reader knows well that the scheme of Indian education includes the primary school in which instruction is given in the vernacular; the secondary school, in which English is taught, and the college affiliated to an University, in which education is completed and success rewarded with a degree. The education imparted in secondary schools and colleges is either technical, or such as falls in with the Arts course of the University. It is desirable to give variety to education, not only because the capacities and tastes of men differ, but also because the wants of society are various, and education ought to fit its pupils to take part in all the services and employments which the country requires. For this reason government provide in their scheme of State institutions, medical and engineering colleges and schools, veterinary and agricultural schools, schools of art and industrial schools. Whenever a new experiment has to be made in the field of education, government lead the way, and especially in the matter of female education and the teaching of science it has been necessary for them to act, because otherwise the attempt would not be made. 118. Private Enterprise. But the main object of government is in education the same as we have seen to be the case in trade and famine relief, namely, to get as many persons and bodies as possible to take part in an undertaking which requires the activities and personal interest of a host of fellow-workers. Upon local boards the duty is properly laid of providing for the primary instruction of the children of ratepayers Societies winch have the good of the people at heart, and men who adopt the profession of schoolmaster, are welcomed and encouraged in the field of higher education by grants-in-aid. By such means not only are many agents induced to assist, but as a rule they are men or bodies of men, who give to their work their whole heart and time, and produce results which no State agency can by itself ever hope to achieve. When education was in its infancy in India, the whole burden of showing the way and teaching the people the value of instruction rested upon the State, but as time goes on the funds allotted to public instruction are found to produce better results when judiciously applied to the encouragement of private enterprise and aided institutions. It is a great benefit to give the people schools, but it is a greater advantage to them if they can be led themselves to spread schools and colleges through the land. By maintaining some institutions of all sorts as models, and by offering to willing co-operators an inducement to assist in furthering the cause of education, considerable progress has been achieved in the last half century. 119. Primary Education. Private enterprise has not quite the same inducement to undertake primary as it has in the case of secondary and collegiate education. 287

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The man who can obtain a degree or a certificate in a technical school has already obtained a possession of some value, which will help to give him the means of livelihood. He is therefore prepared to pay for this result, and self-interest will induce people to open schools and colleges at which they may expect to receive substantial fees. But the classes which never get beyond primary education are poor, and as a rule do not value instruction. If they are to learn to read and write, the State must make it easy for them. It must be expected then that for many years to come public revenue, whether in the shape of rates or taxes, must contribute largely to the cost of primary education. In western countries it is felt that the State owes it to all its citizens to provide primary education for them, either free of cost or at as cheap a cost as possible. In India the taxpayer is not yet prepared to accept that principle, but it is one which must be kept in view, because no citizen can fully discharge his duties to his neighbours and the State unless he has acquired the power of reading, writing, and reckoning figures. 120. Statistics. Only twelve per cent. of those who are of an age to be at scllool are attending school. There are nearly four million boys at school or college and only 400,000 female scholars. Of the whole number 3,140,000 are in primary schools, and 534,000 in public secondary schools. These results are hardly satisfactory, but they involve a gross expenditure from all sources, namely, taxes, rates, fees, and other funds, of more than 3·5 crores of rupees. All that can be said is that India cannot at present afford to do more, but the need for greater effort and expenditure will be readily admitted by all. 121. Conclusion. In the meanwhile the process of education is going on in Indian society amongst millions who have never been inside a school-room or desired to enter one. The action of most of the forces mentioned in this chapter is silent, and it cannot, as in the case of school instruction, be put into statistics: but as long as men have eyes and human faculties, railways, hospitals, post-offices, courts of law, and famine relief camps, besides numerous other incidents of their daily lives, must make an impression on them and add to their experiences and knowledge. It is a great step in public education when the people begin to understand that they are citizens and not slaves, and that, as citizens, they have to play a part in the administration of their affairs. Some glimmer of this sentiment has fallen upon the millions of the people of India, and to every one who is educated enough to know what citizenship means may be addressed the words: “The position of a citizen of British India is yours by inheritance. It is a great entail. Be mindful of your rights and privileges; be mindful also of your responsibilities. The future will depend largely on your own actions.” “Are there thunders moaning in the distance? Are there spectres moving in the darkness? Trust the Hand of Life will lead her people, Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish, And the light is victor, and the darkness Dawns into the Jubilee of the ages.” 288

14 REPORT OF THE INDIAN UNIVERSITIES COMMISSION (SIMLA: GOVERNMENT CENTRAL PRINTING OFFICE, 1902), 16, 27–29, 51–52, 63–69, 81–84

COURSES OF STUDY. 69. We recommend that affiliation should be granted, and from time to time renewed, not in general terms, but with a more exact reference to the subjects and courses of study for which the college can make adequate provision. If a college is affiliated “up to the B.A.,” that is no reason for permitting it to teach history without a library, or to establish science classes in which no student has any opportunity of handling apparatus or of doing any practical work. In considering whether the provision which a college proposes to make for a particular subject is adequate, the following are the points to be taken into consideration:— (1) Whether the college can provide an adequate number of lectures. In many cases it may be found that the “adequate number” is considerably smaller than the number now given. We have been told that the student in a Scottish University may obtain his degree after attending about 700 lectures, and that the Indian student often attends as many as 3,000. The quality of lectures cannot be prescribed by University order, but we suggest that efforts may be made to discourage the kind of lecture which consists merely in dictating notes. The object of the lecturer should be to stimulate and guide the minds of his class; not to dispense them from the necessity of reading their books and thinking for themselves. (2) Whether the college provides its students with adequate tutorial assistance. Few students can profit by books and set lectures, unless they have the assistance of a teacher who shows them how to solve difficulties, and sets them exercises. Assistance of this kind is given in many colleges; we note the absence of any provision for it in others. It ought in all cases to be regarded as an essential part of college work. Where a college possesses a body of Fellows, like the Dakshina Fellows in the Bombay Presidency, it is desirable that such Fellows should give a part of their time to tutorial work. (3) Whether the students have access to a library and to laboratories, etc., where required. The student should spend only a limited number of hours per diem in

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class; during the rest of his working time he should be reading, writing and inquiring for himself—not committing his lecture notes to memory. 70. The certificate that a student has pursued a regular course of study should be so framed as to show that he has gone through a course of study approved by the University as above described. All rules which require merely a percentage of attendance at lectures should be recast or abolished.

VERNACULAR LANGUAGES OF INDIA. 94. We have already noticed two important matters connected with the study of vernacular languages, and have expressed the opinion that (a) the vernacular languages of India should not be recognized as second languages side by side with the allied classical languages for any of the University examinations above the Entrance, and that (b) the vernacular languages should be introduced (as at Bombay) in combination with English as a subject for the M.A, Examination. The M.A. Examination in the vernacular should be of such a character as to ensure a thorough and scholarly study of the subject. The encouragement of such study by graduates who have completed their general course should be of great advantage for the cultivation and development of vernacular languages. 95. Speaking generally, we fear that the study of vernacular languages has received insufficient attention and that many graduates have a very inadequate knowledge of their mother-tongue. We hope that the inclusion of vernacular languages in the M.A. course will give an impetus to their scholarly study; and as we propose that courses of advanced study should be under the supervision of the University, we consider that the establishment of professorships in the vernacular languages is an object to which University funds may properly be devoted. We also think that vernacular composition should be made compulsory in every stage of the B.A. course, although there need be no teaching of the subject. The vernacular is already indirectly recognized where it is the language into which the student is required to translate. The evidence on this subject tends to show that translations are sometimes marked for the verbal accuracy of the rendering only; the principle should be recognized that no translation is satisfactory unless it is properly and grammatically composed. Further encouragement might be given by the offer of prizes for literary and scientific works of merit in the vernacular languages. 96. Unless, however, a good training in the vernacular is given in the schools, no effort of the University will avail. At present the subject is frequently neglected and the teaching is relegated to ill-paid and incompetent instructors. As in the case of English, so in the case of the vernaculars, better teachers are a primary need. Every boy should, on the completion of his school course, be required to pass an examination severe enough to show that he has a knowledge of his own language sufficient to enable him to express himself with ease and propriety. 97. The Punjab University occupies a peculiar position in that it recognizes University teaching through the medium of the vernaculars as part of its system. It

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confers the degrees of Bachelor or Master of Oriental Learning on candidates who have gone through a course of training analogous to that prescribed for the B.A. and M.A. courses on the English side, through the medium not of English but of the vernacular (Urdu). This system has not so far borne encouraging fruit, partly through neglect and partly through the absence of proper text-books and the inherent difficulty of obtaining the services of lecturers competent to convey western learning to their pupils in the vernacular. The preparation of suitable text-books in Urdu and Hindi was part of the original scheme of the University, but little or nothing seems to have been done in this direction. There is considerable conflict of opinion among the witnesses who appeared before us at Lahore, regarding this part of the functions of their University. While some denounce the system in unmeasured terms, the majority uphold it on the whole, but counsel reform. We have come to the conclusion that while the initial character and scope of the endowments bestowed on the University at its foundation, have perhaps made the maintenance of the oriental side of the University binding on the Government, the manner in which that side has hitherto been conducted leaves much to be desired. The Regulations for the degree of B.O.L. in such subjects as Science indicate that some of the most modern and advanced text-books are required to be used and that they have to be taught through the medium of the vernacular (Urdu). Many of the text-books prescribed would be sufficiently difficult even if used in an English course. We are informed that there are no vernacular translations of such works, and so far as we have been able to ascertain, there are no Professors in the Oriental College who have had the training or experience necessary to fit them to be Professors in advanced courses of Science. We would, therefore, suggest that the teaching for the two courses of B.O.L. and M.O.L. should be retained with these important modifications— (1) that English, as a second language, should be made compulsory throughout, the standard being left to be determined by the Syndicate; (2) that whenever possible, graduates with high honours on the English side should be appointed lecturers in this department and that, it should be their duty to prepare their courses for publication; (3) that funds should be set apart annually for the publication of the courses of lectures thus prepared and for the compilation and publication of other text-books on subjects not covered by them. (4) that the Oriental College ought to be subject to the same rules of affiliation as other colleges connected with the Punjab University. 98. We are not prepared, however, to recommend that the example of the Punjab should be followed by any other University for the present. We look upon the Punjab system as an experiment which has not yet justified itself by its results but which may have possibilities which we are not now in a position to forecast or measure.

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99. Attached to the Oriental College is a school working up to the Entrance Examination in the Oriental Faculty. We are of opinion that such school work is outside the scope of the University.

MODERN LANGUAGES OF EUROPE. 100. In Bombay French, and in Madras French or German, is included as an alternative second language in the B.A. course. In the former case, owing, it is said, to the comparative easiness of the examination, French is taken up by a number of students to the detriment of the study of the classical languages of the Province. This result is to be deplored, and measures should be taken to prevent students from neglecting the study of classical languages in order to secure an easier examination. We deprecate the substitution of a modern for a classical language; but we would allow female candidates to offer French as is now the rule at Calcutta.

METHODS OF EXAMINATION. 180. We have received many complaints in respect of the style of papers set, especially in English, and we feel bound to state our opinion that many papers have been so framed as directly to encourage cram, and to deprive the student who has studied a subject properly of the advantages of such study. Catch questions and questions which can be answered at second-hand have been far too numerous. A good examination paper is a work of art, and it is above all things necessary that the examiner should be able to look at his questions from the candidate’s point of view, and that he should frame them so as to give the latter a series of opportunities of showing how far he possesses an intelligent and first-hand knowledge of the subject-matter. We consider that easy questions are best suited for this purpose. Such questions enable a really good scholar to distinguish himself, while the average student puts down what he knows without waste of time. In Mathematical papers it is desirable that problems suitable to the standard of the examination should be attached to questions on book-work, so as to enable the examiner to ascertain whether the book-work has been mastered or merely committed to memory. We disapprove of the Calcutta and Madras rules which require that a high percentage of marks should be assigned to mere book-work. 181. We are disposed to think that the practice of noting the number of marks assigned to each question in an examination paper is objectionable. We prefer that a candidate should be given a choice of questions in each paper and should be directed to answer only a certain proportion of those set. We doubt, however, whether the discretion of the examiners should be fettered by a rule regarding a question of detail such as this, and we recommend that they be given a free hand, at all events in all advanced examinations, in such matters. 182. We have had before us a number of regulations and rules which prescribe percentages of marks for a Pass and for Honours. We are unable to suggest any 292

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system of marking, by means of which percentages can be dispensed with altogether. We fear also that it is impossible to avoid publishing the standard which must be reached in order to pass an examination. Publication encourages a calculating habit of mind, so that some students avoid learning more than is necessary. If, however, the rules as to the standard required were embodied in unpublished instructions issued by the Syndicate to the examiner, still greater evils might result from the ease with which the standard could be altered. 183. When papers have been marked by the different examiners, they should, we think, be returned to the head examiner, who should examine a certain number taken at random, with a view to assuring himself that the examiners are observing the same standard. The Board of Examiners might then be convened to settle the results. Where a candidate has failed in one subject only and by not more than 5 per cent. of the full marks allowed for it and has shown merit (which we would interpret to mean: has gained 50 per cent. of the marks) in the aggregate of the other subjects, we consider that he should be passed. If a rule of this kind were made, grace marks and similar devices would become unnecessary, and they should, we think, be expressly forbidden, 184. In the Bombay Matriculation Examination it has been the custom to examine the papers in English first, and to send to the Registrar the numbers of those candidates who pass in that subject. In other subjects, the examiners are directed to look over and mark only the papers of those candidates who have passed in English. This practice effects a considerable saving of labour and expense, and it may be adopted with advantage in other Universities. 185. Objection has been taken to the publication of the marks obtained by candidates. We would not object to candidates knowing the marks they have obtained. For this information they should, we think, be required to pay a fee. We think it better that in the authoritative publication of the results of examinations candidates should be entered in alphabetical order in the class or division to which they belong. Any order of merit which takes account only of the marks obtained must be misleading; the candidates who take certain subjects can put together more marks than other candidates (it may be, equally meritorious) who take up other subjects.

“EXAMINATION BY COMPARTMENTS.” 186. At Madras, where the subjects of the B.A. Examination are arranged in three divisions, a candidate is allowed to appear in one division, or in two divisions, or in all three, in any one year. It appears that in some cases this rule has worked well. A college, on finding that a student at the end of his third year has made but little progress, may require him to devote his fourth year to English and to his second language, and to postpone his third subject to his fifth year. On the other hand, the rule works badly, in so far as it tempts men to try their chance in all three divisions, in the hope of securing a pass in one or two. 293

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The system which is called “examination by compartments” has been advocated by several witnesses, and in particular it has been represented to us that a candidate who fails in one subject should be allowed to pass on satisfying the examiners in that subject, and should not be required to bring up all his subjects again. After full consideration, we have come to the conclusion that the disadvantages of the Madras rule outweigh its advantages, and that examination by compartments ought not to be allowed. The object of an examination is to ascertain whether the candidate possesses all the knowledge which may fairly be expected of him at the stage which he has reached; and a man who passes in all his subjects at one time gives better evidence of the soundness of his general education than the man who can only pass in the subjects taken separately. Care must be taken, in framing the programme of an examination, to see that the subjects are not so numerous as to lay an undue burden on the minds of the candidates; but if this condition is complied with, we think it better that the examination should be treated as a whole, and not broken up into sections.

CANDIDATES FAILING TO PASS. 187. An important question has been raised in regard to those candidates who fail at the Intermediate and the degree examinations, and who wish to appear again. Should they return to their colleges and go through the course of study, or part of it, over again? We consider that the case of each candidate should be dealt with separately, and that the question may be left to the colleges. But we recommend that the certificate which enables a candidate to appear at an examination should, in every case, be a new certificate, granted for that examination. In the case of a failed candidate, his certificate should show whether he has gone through any additional course of study since his failure. If a student who has passed or failed at an examination desires to go to another college, the transfer rules should require him to obtain a leaving certificate.

PERCENTAGES. 188. Our attention has been frequently called to the fact that undue importance is attached to the percentage of passes obtained by each of the affiliated colleges. If a percentage statement is to have any meaning, it ought to show, not merely the number sent up, but the number of second or fourth year students, as the case may be. But all such statements are apt to be misleading. If, for example, a college sends up one student, and that one satisfies the examiners, the college scores 100 per cent. of passes. We trust that these considerations will be borne in mind by the Syndicates and the Directors of Public Instruction in framing their reports on colleges. 294

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General Remarks on Teaching. The use of “keys” should be in every way discouraged by the college authorities. English. (1) Text-books in English should not be prescribed for the Matriculation classes; the course should be described in general terms, a list of books being given by way of illustration. The list should consist chiefly of descriptive and historical books and should be so long as to exclude the possibility of all of them being committed to memory. (2) In the higher courses the books should be chosen as examples of language and style and should be studied more or less minutely. Books which deal with the history and criticism of literary works which the student has no opportunity of reading should not be included. (3) The English course for the M.A. degree should be combined with a course in a vernacular or in an eastern or western classical language. (4) Anglo-Saxon should not be included in the course of an Indian University. (5) Students, after they begin to specialize in Science, should not be subjected to a separate test in English. Latin. (1) Latin should not be made a compulsory preliminary qualification for medical students. (2) Inter-collegiate arrangements should be made for the study of Latin where there are several small classes in the same town. Classical Languages of the East. (1) The study of a classical language should be compulsory in both the Intermediate and Final courses for the B.A. degree. A vernacular language of India should not be accepted as an alternative subject. (2) Teachers of Sanskrit should have a critical knowledge of the subject and should be acquainted with western methods of study. Their training should be such as to entitle them to the same status and pay as the Professors of other subjects. (3) In reading and writing Sanskrit the Devanagri characters should be used. (4) To improve the study of Arabic, the following reforms should, where needed, be introduced: (a) Well-chosen text-books in grammar should form a compulsory part of the course. (b) Unseen passages and composition should carry high value in all the higher examinations. 295

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(c) A fair knowledge of English in addition to a scholarly acquaintance with the Arabic language and literature should be a necessary qualification for employment as a Professor of Arabic. (d) The emoluments of an Arabic Professor, provided he possesses the qualifications stated above, should not be inferior to those of other Indian Professors. (5) To improve the study of Persian— (a) Graduates with some guarantee of their Persian scholarship other than the Arts degree, with Persian as the second language, should be employed to teach this subject. (b) Persian should not be accepted by itself as a subject for the M.A. course; it should be combined with some other classical or vernacular language of India. (6) Encouragement should be given to the examinations held for the grant of titles in oriental learning, but the Universities should not assume charge of these examinations unless they can be conducted efficiently, unless a standard can be maintained of which the Universities will approve, and unless the transfer will be in the interest of ancient learning. Vernacular Languages of India. (1) The inclusion of the vernacular languages in the M.A. course is recommended, and the course should be of such a character as to ensure a thorough and scholarly knowledge of the subject. The establishment of professorships in the vernacular languages is an object to which University funds may be properly devoted. (2) Vernacular composition should be made compulsory in every stage of the B.A. course, but the subject need not be taught. (3) The principle should be recognized that verbal accuracy of rendering is not sufficient to constitute a satisfactory translation, but that it must be properly and grammatically composed. (4) Further encouragement should be given to the study of vernacular languages by the offer of prizes for literary and scientific works. (5) The oriental side of the Punjab University should be maintained and the courses for the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Oriental Learning should be retained with the following important modifications. English, as a second language, should be made compulsory throughout the courses. Wherever possible, graduates with high honours on the English side should be appointed lecturers, and they should be required to prepare their courses for publication. Funds should be set apart annually for the publication of these courses of lectures and for the compilation and publication of text-books on subjects not covered by them. The Oriental College ought to be subject to the same rules of affiliation as other colleges connected with the Punjab University. 296

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The example set by the Punjab University in establishing an oriental side should not be followed by any other University for the present. (6) The work of the school attached to the Oriental College is outside the the scope of the University. French. French should not, except for female students, be accepted as an alternative for a classical language. Philosophy. (1) The subject of Philosophy cannot be included in the Matriculation classes, but should form a compulsory portion of the Arts courses. (2) Courses in Philosophy should be defined by syllabuses. Suitable textbooks should also be recommended for study. (3) The following is suggested as an outline for the study of Philosophy: (a) Intermediate course—Deductive Logic and elementary Psychology. (b) B.A. course—Deductive and Inductive Logic, Psychology and Ethics, Natural Theology and the History of Philosophy. (c) The M.A. course should include in addition to the books of Greek and German philosophers, suitable portions of some of the great systems of Indian Philosophy, to be read in English or in Sanskrit at the option of the student. Mathematics. The subject of Mathematics should be compulsory in the Matriculation and Intermediate courses, and optional in the higher courses of the Arts and Science Faculties. History and Political Economy. (1) History should not be included in the Intermediate course, but should form an optional subject for the B.A. and M.A. degrees. Political Economy should be combined with it. (2) For the study of History, the subject should be defined by periods, books being recommended, not prescribed; some study of original documents should be introduced and some use of contemporary historians should be required. A reference library should be made available wherever History is taught. The course should be carefully adapted to the needs of Indian students. (3) In the study of Political Economy attention should be directed to the economic conditions with which the students are familiar, and they should be encouraged to investigate in a scientific manner the economic problems of India. 297

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Science Courses. (1) Students should not be required to pass in Science before entering on a University course. (2) Physics and Chemistry should be optional in the Intermediate course. (3) The instruction in these subjects should include a regular course of practical experimental work. The University should not conduct a practical test as part of the Intermediate Examination, but each candidate should present a certificate from the authorities of his college, to the effect that he has duly gone through the practical course prescribed in the laboratories of the college, and that he has passed the college test examination in the practical work of the course. The written examination should be so devised as to elicit the fact of his having undergone this training, and the University should assure itself that in the college in which he has studied, he has had adequate facilities for receiving practical instruction. (4) The course of the degree of Bachelor of Science should consist of one of the two following groups of subjects:— Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, or, Physics, Chemistry and Natural Science. By Natural Science is intended one of the following Sciences:—(a) Botany, (b) Physiology, (c) Zoology, (d) Geology including Mineralogy and Palæontology. One of the three subjects should be regarded as the candidate’s special subject, and he should be subjected to a more severe test in it. For candidates studying the second group, the special subject must be the selected Natural Science. (5) Candidates following a literary and a scientific course, respectively, should receive the separate designations of Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. (6) In all examinations for the degree of B.Sc., the practical side must be made more prominent than has heretofore been the case. Practical examinations should be passed independently of the written examination, and should have a separate minimum of marks. Ample time should be allowed for a thorough and fair practical examination. (7) No special facilities in the way of a reduced period of study or a diminution in the number of subjects should be conceded to enable a Bachelor of Arts to proceed to the B.Sc. degree or vice versâ. (8) A graduate in Science should be allowed to proceed to the higher degree of Master in Science by specializing in one of the subjects included in the B.Sc. course, and presenting himself for examination in that subject after some specified period after the time of his graduation as B.Sc. (9) The Doctor’s degree should not be obtained solely by examination, but should be awarded mainly on the ground of original investigation for a period

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of, say, five years, in the particular Science in which the candidate has taken his Master’s degree. General Outline of Courses. The following outline is suggested for the various Arts and Science courses:— Intermediate Course:— 1. 2. 3. 4.

English. Classical Language. Mathematics. One of the following:— (1) Physics and Chemistry, or, (2) Deductive Logic and Elementary Psychology.

B.A. Course:— 1. 2. 3. 4.

English. Classical Language. Philosophy. One of the following:— (1) Mathematics. (2) History and Political Economy.

B. Sc. Course:— One of the following groups of subjects:— (1) Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. (2) Physics, Chemistry and Natural Science. M.A. Course:— Any of the following subjects:— (1) Languages—the course to include either English combined with a classical or Indian vernacular language, or a classical language of India combined with an Indian vernacular. (2) Philosophy. (3) History, Political Economy and Political Philosophy. (4) Mathematics. M. Sc. Course:— Any one of the subjects included in the B. Sc. Course. The degrees of Doctor of Literature and Doctor of Science to be given to Masters of Arts and Science respectively after some years spent in original investigation.

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Law. (1) The study of Law should be postponed until the student has finished his course for the ordinary degree in Arts or Science. If he is intended for one of the lower grades of the profession, he should begin after the Intermediate course; if he is going to the Bar or means to take a degree in Law, he should begin after graduation. Jurisprudence should not be admitted as an optional subject in any course leading to the B.A. degree. (2) The method of instruction should be improved by introducing the system of teaching from cases. (3) Roman Law should not be made a necessary subject for a Law degree. (4) The question of creating or maintaining and improving an adequate central School of Law should be taken up without delay at each of the Universities. The Professors of such a School, including any University Professors who may be connected with it, may be judges or practising lawyers who meet their classes in the morning or evening out of court hours. There should be a staff of tutors competent to help students in their reading, and a good Law library. In the governing body the Bench and Bar of the local High Court should be strongly represented. Medicine. (1) The system under which the teaching of Medicine is centralized in the Government colleges should be maintained. (2) The equipment of the medical colleges should be improved, especially as regards the provision of arrangements for practical work, and of class-room and hostel accommodation. (3) A medical college should be established in the United Provinces. (4) No person should be appointed to lecture on a particular branch of medical study unless he has devoted special attention to it and displayed special knowledge about it. A medical officer selected to lecture in a particular subject, either permanently or temporarily, should not be regarded as having any claim, owing to his position in the service, to be transferred to another professorship which may fall vacant. (5) Medical students in the University of Bombay should be required to pass the Intermediate instead of the Matriculation examination as a preliminary qualification for admission to the medical course. At Lahore no further qualification in Arts or Science need be required for the M.B. degree. (6) Medical students should not be required to qualify in Latin. (7) The Universities should continue to give licenses in Medicine and Surgery to those who qualify for them, as well as the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Medicine. The license should be a diploma and not a degree, and may be given to those who attain a somewhat lower standard in the examination for the M.B.

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degree in both extent and depth of knowledge, than those who will be entitled to obtain that degree. (8) Each University should revise its scheme of studies and examinations so as to provide for a preliminary scientific course extending to Physics, Chemistry and General Biology; to be followed firstly, by an Intermediate course of Anatomy, Physiology and connected subjects, and secondly, by a final course of Medicine, Surgery and other professional subjects. (9) It appears undesirable to separate Medicine and Surgery at the stage of the Bachelor’s degree, but desirable that the Doctor’s degree should be given for some special branch of study, a candidate being allowed to offer his own subject, and the University testing him as it thinks fit by examination or otherwise. A candidate for the Doctor’s degree should not be required to have obtained a degree in Arts or Science. (10) Each University should establish a diploma of Sanitary Science as soon as adequate arrangements have been made for the proper teaching of Bacteriology, Sanitation and Sanitary Engineering. Engineering. (1) The Intermediate Examination should, in all Universities, be the preliminary test for students wishing to follow a course of Engineering. (2) The University should not itself undertake instruction in Engineering. (3) Such instruction as students may need in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, subsequently to having passed the Intermediate Examination, should be provided for in the colleges of Engineering. (4) Great care should be taken to provide similar courses and to equalise the standards in the different Universities. (5) Further provision is needed for instruction in Mining and Electrical Engineering. (6) The training should be throughout of a thoroughly practical nature. Agriculture. The Universities should, as far as possible, encourage agricultural studies, and should consider the desirability of granting diplomas for proficiency in the theoretical and scientific as opposed to the practical side of an agricultural course. Commerce. Studies useful for commercial pursuits should be encouraged as far as possible both by the Universities and by the Government. The Universities may perhaps help in the examinations of the London Chamber of Commerce or in any examinations which may be instituted by the Local Governments.

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Teaching. The Universities should promote the training of all classes of teachers in the theory and practice of Teaching in every way in their power; and, where this has not already been done, arrangements should be made to hold examinations for the grant of licenses in Teaching. The University should provide suitable courses of lectures for teachers. General Scheme Of Examinations. (1) The Previous Examination of the University of Bombay should be abolished. (2) The standard of the Matriculation Examination should be raised. (3) There should be uniformity in the nomenclature of the examinations and degrees in Arts and Science at the different Universities. The three examinations leading up to the Arts and Science degrees should be called the Matriculation Examination, the Intermediate Examination and the Examination for the degree of B. A. or B. Sc. respectively. Matriculation. (1) Colleges should not be permitted to matriculate students at their own discretion. (2) The Matriculation Examination should be improved by drawing away from the examination candidates who ought not to appear at it, and by raising the standard. The Age Limit for Matriculation. (1) A candidate should be required to have completed his fifteenth year at the date on which he appears at the examination. (2) No candidate should be allowed to appear for Matriculation more than three times, whether at one or several Universities. Power should be given to the Syndicate to make exceptions to this rule for special reasons to be recorded in each case. Private Students. (1) Every private candidate for Matriculation should be required to obtain a certificate, which should only be given under special circumstances, from the educational Inspector of the circle within which he lives that, as the result of an examination held by the Inspector or of the ordinary test examination of a high school, it seems reasonably probable that he will pass the Matriculation Examination. (2) Pupils who ought to have come up from a recognized school, but have failed to comply with the rules, should not be allowed to appear as private students. 302

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(3) No private student should be admitted to the Intermediate Examination, or to the examination for the degree of B. A. or B. Sc. unless by a special order of the Senate, to be justified by reasons to be recorded in each case at the time of making the order.

VII.—ABOLITION OF Text BOOKS IN ENGLISH FOR THE ENTRANCE EXAMINATION. 24. The point next in order upon which I feel bound to note my dissent, is the recommendation contained at page 25 of the Report, for the abolition of text books in English for the Entrance Examination. The main reason for this recommendation, as I gather from the Report, may be stated thus: The object with which students of the Entrance class read English is “to enable them to read with ease the books from which they will derive information in other subjects during their college course. To secure this the Entrance course can be described in general terms, a list of books being given by way of illustration. The list might consist of historical or descriptive books from which the student would obtain useful knowledge as well as linguistic training, and it should be so long as to exclude the possibility of all of them being committed to memory.” 25. With all respect for the opinion of my learned colleagues, I would beg leave to point out that the object mentioned above will be better secured by prescribing suitable text books than by the plan recommended in the Report. In the first place, it is not correct to say that the mere prescribing of text books leads students to commit to memory keys and notes without understanding the text. It is the prescribing of books abounding in obscure allusions, or containing thoughts and expressions beyond the comprehension of those for whom they are intended, or written in a style which cannot serve as a model for students to imitate, that leads to the evil spoken of, as some of the witnesses have said; and the remedy lies not in abolishing text books, but in prescribing better books than those in use. In the second place, it is not correct to assume that students mechanically commit to memory keys and notes without reading the text, for the mere pleasure or convenience of doing so. Everyone who knows anything about the way in which students work at home, must know at what cost of time and trouble, and how reluctantly, they follow that course; and if they do so nevertheless, it is partly because the method of teaching in most places does not discourage that course, and chiefly because the method of examination to which they are to be subjected, encourages it, as the evidence before us goes to show. The true remedy for the evil of cramming lies then in starting with suitable text books and improving the modes of teaching and examination. Nor will it be safe to assume that we shall suppress cramming by abolishing text books, unless we also improve our methods of teaching and examination. There are already existing many hand-books for the study of English and books of 303

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model essays; and if text books are abolished, there will soon come into existence many more books of the same type, as well as summaries, abstracts and compendious keys of the several books which the Universities might recommend; and in place of a careful study of the text book and its keys, there will be substituted a hurried reading of the numerous books just referred to, thus giving rise to a worse sort of cramming than the one we are trying to check. The recommendation in the Report seems also to underrate the importance of a careful and critical study of suitable text books, which is one of the best modes in which an Indian student at that stage of his progress at which he is preparing for the Entrance Examination, can acquire a correct knowledge of English. A less careful and less critical reading extending over a wider range may perhaps secure the same result. But an Entrance student has not the time for it; and, moreover, it may encourage the habit of superficial and perfunctory reading, by no means desirable in a student. If there is to be any wide range of reading at all, it should be, as Mr. Stephen, Officiating Principal of the Duff College, in his evidence said, “of a simple and fluent character” and combined with “exact reading to some small extent,” 26. If besides being examined in a suitable text book prescribed, candidates are also examined in unseen passages set for explanation, the evil of cramming will be sure to be checked, and students will try to learn English. I would accordingly recommend that suitable text books in English should be prescribed for the Entrance Examination, and unseen passages also set for explanation,

VIII.—CENTRALIZATION OF LAW TEACHING. 27. The next point upon which I am unable to agree with my learned colleagues is the recommendation at pages 34, 35 of the Report that each University should provide a properly equipped Central Law College. 28. In Madras and Lahore, Law education is already centralized, and there are no indications of any endeavour to multiply Law colleges in either of those two places. The question of centralizing legal teaching in Madras and Lahore must therefore be taken as practically settled for the present. In each of the cities of Bombay and Allahabad there is only one Law college; but there are other Law colleges affiliated to the Universities of Bombay and Allahabad; while the Calcutta University has a large number of Law colleges affiliated to it, four of which are in Calcutta and the rest in the mofussil. The question of centralizing Law education may therefore arise with reference to the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Allahabad. The state of things observed at Lahore and the city of Bombay does not, however, make one very hopeful about the efficacy of centralization. Moreover, there is a circumstance connected with the colleges of Bengal which should be noticed here. The income derived by some of them from their Law department goes materially to help their Arts department; and if the former be closed, as will be the case 304

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if Law education is centralized, the latter will suffer. This is a result which should be avoided if possible. Another strong reason against centralization so far as Calcutta is concerned, consists in the large number of its Law students. No central college, however well managed, can conveniently accommodate or efficiently teach such a large number of students. 29. As regards the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Allahabad, I would therefore leave Law teaching in the hands of the colleges; provided that they increase their staff where it is insufficient, and make arrangements for tutorial supervision by having classes in the evening as well as in the morning. And I would recommend that those three Universities should establish at their local centres good Law libraries accessible to all Law students of affiliated colleges, and Law societies under the guidance of Committees composed of members of the Bench and the Bar of the High Court and of the Professors of the Law colleges, where Law students may meet and read papers and have debates on questions connected with Law. 30. It may be said that a College is bound to devote the whole of the income derived from its Law department to the improvement of that department, and it should not appropriate any portion of such income to the purposes of its Arts department; and that one of the reasons given above for allowing Law teaching to remain in the hands of private colleges is therefore a bad reason. I am unable to accept this view as correct. No doubt the improvement of the Law department should be the first charge on the income derived from that department. But if after satisfying that charge, any surplus remains, there is no good reason for holding that it should not be appropriated to the purposes of the Arts department of the college. Such freedom in the appropriation of its funds is beneficial to the college as a whole without being injurious to any part of it, and it should not be restricted, seeing that our private colleges have so little in the shape of endowments to support them.

IX.—THE MATRICULATION AND THE SCHOOL FINAL EXAMINATION. 33. Another portion of the Report in which I am unable to concur is that at pages 45 to 48 in which my learned colleagues express their views as to whether and how far the School Final Examination should take the place of the Matriculation Examination. 34. No definite scheme of the School Final Examination being before us, we cannot compare its merits with those of the Matriculation Examination. But whatever the nature of that scheme may be, we may say this, that if a literary as distinguished from a technical course of school education is retained, as one may presume it will be, the test of such education and that of a student’s fitness to enter a college or University, ought to be the same, and one examination ought to be sufficient as a test for both, instead of examinations being multiplied unnecessarily. 305

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A large examination no doubt has its difficulties, but they are not removed by making the School Final to take the place of the Matriculation Examination. The question is reduced to this, namely, whether if there is to be one examination, it should be the School Final or the Matriculation Examination, I think it ought to be the latter. It will serve the double purpose of testing whether a student has pursued his school course of literary education properly and whether he is fit to enter a college. The opposite view will result in placing all schools whether they receive aid from Government or not, under the control of the Education Department, though many of them impart education only to enable their students to enter the University. The latter class of schools where they receive no aid ought to be placed under the control of the University. If the object be to prevent unfit students from entering the University, it will be secured by raising the standard of the Matriculation Examination as the Report recommends; and it will not be necessary to remove the examination which students have to pass after finishing their school education, from the control of the University and place it under that of the Education Department or to wish for the Matriculation certificate not being taken as a qualification for certain purposes. The view approved in the Report will also have the effect of materially reducing the resources of the Universities which are derived in a large measure from the fees paid by candidates for the Matriculation Examination.

X.—APPOINTMENT OF TEACHERS TO SET QUESTION PAPERS. 35. The point next in order in the Report upon which I deem it my duty to note my dissent, is the recommendation at page 50 for the repeal of the rule, that no one engaged in teaching a subject for any examination should be appointed to set questions in that subject for that examination. 36. The reason for this recommendation, as I understand it, is that teachers are the persons best qualified to set proper question papers in their respective subjects. Theoretically, perhaps, this may be true; but judging from practical results, one cannot say much in favour of papers set at our examinations by teachers as examiners. For though the rule prohibiting the appointment of teachers to set papers has been in operation in Calcutta only since 1890, the complaint against the suitableness of the papers set has been of much longer duration; and the questions set before that date do not compare favourably with those of subsequent years. Nor has there been any great practical inconvenience felt in getting competent examiners notwithstanding the operation of the rule, professors of Physics and Mathematics, and of English and History, changing places in setting papers each in the other’s subject, professors teaching the B.A. course setting papers for the F.A. examination, and professors of colleges affiliated to one Indian University setting papers for the examinations of another. 37. While thus the necessity for changing the rule is at best doubtful, the reasons for maintaining it are, in my humble judgment, in full force still. The rule 306

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in Calcutta was adopted on the unanimous recommendation of a committee (of which two such educational experts as Sir A. Croft and Mr. Tawney were members) appointed to enquire into and report upon the alleged premature disclosure of certain examination questions (see the Minutes of the Calcutta University for 1890–91, page 49), and the view maintained by one of the professor examiners concerned in defending his action, shows that there may be such honest differences of opinion in connection with the matter as would make the rule under consideration a very desirable one. The rule does not imply any reflection on the integrity of teacher examiners, but it is intended only to guard against the pupils of any teacher from having an undue advantage over other candidates at any examination, and to relieve the teacher from a conflict of duties which may arise if he is appointed to set questions in his own subject. That such undue advantage may be given, and such conflict of duties may arise, is clear when we consider that a teacher in teaching properly, must dwell on the relative importance of the different parts of his subject, and an examiner, to examine properly, must set his question paper keeping in view such relative importance; and it is difficult to prevent the teaching from affording a fair indication of the nature of the expected examination. Mr. Todhunter of Cambridge, in his “Conflict of Studies and other Papers,” says (I am referring to his remark from memory, not having the book before me now) the wonder is that the importance of a rule like the one under consideration is not more readily recognized. 38. To my mind, it is of the utmost importance that we should secure the confidence of the public generally, and of the students in particular, in the absolute fairness of our University examinations. Again, if it is necessary in the interests of discipline that students should not talk or think lightly of their professors and examiners, we must carefully avoid giving them any reasonable ground for talking or thinking in that style. I therefore think that the rule in question is a salutary one and should be generally followed.

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE following chapters contain an account of the revision of the vernacular reading books used in the Bombay Presidency. This revision was carried out through a Committee appointed by the Bombay Government and presided over by the writer The period covered by the Committee’s official activities ranged from October 1903 to March 1905. The new books however will not all be ready for sale until the beginning of the next year (1906), the actual publication having been a labour of considerable difficulty in itself and subjected to many impediments incidental to the conditions of this country. 2. The books to be revised were those intended mainly for primary pupils but also used in middle and high Anglo-vernacular schools and in Training Colleges for primary teachers. Written in four different tongues, according to the nationalities which they served (viz., in Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi and Kanarese) they consisted of five distinct graduated series, the past evolution of which had been a somewhat lengthy process moulded by the idiosyncrasies and educational circumstances of each nationality. The Committee’s duties, however, were not limited to mere revision. To a certain extent they were necessarily creative, and not only in regard to the five series, which it found ready to its hand, but also in the case of providing for expressed and definite wants, as, e.g., by the supply of a set of special readers for girls. They also included other things which have been narrated in their proper place. 3. In order to render adequately to readers unacquainted with the Presidency the full significance of this work of revision, any general account of the undertaking involves, not merely a description of the detailed operations, but also some review of the geographical, ethnological and linguistic peculiarities of the region,

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in so far as these affect the general problem or give rise to particular ones, as well as an outline of the educational institutions for which the new books were chiefly designed, and of their administration. Equally essential would it appear to trace the growth of the series now displaced, to exhibit their distinctive features and to indicate their merits and defects. All this would but provide the requisite basis for a more precise comprehension of the task which lay before the Committee and of the lines on which that body endeavoured to grapple with it. The gist of the former has already been stated. As for the lines, they were such as sprang from the conditions of the Committee’s appointment or as were suggested by approved precedent, by the characteristics of the people and by the territorial distribution of the country, but in either case they were tempered by a lively appreciation no less of the successes and failures of the past than of the limitations and tendencies of the present. 4. Apart from the above, an enterprise of this kind must naturally bring its authors into contact with wider questions both academic and practical and of no little import for educationalists generally, as well as for the Indian educationalists in particular. Such for instance are, the place of dialect in popular instruction, the capacities of Indian vernaculars, the teaching of reading, the value of the classification adopted in Sanskritic alphabets, the constituents of a good local reading series, the capacities and limitations of the Indian child, the use and abuse of pictures and the relative value of native and European illustrations for native pupils, the State as an educational publisher, and the technical difficulties of Indian publication, the equation of the publisher’s profit with the purchaser’s ability to pay and “many more too long.” 5. It is not pretended that all of these have been exhaustively treated in the following pages. Some of them might well claim a book to themselves alone. But they have at least been broached, and the Committee’s views and decisions have been set forth for what they are worth. It is hoped that this simple history of the Bombay Committee may prove of service to others in India wrestling with similar problems.

Chapter III.—THE OLDER READING SERIES AND TEXT BOOKS. 45. The four series of vernacular reading books, which the Committee was called upon to revise had their roots in the very foundations of modern education in Bombay. They were the direct successors, if not the immediate descendants, of the scanty set of books on which the earliest framework of vernacular education was raised. Their compilation marked the triumph, so far as this presidency was concerned, of the vernacular ideal in primary instruction over that of the ‘Anglicists,’ of whom the extremer section at least had cherished the hope of making English the universal language throughout India. It would be unnecessary to rake up here the ashes of that ancient controversy, in which the extremists on either side have been refuted by the logic of sixty years. But in order to make the position of our Bombay Readers clear 309

The existing Reading Series and their origins.

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The beginnings of vernacular education in the Presidency.

Mountstuart Elphinstone and the struggle between English and the vernaculars.

and to bring out their more distinctive characteristics it is essential to trace in outline the humble origins from which they sprang. 46. Previous to 1820 little had been done ‘on this side’ for the education of the natives. The Hindu College at Poona was instituted with the object mainly of turning out a class of pandits who might be useful to the Judicial Department of Government in consequence of their study of such “systems of ethics, codes of laws and compendiums of the duties relating to every class of the people” as were accessible in Sanskrit. As such it was on a par with Lord Minto’s Hindu College at Benares and the new ones proposed in 1811 for Nuddea and Tirhoot. Institutions of this kind could only benefit a very limited class. A real step in advance was taken when in 1820 “The Native School-Book and School Society” came into existence as a branch of the Bombay Education Society. In 1822 the former society separated from the latter and in 1827 changed its title to “The Bombay Native Education Society,” which remained until 1840 when the Society’s schools were incorporated with those attached to the Elphinstone Institution and came under the supervision of the new Board of Education. 47. The Native School-Book and School Society was a replica of a similar one started in 1817 at Calcutta by the suggestion of a missionary, the Reverend Robert May. The object of such institutions was to prepare the way for the education of the natives by “the provision of the humble requisites” viz., school books in the languages of the country, and the institution of schools. To quote the words of a report1 of the Board of Education (Bombay) on the subject “It was from the activity of these bodies but more especially from the circumstance of a statesman of such enlarged views as Mr. Elphinstone being at the head of the Bombay Government that education received its first effective impulse in this Presidency.” Mountstuart Elphinstone, although convinced of the necessity of teaching English and admitting that its diffusion would accelerate the progress of knowledge ten-fold, was by no means willing to make its cultivation the primary object of all educational agencies. Hence in lending his countenance to the new society he made no endeavour to force English education upon its attention in preference to vernacular. Books in English might be contemplated indeed, but the provision of vernacular texts and the institution of schools primarily for the conveyance of knowledge in the languages of the country were to have the first claims upon the society’s energies. It may be remarked that it was specially laid down in this connection that to furnish religious books formed no part of the design, though this was not intended to preclude the supply of moral tracts or books of moral tendency “which without interfering with the religious sentiments of any person may be calculated to enlarge the understanding and improve the character.” 48. Elphinstone further initiated an enquiry into the state of indigenous education in the Presidency with a view to eliciting what elements in the native system might be adopted into the newBritish one. The Society co-operated in the investigation but the results were not very encouraging. Beyond the discovery of a superficial parallel to Lancaster’s ‘monitorial methods’ (then possessing some vogue in educational circles) and the practical demonstration of the utility of ‘sand 310

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writing,’ the investigators reaped little from their trouble. One thing however had become very clear. “The first and principal evil consists in the deplorable deficiency of books for education and mental improvement.” A Committee of the Society therefore recommended the preparation and publication of books both for the elementary and more advanced stages of education among the natives. The former were to be in vernacular, the latter might be in English. The first class was to consist of works either translated from English or specially written in vernacular from English bases. Government came to the Committee’s assistance and by 1824 translators and writers were busily engaged. Lithographic presses were largely used but printing presses and types (English and Balbodh) were ordered from England, and types also from Bengal. It is gravely recorded that at one meeting of the Society in 1825 “the operations in Lithography were exhibited, at which the numerous gentlemen present expressed their surprise and entire satisfaction.” 49. The following were some of the books in the Society’s depository in 1824:—

The need of vernacular school books recognized at an early date.

Some of the earliest vernacular (1) ‘Leepeedhara’ (a primer giving vernacular letters, their combinations, and school words up to words of five syllables, prepared by Pandits in the Society’s books.

service)—in Gujarati and Marathi. (2) ‘Numerals,’ containing the numbers, multiplication tables, tables of weights and measures “after the system of the Marathi schools”—Marathi. (3) ‘Guunit’—i.e., arithmetic on the European system—by Captain George Jervis—in two parts—in Gujarati and Marathi. (4) Advice to children (or Bodhvachun) (in short sentences) by Sadasiva Cassinath, native secretary to the Society. (5) A treatise on the management of schools—by Captain Molesworth: an adaptation of Lancaster’s system: in Gujarati and Marathi. (6) Fables—in ‘Banyan’ Gujarati and the same in ‘Parsi’ Gujarati. (7) The “Panchopakhyan” (Marathi). (8) “Vidoor Neeti” and (9) “Ball Goshtee” (tales for children).

74. That discretion, however, had to be exercised in regard to the subject-matter of such selections is, to all at least who are acquainted with the frank exuberances of Oriental verse, equally obvious. This, however, is a point connected with the larger problem of the selection of matter. In discussing the latter question two or three fundamental facts may well be borne in mind. From these spring the general principles which governed the Bombay Committee’s action. Firstly, the matter was required for vernacular speaking orientals, the vast majority of whom would never speak English, and whose teachers also (so far as the primary schools were concerned) would be equally ignorant of that language. Secondly, these orientals, except on the servile and nomadic fringes, were members of an ancient civilization. Not only were their lives ordered for the most part peaceably and decently in accord with immemorial precedent and tradition and the sanctions of great religions, but they too like ourselves were heirs of the wisdom of the ages. On the 311

Selection of subjectmatter. Fundamental facts to be considered in this connection.

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Principles on which selection was based.

Interesting and amusing matter.

Moral, mythical and religious matter.

other hand, the wisdom of the West was a fast opening book, some of the pages of which were fraught with lessons fruitful alike for Eastern and Occidental, while others bore maxims to be digested and applied only in the colder regions and by the more critical peoples of temperate zones. Lastly, here in Bombay was no educational tabula rasa. The methods and matter of the older books had created a vogue, which, however necessary to extend or correct, it was neither politic nor feasible to destroy. 75. Hence five obligations rested upon the Committee. First to select passages which sprang from and adequately represented the vernaculars of the people. Secondly, to supply matter that was of a piece with the web of which their daily lives and general experience were woven. Thirdly, not to ignore completely the great achievements and accumulated wisdom of their historic past. Fourthly, to open, in so far as the revelation might prove profitable, the doors of the treasure house of Western civilization. And lastly, to develop, if possible, the lines on which the previous series had won their most notable successes and also to supplement their more obvious deficiencies. 76. The ideal of Hope’s series had been to combine interest with instruction. But fifty years ago it was too often assumed that what did interest ‘grownups’ should ipso facto interest young children. And in matters scholastic interest was not held to include amusement, since to amuse was scarcely compatible with edification. But the Committee has considered that some lighter pieces may legitimately have a place in the text books. A monotonous insistence upon the moral aspect of all the subjects treated in a school text book tends to defeat its own object. 77. Even so, the moral side has not been neglected. In the earlier books stories with a moral tendency predominate, while their place is gradually taken in the higher by direct moral lessons advocating and illustrating uprightness in points of practical conduct. And in all stories the Committee’s aim has been to palliate nothing ignoble and to magnify nothing that good men of whatever creed would deem unworthy of praise. More particularly has care been exercised in the selection of legends and fairy tales and myths. How far these ought to be taught at all to children has been a moot question in Europe from the days of Plato downwards. Modern times indeed have answered the question with a distinct affirmative, but their answer is conditional upon a drastic expurgation of the myths taught. However, in the West the problem is little more than academic, and there is no possibility of confusing the older mythologies with Religion. Not so in the East, where the myth is still informed with vital force, and can propagate its kind with undiminished vigour. Here still the part is often greater than the whole, and mythology identifies itself with Religion and works wonders in its name. Hence the question becomes a very practical and a very difficult one. To omit in a national series all reference to the creeds in which the people for whom it is written believe would he as wrong-headed as it would be unpopular. The solution seems to be that as regards the introduction of such stories “commendat rarior usus.” Mythical tales if inserted should deal with the gods rather as historic or legendary personalities 312

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than as ‘praesentin et praevenientin numina’: their superhuman activities should not be presented as facts or verities a belief in which is essential for the faithful: lastly, the stories should involve no setting forth of dogma or sectarian doctrine and still less any depreciation of or attack upon other faiths. Guided by these principles, the Committee has not shrunk from inserting tales and passages containing references to the mythology and the beliefs of the people. To the charge that all these qualifications deprive the scholars of a God in any real sense, the answer is that direct lessons have been specially included which treat of God and the Divine attributes in a non-concrete but simple fashion, and so as to offend, it is hoped, the truly pious of no denomination. 78. But it is not only on these lines that attempts to improve upon the older books have been made. Recently a tendency had arisen to disparage or even to exclude historical lessons, apparently because it was considered that the vernacular histories sanctioned by the Department gave all that was necessary and also because it was contended that these lessons were difficult and uninteresting. Both reasons were unsatisfactory, and the loss of historical matter was a real detriment. The so-called ‘histories’ were either compilations of the most jejune description or translations of English works, difficult both in language and idea for vernacular pupils. Though the old historical reading lessons may have suffered from the latter fault, at least they were a step in the right direction. To excise them was to betray a want of appreciation of the enormous practical importance of history as an educational factor. The Committee determined to insert reading lessons dealing particularly with the history of each division, the Mogul Empire and the British rule, as well as others, giving some account of the earliest conditions of the country and its peoples, and also sketches of certain of the great personalities who have made it famous. Thus Alexander and Asoka, Sultan Mabmud of Ghazni and Prithvi Raja, Adinath and Gautama Buddha, Siddharaj and Ahmadshah of Ahmedabad, Karanghelo of Anhilwada and Krishnaraya of Vijayanagar, Akbar and Aurangzib, Malik Amber and Shivaji, Basava and Nana Fadnavis, Kalidas and Bhaskaracharya, Chand Bibi and Aholyabai are or ought to be still names of power in this Western Presidency, and their stories are as fully charged with romance or interest as those of the heroes of any European Valhalla, To write them down worthily in the vernacular and so that they shall appeal to and be understanded of the youthful reader is indeed a difficult task, and most of all for the native scholar troubled with many details, and with little eye for the dramatic or the picturesque. That the Committee’s versions fall painfully short of the ideal in many instances is only too manifest. But at least there has been no shirking of the difficulty and no decree ex cathedra that “historical lessons are useless and difficult and may be dropped.” Peradventure vernacular writers, as they begin to grasp the drift of the Committee’s intent, and to disabuse themselves of the idea that history is a meaningless jumble of tiresome dates and dreary details, may be able hereafter to improve upon the specimens procured by the Committee. One caution alone remains to be added. The aims of lessons of this kind, apart from their general objects of interest and instruction, should be not political, but ethical. In them it is the duty of the 313

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educationalist impartially to hold up ensamples of conduct for guidance and warning, not to disseminate a partisan propaganda. Detailed points of current politics and the exercise of what may be termed political logic, whether inductive or deductive, should be left unessayed. On the other hand, easy lessons on ‘citizenship,’ the rights of the state and the individual, etc., should be provided in the highest books, and a steadfast spirit of simple loyalty should be implicitly cultivated. Reading 79. In this last respect more can be done explicitly through the medium of readmatter in ing lessons in geography, especially those which deal with the British Empire in ‘political’ general, and the British Isles and Colonies in particular. Such lessons, naturally, if geography. they are to have their fullest effect, must be reserved for the latter part of the course, but in any case they seem essential. They are useful too in another way, since they take the native inhabitant of India out of the narrow compass of his own native ideals and experience and teach him the moral and material greatness of those other countries with which the destiny of his own is now irrevocably united. But this is not enough. In order to enable him to realize his place in the world sketches of those of the great European nations that count or have counted as Asiatic powers (e.g., the Portuguese and Dutch, France, Russia and Turkey) as well as of the chief native kingdoms of Asia are desirable. The treatment may be historical or geographical or a mixture of both, but special care should be taken to bring out the national characteristics of the people concerned and, where necessary, to draw instructive comparisons and contrasts between such countries and India. It is on these lines that the reading lessons in ‘political geography’ as it is sometimes called, though the term is too narrow, have been designed for the higher books in the series. In the lower readers the lessons start from the pupil’s immediate surroundings, his school, his village, his taluka and district, and carry him up through the Division and the Presidency to India as a whole. In this way he ascends the whole gamut of Indian institutions and receives, it is hoped, some impression not too blurred of the organization of which he is not an unconsidered unit. Elements 80. But it is necessary to project the more advanced scholar’s mind not merely of World spatially but also temporally beyond the boundaries of his country’s greatness and History. renown. He must learn that, honourable and ancient as is her past, other nations too have flourished, as honourable and still more ancient, and that the debt which the world owes to some of them far exceeds all that it has ever received or can receive from India. Not only should the ascent of man from the brute stage to the possession of arts and laws be depicted and his distribution racially over the earth be briefly indicated, but Egypt and Accad, Assyria, Phoenicia and Persia, Greece and Rome, these should be something other than more words to him. Perished dynasties, the dates of by-gone battles, the sites of vanished cities, with these things and others like them themind need not be stored. What is essential for him is to realize first that each of these nations has in some way or other helped or hindered the march of civilization, secondly what was the main contribution or set-back received from each, and lastly that the march though devious and interrupted has been a progress after all. No better antidote for the self-concentred or 314

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for barren intellectual pride, can be imagined. Islam, thanks to its origin and growth, has ever admitted an ample range in its historical perspective, but the recipé is not without virtue even in its case. Lastly the main links in the long chain which binds the modern with the ancient ages should not be wholly forgotten. The birth of Christianity under the Roman Empire, the rise and preaching of Mahomed, the Venetians and their sea-faring, the discoveries of Columbus, the voyage of Vasco da Gama and the coming of the English to Surat all have their interest and importance for a lad born and bred in the West of India. If a full and separate exposition of each may not be possible or desirable, room at least can always be found in an appropriate context for a stimulating reference or a luminous allusion. In conformity then with these principles the Committee included in their higher books a minimum of what may be called the elements of World History. 81. It should not be supposed however that the humanistic side of education was solely or predominantly represented. Nature and Nature’s laws have received due attention in lessons that deal with birds and beasts and flowers as well in others that ‘treat of the human body and its functions, and the conditions of healthy living, or of the inanimate phenomena of the earth and sky, or of the commoner objects of daily life. The treatment is progressive. At first the more familiar plants and animals are selected and dealt with from an external, general and simple standpoint. Mere description is avoided and efforts are made to awake the child’s sense of observation and arouse his individual interest. Next, plants or animals are selected as typical of classes, and the kinship between them and other species is emphasized and illustrated. 125. An offer to contribute the matter required was received from Rao Bahadur H. D. Kantavala, a well known Gujarati educationalist and late Director of Vernacular Instruction in the Baroda State. After some negotiations the offer was accepted, Mr. Kantavala consenting to write his lessons in Gujarti upon the Iines indicated by the Committee. When they were received these were fully edited and arranged, the Committee, wherever it thought necessary, substituting lessons or passages of their own in the place of those originally furnished. Eventually the Committee compiled three Gujarati books2 (which were divided into subject sections like those of the boys’ books) containing about 176 pages and 80 lessons each. The lessons in the miscellaneous sections included poetry, stories, moral lessons, etc.: the historical and geographical sections corresponded in treatment to similar lessons in the boys’ books: those in the last section included lessons on natural phenomena and common objects as well as others on household economy, dress, sanitation, physiology, etc. The last section was almost equal in number of lessons to the first: the other two were much smaller. The advice and opinions of the Lady Superintendent of the Departmental Female Training College, Gujarat, an educationalist of great experience in female vernacular education, were sought on all topics of specially feminine interest. 126. Taken as a whole the girls’ readers are simpler in general treatment and narrower in the range of subjects than the boys’. The wider topics of history, literature and science are of little concern to vernacular girls, for whom (apart from 315

Reading matter for ‘Nature study,’ ‘Object lessons’ and Scientific subjects, etc.

The Preparation and general character of the three new Girls’ Readers.

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Special characteristics of the Girls’ Series.

the practical demands of domestic economy) biographies illustrating the good deeds of great and virtuous women, accounts of their native land and its most distinguished sons, ethical stories and lessons inculcating modesty and sobriety of conduct and demeanour, together with poems of a moral and natural religious tendency are held by native public opinion to be more fitting pabulum. Such have been provided, but the Committee has also introduced geographical lessons dealing with important natural phenomena, with the authorities of the Presidency and India, and with the British Empire. Lessons too on the King Emperor and his Consort and family as well as on Queen Victoria, have not been forgotten. In the historical sections sketches of such heroines as Sita, Savitri, Mirabai, Chandbibi, Nurjehan are given; and of such rulers as Asoka, Ahmedshah, Akbar and Shivaji; with some account of the rise of the British power and of the system of British government in India. The lessons on domestic economy, common objects, etc., are intended to be reading not object lessons and will supplement, reinforce and possibly suggest practical demonstrations in their various subjects. The bulk of them handle themes belonging to domestic economy. That is they treat of food substances and their preparation, of cooking, of the cleanliness of the house and of clothes, of furniture, of household management, of dress, sewing, and so forth. They also include lessons on elementary physiology and hygiene, as well as others on common articles and objects.

Notes 1. Dated 1845. 2. Adaptations into the other languages were to be arranged for subsequently.

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16 LEONARD ALSTON, EXTRACT FROM EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN INDIA (LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., 1910), 144–195

CHAPTER V § 51. To the Englishman who approaches such a topic as this at the present juncture of national affairs, the phrase “foster a sense of duty”1 is certain, at first hearing, to convey a very particular sense. It will suggest to him, inevitably, the relations of subject race to ruling race; the duty of which he will think primarily is bound to be the duty of submission to the laws of the State as now established and to the commands of the magistrates set over the people of India by his fellowcountrymen. He will probably overlook, unless he is exceptionally broad-minded, the important fact that his beneficent fellow-countrymen are to the Indians (even if they admit the beneficence) alien conquerors, whose rule rests on might rather than on right. Even if exceptionally broad-minded he is likely to forget that to the most public-spirited of Indians—those, that is, who are most likely to be possessed of “a sense of duty” in general—the State as now established in India can only present itself as a transitional arrangement, a political expedient which has done, perhaps, much good in the past, which may, perhaps, do yet more good in the immediate future, but which must in the farther future, if the Indian is ever to come to his own and rise to the full stature of political manhood, he finally superseded by something as different from what the Indian Government now is, as the existing British Constitution is different from the constitution of Norman and Angevin England. The problem of political duty, the question of the proper limitations to the obligation of submission to the established State, is, even in a unified organic State like England, by no means free from complications. The duty of obedience seems at every turn to be crossed by other lines of duty. These other duties nearly always present themselves with a greater emotional intensity than mere political duties. They concern the welfare of sections of society in whom we are more interested than we are in Society in general; they concern in some special way, perhaps, our own soul’s welfare; and therefore they are likely to present themselves as “higher” duties. Being accepted as higher, they will be obeyed in preference to ordinary political duties by those who are conscious of them, while the rest of the 317

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community, feeling them not, or feeling them but slightly in the special instance, protests that larger and more permanent aims are subordinated to sectional interests and transient fancies. The problem of political duty is always a complicated problem. But when we are concerned with the political duties of conquered races its complications become such that no simple solutions are possible. The duty of obedience in such cases may be overcome by a higher duty of resistance. As a lover of order and progress, I may, if a member of a subject race, feel it incumbent on me to assist in a thousand minor details the good intentions of those whom Fate or Providence has set over me. But it may well seem equally my proper part in life to foster a nascent political consciousness, to stir in sluggish minds not merely a sense of indignation at injustice, but also a consciousness of undeveloped powers which only treachery to one’s higher nature can allow to atrophy. And if I play such a part as this (a “double” part it will be certain to seem to the unsympathetic imperialists set over me—rulers who praise my loyalty in administrative matters but are ready to revile me as a sedition-monger at the first glimpse they catch of my larger activities), then, when it seems to me that the appropriate moment has come, I must endeavour to turn my nationalist teaching into an affair not of words, but of deeds, and strike for what has ever been, in both my “parts,” my ultimate aim—the higher welfare of any fellow-subjects. The unsympathetic member of the ruling race, even though beneficently minded, is bound to demand that the present relationship of race to race must be accepted for at least a considerable period as unalterable in its essentials. The rulers are the superior race; the ruled are inferior. It therefore seems to him indubitably just that the former should watch over the latter and guide them into higher ways for the good of both, and that the subject peoples should be duly grateful and continuously “loyal.”2 He forgets that it may be possible to admit the relative superiority and be grateful, even, for the beneficence of the conqueror, and yet reject the conclusion that the higher should automatically govern the lower or the lower submit with unquestioning “loyalty” to their betters. Is it not possible to hold that it is better for a people to misgovern itself (within certain limits) than to be well governed by others? If I mismanage my own affairs I may suffer, economically or in other ways; but if I give offer to another the management of what seems to myself the most essential elements of a full life, I am submitting to something much more serious than pecuniary loss or economic ineffectiveness or discomfort. Life is more than bread; and political institutions exist for other objects besides the supplying of a good postal system, a good fiscal system, or even a good system of justice and police. What then is commonly called “sedition” is not necessarily incompatible with a high sense of social and political duty. It may, no doubt, at a particular juncture, be adjudged incompatible with political sagacity; the shapes which it is taking in contemporary India may be declared proofs of un-preparedness for a full use of political functions. But these are questions of fact. They are not self-evident 318

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propositions that can dispense with the support of arguments based on empirical considerations. We cannot therefore put forward the existing unrest and “disloyalty,” of Indians as proof conclusive of the failure of our educational policy to inculcate a sense of political duty. The unres might even be plausibly cited as proof of the success of our instruction.3 A “sense of duty’ may be evidenced not merely by a patient willingness to obey, but by a readiness to protest, and a capacity to protest intelligently against the plunders of those in authority.4 “It is true” (writes John Stuart Mill) “a despot may educate the people; and to do so really, would be the best apology for his despotism. But [********] education which aims at making human beings other than machines, in the long run makes them claim to have the control of their actions. . . . Even Jesuit education, it seems, was sufficiently real to call forth the appetite for freedom.”5 § 52. It may, however, be urged that, whatever the ultimate duty of the subject people in the matter of accepting the control of the sovereign nation, it is a duty of the first importance on the part of every leading thinker among the former to see that he himself is well-informed as regards the motives, aims, methods, and achievements of the latter. This, however, is seldom spontaneously done. In the case of the average Indian we cannot reasonably expect this task to be undertaken. Indeed, it would by no means be easy for him, handicapped as lie is by the paucity of libraries and the comparative expensiveness of books, to acquire the necessary knowledge. Nor do there seem to be any good books on the subject. He is therefore hardly open to serious blame. “It is an absurd mistake,” (writes Sir Theodore Morison,6 “to suppose that the Indian student is perversely and obstinately disloyal; he is perfectly capable of understanding correct reasoning and ready to be convinced by it, if the facts and arguments are only put before him; but an appreciation of the excellence of the present administration does not come by nature, and there is no reference to the subject in any of the text-books he has hitherto been taught, which is the only educational agency recognized by Government. Is it then surprising that he holds views which he never hears disputed, and believes facts which he never hears challenged?”7 “It is not an uncommon thing to hear even educated Indians question the benefit of railways, steamers, and telegraphs, and to represent these [******* **] forming part of the diabolical contrivances by which England drains India’s wealth and impoverishes her people. . . . About the moral and material progress of his country since 1857 the Indian graduate has no real knowledge—no knowledge, that is to say, resting on anything better than hearsay or the reading of half-informed newspapers. And unfortunately, living, as he does in our days, in an atmosphere of suspicion and race prejudice, he easily imbibes the false and pernicious motion that England’s work in India has been only to bleed her people and enrich herself at their expense.8 The young men who pass out of our colleges have never been taught anything about the elements of citizenship; they know nothing about the administration of India, nothing about the stupendous work that has been done and is in progress for the moral and material benefit of its people.”9 319

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This sort of social knowledge is not likely to be gained unless it is specially incorporated in the educational curricula,10 or supplied in some such way as Sir T. Morison suggests.11 For the people who are interested in spreading views of any sort about the objects of the Government are usually those who desire to see the spread of what we consider false views. These must be combated even by those who look forward eagerly to a self-governing India; and the combating of the false is most satisfactorily achieved if the true be made part of the regular schooling of the educated Indians. To quote Mr. Welinkar again: “In India . . . a system of liberal education has to subserve another peculiar function of fundamental importance. That function may be characterized as the ministry of reconciliation between the East and the West. I cannot be wrong in thinking that the ultimate aim of England’s policy in regard to the higher education of Indians is to train the best minds in India to understand England—to learn its history, its literature, the science which has given it its power and its wealth, and, what is of still greater importance, the spiritual ideas which underlie and hold together its national life. And having learnt these things, England expects that the favoured recipients of this knowledge will take their position as connecting-links between their countrymen and themselves, interpreting to the masses of their countrymen, who are necessarily deprived of the advantages which have been placed within their reach, the aim and spirit of British rule, spreading the knowledge they have themselves been helped to gain, and thus helping England to govern a foreign race so as to secure the contentment and progress of the millions committed to her care.” Such knowledge is certainly not spread by the vernacular Press, which seems to find (as might be expected) better opportunities of increasing its circulation in vilifying the measures of Government than in any other way.12 Vernacular newspapers, of which, in 1907, there were 753 in all (besides 1062 periodicals), are not, as a rule, profitable concerns;13 and the journalists as a class seem to be largely recruited (as has been already pointed out) from the ranks of unsuccessful college students, who have little opportunity, even if they had the will, to keep themselves well-informed on broad matters of Governmental policy.14 § 53. Among the different social and political groups in India whose activities are clearly discernible and capable to some extent of being satisfactorily estimated, the Congress party may be taken as that which represents preeminently the higher secular education. A careful study of their literature and their public actions, in the light of their special social environment, will do more perhaps than and other investigation to answer the questions with which we are concerned. The Congress historian will find it no easy task to separate out the different threads of policy that are due to the presence of selfish sectional interests within this heterogeneous party, a task which will be necessary before he can attempt to pass judgment on its work as a whole. The mere partisan observer will easily dismiss the whole movement with a few savage diatribes couched in the tone in which Mr. Masterman describes the “Condition of England.” For even the most sympathetic of the supporters of Congress 320

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must admit that its activities are not ideally disinterested, tactful, or sagacious,— any more than are the activities of political and social parties in England. But in serious discussions of political movements comparisons of the actual and the ideal are obviously unreasonable, and we shall endeavour to steer clear of all such unreasonableness. § 54. The Congress, it should be mentioned, is not strictly a deliberative body. As Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, when chairman of the Reception Committee (1904), has put it: “It would be absurd to say that the Congress meets to deliberate or discuss and decide all the important subjects with which it deals. That task must be, and is, largely performed in the course of the year by such institutions as we may possess for forming Indian public opinion, in the common intercourse of daily life, in local bodies more or less active, in the Native Press, which is undoubtedly growing more and more capable and potent. At the end of the year we all meet together from different parts of the country, representatives of the people, not selected, it is true, by any authoritative or scientific process, but still representatives in all the various ways in which virtual representation works itself out in the early stages of its progressive development, representatives who are of the people and in immediate touch and contact with them, representatives realizing in themselves the wants, the wishes, the sentiments, the aspirations of the people, representatives whose education has qualified them to ponder over grave questions of policy and principle in their application to the administration and government of this country in all their complex relations of a foreign rule, representatives into whom education has instilled an earnest, devoted, and enlightened loyalty to the British Crown and a keen solicitude for the safety and permanence of the British Empire, in which they are firmly persuaded lie implanted the roots of the welfare, the prosperity, and the good government of this country—I say, we delegates, representatives of the people, meet together at the end of the year to give voice to the public opinion of the country taking shape and formulating throughout the year, to present our Petition of Rights, our Grand Remonstrance, our appeal and our prayer for a firm and unfaltering grasp of a policy of wisdom and righteousness, for the reversal of retrograde measures inconsistent with such a policy, and for the adoption of means steadily ensuring the gradual development of free political progress ‘broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent.’” The Congress meets for only three days in the year, and carries out a programme prepared ‘by a committee which debates in secret.’ This committee selects speakers to advocate particular measures. The orators deliver set harangues, and the resolutions proposed are carried unanimously. What strikes one most forcibly in glancing down thee series of resolutions is that while there is invariably placed in the forefront a demand for lessened taxation, a considerable number of the other proposals call for largely increased expenditure. But such inconsistencies, of course, are to be found in the programmes of most parliamentary oppositions; and the Congress politicians are not kept in check by the consideration that they themselves may have to give effect to their own programme. The speeches taken in the mass are very decorous and fairly reasonable, 321

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though not, apparently, based on very full or accurate knowledge of the topics treated. Occasional speeches are admirable. Writing in 1898, Mr. Eardley Norton says “Were I a statesman and in office I should be proud of this wonderful exhibition of the development of English education. I would point with exultation to its peaceful, orderly assembly, to the discipline of its meetings, to its ready and cheerful obedience to its President, to its grateful acknowledgment of the manifold blessings of British rule to the sober language of its demands? to the verdemands themselves, as necessary and intende results of our education, of our promises, and of our policy; and I would boast, as I believe I could boast truthfully, that no country in the world but my own Could in so short a time have transformed the India of yesterday into the India of to-day.”15 He goes on to quote passages from Sir Wm. Hunter: “I affirm that there is no political movement in the country which is managed with the same moderation of speech and the same dignity of procedure as this, the Indian National Congress” (1889). . . . “I may therefore briefly say that those political movements are the legitimate and inevitable result of Western education in India. The men who conduct them are the men to whom in all other respects, intellectual and moral, we are accustomed to point as the highest products of British rule in India. They are the men who form the natural interpreters of our rule to the masses of the people. To speak of such men, when their activity takes a political direction, as disaffected, would be equally unjust and untrue” (1890).16 The split which occurred in 1907, when the Extremist section refused to fall in with the rulings of a Moderate President and Committee, may seem to detract a good deal from these eulogies. But similar breakdowns occur over and over again in the legislatures of countries (such as Austria) where Parliament has the right to Criticize, but no power to control, the Executive. Moreover, the Moderate section seems to have very quickly and satisfactorily reconstituted itself as the National Congress.17 § 55. The Congress party is certainly the party of disloyalty in the narrower sense of that word. But it is still more the party of conscious political ideals, however much its aims may be permeated by class selfishness. “The dignity of the true statesman’s work” (says Mr. J. N. Farquhar, Professor of English, Bhawanipur) “and the value of all faithful toil done for the State are now commonplaces on the Congress platform.”18 For one among many of the expressions of this new-born sense of political duty we may turn to the prayer with which the National Congress was opened in Calcutta. The ideas as well as the phraseology are borrowed from English Christianity; and they may be, and probably are, very imperfectly grasped. Yet even outward homage to such ideals is itself a sign of progress, and likely, by familiarizing the party with the principles that should underlie political action, to favour further progress and lead on to fuller ethical gains. No doubt this is less certain in the case of Indians (by whom the logical connection between words and actions seems always very hazily grasped) than might at first sight appear; but the necessity of justifying political and social actions by 322

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reference to the highest Western ideals can hardly fail absolutely of all result. The words of the prayer are quoted in Mr. Farquhar’s article. “O most Gracious God and Father, by whose Divine Providence mankind is ruled and all things are made to work out His good ends, we thank Thee for enabling us, Thy unworthy servants, to assemble once more in this great city for this the twenty-second session of our National Congress. We bless Thy Holy Name that Thou didst put into the hearts of our leaders, some of whom have now departed this life, to establish this Congress, and didst grant themwisdom and ability to maintain and develop it in the face of manifold and vast difficulties. We heartily thank Thee for the measure of usefulness granted to our Congress in the past, in drawing together in the bonds of friendship, fellowship and united effort our countrymen, separated as they are by difference of race, creed, language and social customs. We also render Thee most humble and hearty thanks for the marvelous growth of the true spirit of Nationalism which has recently manifested itself in all parts of our beloved motherland. “We seek Thy blessing, O Heavenly Father, on the proceedings of the present session of our Congress. Give to the President and to all speakers the guidance of Thy Holy Spirit, so that nothing may be said or done here that is not in accordance with Thy Holy Will. Remove from us all ill-feeling, prejudice, and uncharitableness, and fill our hearts with a genuine desire for the good of the country and its people, with unswerving loyalty to our rulers, and with good feelings towards all sections of the inhabitants of this land. Let moderation and earnestness, wisdom and charity, humility and harmony characterize our proceedings at this great gathering. “We implore Thy blessing on our Gracious Sovereign and Emperor, King Edward, and on the Royal Family. Enable those that bear rule in this land under His Imperial Majesty to realize their unique responsibilities consequent on their position which Thou hast been pleased to grant them, and help them to fulfil the sacred charge committed to them, so as to glorify Thy Name and to benefit our people. More especially at this time we beseech Thee, O Lord, to inspire all the members of the ruling race with true sympathy for the people over whom Thou hast placed them as rulers. “O merciful God, we seek Thy guidance and help in checking and uprooting all the evils which hinder our progress and improvement as a people. Enable us to make ourselves worthy in every respect for the privileges of self-government and participation in the administration of the country which we seek and claim. Pardon our many shortcomings, strengthen our infirmities, bless our labours, and bestow on us such a measure of success as Thou thinkest fit. Grant us the spirit of self-effacement and self-sacrifice, and accept our humble services to the glory of Thy Holy Name, and the good of our beloved motherland. Amen.” § 56. As regards the speeches and writings of the Congress party, one is always hearing the charge that they are violently seditious.19 Defenders of the Congress are always repudiating it. The impression that I gather myself from the perusal of a considerable amount of such matter is that both accusation and repudiation are, 323

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in most cases, put forward in good faith. Many times the Congress politicians are genuinely astonished at some flagrant utterance being treated as unjustifiable. In a considerable proportion of cases I believe the misunderstanding, when closely analyzed, will be found to be in part a difference in political manners and in part a consequence of linguistic difficulties. A very slight turn of phrase may, unintentionally, convert a respectful protest into an intolerable demand—the misuse of an auxiliary verb—some slight nuance in the use of an adjective. This is a very real cause of serious misunderstandings. It is a point that has been brought home to me by the way in which I have frequently been approached, by letter or in person, by Indian students whose obvious interest it was, in presenting some request, to be as condilatory as possible. Yet some of the expressions they would use, intermixed with painstakingly respectful sentences, would be of a kind that at first hearing seemed to call for indignant rebuke. Not a little thought was required sometimes, before one could realize how trifling an alteration—the substitution, say, of “may” for “must,” “request” for “desire”—would suffice to give the question a satisfactory shape.20 Such shades of difference in expression may be pure matters of idiom or involve also questions of taste. In either case the hitting of the exactly appropriate phraseology is ultimately a matter of scholarship, and often of very delicate scholarship. This neither party understands. The unintentionally offensive speaker is treated by Englishmen as a dangerous sedition-monger, and his compatriots are amazed to see him singled out for disloyalty, when Englishmen or Irishmen who use what to them may appear much more outrageous expressions are left unrebuked. Even when the objectionable utterances are not thus susceptible of being resolved into linguistic misunderstandings, it should not be forgotten that political manners differ from country to country as well as from century to century. We must keep clear of the error (natural enough, it is true) of condemning our own work in the East and of dealing in gloomy forecasts for India, because we find that contemporary India does not coincide with our ideal. A great deal of what seems to us, in the nascent political life of India, outrageous, and indeed in-tolerable, could doubtless be paralleled without much difficulty among the platform utterances and newspaper articles of America and the Continent, and, indeed, in the journalism of eighteenth-century England.21 It is natural, moreover, for Orientals, as it is for southern Europeans, to deal in superlatives. “An impartial judge of native comments” (writes a native of India)22 “will also make some allowance for the emotional character of the Oriental mind and its traditional habit of indulging in spirited and hyperbolical language.” § 57. The Indian would-be statesman lacks the sort of training which is ours almost from childhood—the quasi-political training of the public school especially, where we acquire the elements at least of political sagacity and learn to give and take in reasonable measure. Even the politicians of Continental Europe show, conspicuously at times, signs of the inadequate nature of their experience in such matters The management of school clubs, the prefect system, the life of the cricket field and the dormitory, all leave their mark on the growing English boy.23 324

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Rarely indeed—unless it be in the chiefs’ colleges24 and perhaps a few places like Aligarh and Trinity College, Kandy25—has the Indian known any such preparation for life.26 The attempt to make the control of athletics a matter of student self-government has been known to fail utterly in a University college where two religious sects have been evenly balanced in numbers, as every committee election, every selection of a cricket team was made a matter of racial and religious feud. Autocratic intervention on the part of the English professors has been necessitated in order to remedy glaring injustices brought about by a chance-majority vote, and tenaciously upheld on, the sternest “constitutional” principles by the unpatriotic offenders, who were willing, if not eager, to sacrifice the prestige of their college in intercollegiate competitions, if by so doing they could feel that they were championing the interests of Religion.27 The Indian agitator (with rare exceptions) has not learned the wisdom of moderation. He attacks indiscriminately the good and the bad actions of government, with the zest of a schoolboy playing at a new game and the bitterness of one who believes that his personal aspirations are debarred from a legitimate outlet in an administrative career.28 The game of politics is new to him. He has learned it from newspapers and books. He does not realize the difference in controversial tone and social environment which makes the game in twentieth-century England a very different one from what it can become in India. He overlooks, too, in most cases, the difference between party strife in a country with responsible self-government, and class opposition in a country where the Government must necessarily remain autocratic. Unfortunately his English sympathizers (especially certain sections of the Liberal Press and a group of ill-informed members of Parliament) overlook this difference also. As Mr. Mitra puts it: “An attack made on the Government of India by the National Congress or by the Vernacular Press is not like the attack of an organized opposition on the Government of the day. There is no system of party in India. Those who attack the Government know that they cannot hope to turn them out, but they proceed as if they could do so. It is an axiom in Indian politics that the Government of India cannot allow itself to be beaten.”29 § 58. It is the absence of racial unification and class equality which makes autocratic rule (however much tempered by consideration for the governed, and modified by frequent consultation with representatives of the subject peoples) an abiding necessity as long as the caste system holds sway and racial and religious antipathies remain what they are to-day. The Congress politician crying out for representative institutions stands in the same position as the Roman oligarch of yore, protesting, “I was born free as Cæsar; so were you . . . ”; yet (in true oligarch fashion) never casting a thought in the direction of the great mass of the subject population of Rome. A share in political domination the educated Indian naturally craves. But the Provincials—the struggling ryots—still prefer, it would seem, the rule of an alien Cæsar to the rule of a native clique. “Many able and conscientious men” (writes a judge of the High Court of Bombay)30 “take their stand in dealing with the Indian problem upon a fundamental 325

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principle. All people have the right to be free. No country has the right to hold the peoples of another country or continent in subjection and deny them equal rights of free citizenship. As an abstract proposition in the domain of national ethics few can dispute the principle. But when it is sought to be applied practically to the complex problem of Indian government, it will be found to imply some conditions which do not exist and never have existed. “It implies that we found India ‘free’ and enslaved her. It implies that there is a people in India struggling to be free, and that we repress it. It implies a homogeneity of race, religion, and sentiment throughout India, the very reverse of what we really find there. It implies an Indian ‘nation’; but there is no Indian nation. It implies that India, like France or England, is a country, while everyone Knows that it is a continent. It is a continent full of jarring and hostile elements, a continent of which the numerous peoples and tribes are only kept in restraint by the compelling power of England. If there were, as the exponents of this principle seem to believe, an Indian nation aspiring to be free; if the English rule suppressed by force that aspiration, and imposed upon the weak but unwilling necks of millions the yoke of a foreign tyranny, I do not think that any genuine Englishman could be found to defend the morality of such a position. But were the facts so, or nearly so, there would be no need of any moral discussion. Two or three hundred million people animated by a common patriotism, by a common resolve to be free certainly could not be kept in subjection by such means as England uses in India for a single day.” These are facts which it is not easy for the English politician or the English journalist to grasp so firmly as never to let them slip from his memory when he is handling a concrete Indian problem. They are, however, repeatedly ignored by writers who certainly cannot urge the excuse of ignorance. § 59. The Congress party is freely accused of being a selfish and partisan body representing the interests of unimportant coteries. “Mr. Niel Groïs, a graduate of Harvard University, and a student of international affairs . . . was struck by the fact that the Congress at Calcutta was a collection of office-seekers, not of patriots, and in a speech delivered at Boston last year he explained the special opportunities of studying Indian problems he had enjoyed, and compared the disloyalty of the educated classes with the devotion of the masses, who realized that their safety, and in fact their entire well-being, depended on the continuance of British rule.”31 “It is becoming increasingly obvious,” writes Mr. T. V. Subrahmanyam,32 “that the institution has ceased to be popular, that it is preserved as the organ of a few, and that its resolutions cannot be said to have the sanction of the people at large. It was only the other day that the Amrita Bazar Patrika [a leading Congress organ] was forced to confess that the so-called National Assembly was the preserve of a few people who could make a speech in English.” Whether the protests raised in Congress and re-echoed in all parts of India over such matters as the Partition of Bengal and the Universities Act—to take the two stock grievances of the Congress politician—were intelligent or disinterested is indeed very dubious. The weight of evidence seems in the former case all in 326

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favour of the view that the agitation was largely engineered in the interests of small coteries, of educated Hindus desirous of maintaining the preponderance of Hindu officials in the Mohammedan section of the province and of retaining Calcutta as the centre of legal and administrative business for the larger area.33 The whole controversy, however, is most bewildering. Lord Morley, in his speech at Arbroath (21st October, 1907), certainly rejected the theory that the agitation was purely artificial, not based on existing and widely-felt discontent. After considerable wearsome study of Congress speeches and of articles in the pages of India (the weekly organ of the Congress party published in England), I find myself completely baffled by the whole question. The only tangible objections that appear to be raised against the Partition seem to imply that some sections of the population may lose advantages which other sections will gain; and the sympathies of the Congress happen to be with the former rather than the latter. But what exactly the losses (if any) amount to, and whether there can possibly be any net losses, are questions that it seems almost impossible to answer with confidence, the whole of the controversial ground being now so overgrown with a jungle of misrepresentations that clear vision is impossible. One can only re-echo the words of Lord Morley: “It is the vagueness of the discontent, which is not universal, out of the discontent so far as we can perceive it—it is the vagueness that makes it harder to understand, harder to deal with. Some of them are angry with me. Why? Because I have not been able to give them the moon. I have got no moon, and if I had I would not give them the moon. I would not give anybody the moon, because I do not know who lives there. I do not know what kind of conditions prevail. But, seriously, I read pretty carefully—not very pleasant reading—I read much of the Press in which their aspirations are put forth. . . . But I declare to you I cannot find what it is precisely they want us to do which we are not anxious slowly and gradually to make a way for eventually doing. But there must be patience and there must be, whatever else there is, firmness.” “It is impossible to read the narrative of the controversy, says a former Bishop of Bombay,34 “without deploring the prejudice and pusillanimity which underlies the native side of it. The larger considerations which appeal to statesmanship are ignored, while the smaller and more personal aspects of the question are strongly pressed.” Similarly with regard to the Universities question: “The scheme of reform was under consideration when I left India. It occasioned the strongest feeling, and what impressed one chiefly in the controversy was the weight given to mere personal considerations. . . . There seemed to be little anxiety to get at the real merits of the question; to arrive at the best settlement in the light of efficiency; to think out impartially such a constitution of the governing body as would best promote the usefulness of the university and lend most value to its educational work.”35 § 60. The Congress, it is further urged, represents the selfish Hindu point of view only. That it is almost entirely repudiated by the Moslem element, is true enough;36 but this is in part due to the educational backwardness of the Moslem community, and in part also to the personal influence of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of Aligarh College, who always deprecated political activity before 327

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the Moslems should have strengthened their position by broadening through education their intellectual outlook. Its non-representative character is very forcibly described by a somewhat hostile critic, Sir G. Chesney. He emphasizes the smallness and what he believes to be the political insignificance of the section from which most of its members are drawn; but hardly succeeds in showing conclusively that a Western Government fostering Western ideas should not give to them and their ambitions a larger measure of attention than the bulk of the people, Mohammedans and uneducated Hindus, might approve. “Among the special elements of difficulty at the present time” (he writes),37 “is the appearance on the surface of Indian society of a new class—a class which has no affinity with the landed aristocracy or the natural rulers38 of India, of the mercantile, or the agricultural communities, which has never before occupied a position of any importance; a class which is the product of our system of free [sic] education, and which, while constituting a numerically insignificant minority of the whole population, lays claim to be accepted as the people of India, and, with the assistance it is endeavouring to secure from an uninstructed section of English politicians, is entering on a course of political agitation—vague, unreal, and impracticable in its aims, but which, unless directed into a rational course, may bring about trouble and danger to India. The vast majority of the people of India, on the other hand, although the agitation now being got up among a section of the small English-speaking class necessarily excites among them a vague feeling of unrest and expectation, are still politically in an elementary condition to which no part of Europe furnishes anything analogous. The questions which we are told exercise the minds of the people of India such as the expansion of the legislative councils, the constitution of the Civil Service, and so forth, are at present absolutely beyond their apprehension. Their notions of the nature of the Government they are ruled by are of the vaguest. To them the Government is represented by three or four district officials with whom they come in contact; these they see to be acting under higher authority, but as to the nature of this they have only the vaguest notions, while of the Government in England, with its parliament and political parties, they have no more conception than of the composition of the solar system. Representative institutions, franchises, voting, elections, the simpler political questions which are coming to be understood by all classes in Europe do not enter even in the most remote way into their thoughts. This is a class of whose wants and feelings little or nothing is heard in the so-called political discussions now going on in India; yet, it outnumbers the other class by thousands to one, and it is mainly in their interests that the Government has to be conducted. This last point is also emphasized by the American missionary, Dr. J. P. Jones: “It is certainly the business of Great Britain to discover and consult the wishes of the people—not the hungry office seekers—in this matter. After many years of observation and living among the people, the writer is convinced that nine-tenths of the people would be prepared any day to vote in favour of the relative increase, and not the decrease, of the European official force. . . . The writer knows how 328

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general is the want of native confidence in natives. Many a time has he been importuned to use his influence to have cases transferred from the jurisdiction of the native to the Englishman.” . . . “The presence of the few English dignitaries” (he adds) “does ten times more good to the land in purifying and toning up the service than their salary is worth.”39 It is, of course, a point to which the Congress party denies any importance or any truth. Says a native member of the Legislative Council of India40 on one occasion: “Lord Curzon . . . told his hearers . . . that even if he had incurred the hostility of educated Indians, the masses would be grateful to him for what he had done for them. This attempt to distinguish between the interests of the educated classes and those of the bulk of their countrymen is a favourite device with those who seek to repress the legitimate inspirations of our people. . . . We know, of course, that the distinction is unreal and ridicuous, and we know also that most of those who use it as a convenient means to disparage the educated classes cannot themselves really Believe in it.”41 As soon, however, as one turns from the heated atmosphere of Congress discussions and the unsavoury declamations of the friends of Congress in the House of Commons, and opens such a book as Sir F. S. P. Lely’s sympathetic little brochure (Suggestions for the Better Governing of India),42 he feels himself at once in a different world. Here we get the peasants’ point of view, set forth by one who evidently knows them at close quarters and who certainly holds no brief for the Government as it is. But the “reforms” for which Congress clamours are conspicuous by their absence. Congress gets scarcely a mention from cover to cover; yet it is hardly possible to read the essay through without a conviction that here, at last, is an author who really aims at presenting what are the genuine grievances and the actual aspirations of over 90 per cent of the people. § 61. That the Congress party is swayed by class interests may be freely admitted. What political party in history has not been so swayed? But the Congress certainly stands for Western political ideals, and much of its programme consists of what, on a priori reasoning, the Liberalism of Europe would be bound to approve. That the literary class, the lawyers, the potential officeholders would benefit by the spread of liberal principles of government (as understood in England) does not prevent their interest in Liberalism being genuine. Nor is it reasonable to argue that because both their aims and methods are exotics, introduced into India from the alien West, these aims and methods must be the products of insincere imitation. The methods of Congress are of course not the natural methods of the East, any more than they are faithful copies in detail of the methods of the West. “Orthodox Hindus of the old school” (says Sir Theodore Morison) have been offended at the pretensions of the Congress politicians to represent Hindu society, seeing that their manners and methods of political agitation are flagrantly foreign to Indian ideas.”43 But for the Congress party to refrain from adopting Western methods in their agitation, while such a course might enhance their appearance of sincerity, would hardly be evidence of their political sagacity. 329

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What, however, are we to say of their ultimate aims? In so far as these are disinterestedly patriotic they ought to be bent towards securing for their country a fuller realization of self-respecting Statehood. The mention of such an aspiration as this in a Western land would at once suggest the double aim of attaining complete independence from foreign control and of introducing some democratic system of representative government. The Indian is intellectually imitative, and the Congress Indian is the Indian who knows something of Western aspirations. Nothing therefore is, more natural than that Congress politicians, while postponing the dubious benefits that would follow the withdrawal of British control, should press forward towards the goal of representative institutions. This, however, is by no means the accustomed, aspiration of the uneducated Indian. His desire is distinctly for good patriarchal governments. Loyalty to a personal monarch comes easy to him. He. is not even eagerly bent on having a ruler of the same nationality as himself. The Nizam, a Mohammedan, speaking Urdu, reigns over Hindus whose native tongues are Telegu, Canarese, or Mahratti; nor will the Gaekwar of Baroda be found ruling over populations composed preponderantly of Mahrattas. Yet these princes do not seem to have any difficulty in winning the loyalty of their subjects, and that though neither of them can show a genuinely ancient title to their allegiance. Even the English Emperor-King receives an unexpectedly large share of veneration in India. For the monarchical sentiment is a deep-seated instinct among the races that dwell east of Suez.44 By this we do not, of course, mean to imply that the Oriental any more than the European wishes to be ruled in accordance with the changing caprices of an inscrutable despot whose ways are, not his own ways and who never condescends to explain, when explanation is necessary, why he wills what he wills. As an Anglo-Indian paper45 points out: “It is too late to reiterate the familiar notion that the East desires good government through a benevolent despot, and looks on self-government with contempt. If the ‘benevolent despot’ is one who pursues his own way, regardless of what his subjects think, then he has passed from the scene of government in India, and it is useless to go on holding him up as an ideal. An authoritative government, whose rule is conditioned by a careful regard for the informed and reasonably expressed opinion of the people who are ruled, is another matter.” Even an Indian rajah can be found to insist on the same point.46 “Again, when the public journals question the justice or wisdom of any action of Government, Government should condescend to afford explanations oftener and more fully than heretofore. Such explanations would, “in many cases, clear up matters and obviate dissatisfaction. A good and strong Government ought not to hesitate to take the people into its confidence.”47 § 62. Discussing the aspirations of New India before the Royal Colonial Institute, Sir Bamp-fylde Fuller is reported48 as saying: “If the eyes of, the Indian people were not turned to democratic ideals, what was it they were looking for? It might safely be concluded that if the extravagant utterances of extremist politicians found a hearing, it was not because the Indian people wished to see the 330

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end of British rule. He believed that their grievance was primarily sentimental, that uppermost in their minds was a vague feeling of resentment at being treated always as inferior to Europeans. . . . His conclusions were that one could learn very little as to the real wishes of India from the recent manifestations of unrest; that the heartfelt desire of the people was to acquire a self-respect which had been lost during years of subjection; that the best method of meeting this desire was to prove to them that they were not barred from positions of trust and dignity in the service of the country; and that, if this concession was granted, they would remain very well content with methods of government which might not realize the democratic ideals of Englishmen, but which satisfied the present needs of a large portion of Europe.” § 63. The Congress speakers clamour, and very naturally, for more of the loaves and fishes of office. They almost certainly do not desire a severance of the English connection. On this point testimony seems practically unanimous. To quote one of themselves:49 “The educated Indian has his faults, but whatever these faults may be it cannot be asserted that he is blind to his own material interests, and it is his own material interests that sway him altogether towards being loyal and contended, as loyal subjects should be contented, towards the Government. Indeed, the principle on which the Indian National Congress is based is that British rule should be permanent and abiding in India, and that, given this axiom, it is the duty of educated Indians to endeavour to the best of their power to help their rulers so to govern the country as to improve her material prosperity and make the people of all classes and communities happy and prosperous and contented as subjects of the British Empire. The sooner this erroneous but very mischievous notion that the educated Indian is seditious is given up, the better for the country.” “These men” (says one of their English coadjutors50)“are not paid demagogues or political incendiaries with no stake in the land. Their material well-being is bound up with British rule. They comprise, educationally, the pick and flower of all the trades and professions in India. Many of them are wealthy landowners, nearly all of them are men of substantial means. Is it wise” to decry such men as paid agitators, to denounce their leaders as discontented lawyers?51 In past years I was of the Cabinet of the Congress. My official severance with that body is now complete. But I gladly pay my old colleagues the tribute of my admiration and respect for the ability, the ardour, and withal the moderation with which questions were threshed out in the Subject Committees. It was here that all the real work of the Congress was done. . . . I have lived too long behind the scenes and mixed too freely with the delegates not to be certain that they bear very willingly and very gratefully the yoke of England’s rule.” § 64. The difficulty of the sympathetic observer of the manifestations of Indian unrest is to decide with what set of conditions, real or imaginary, the present circumstances of India should be brought into comparison. The agitators and the agitated populations are alternately comparing things as they are (or more often, perhaps, things as they pretend or imagine them to be) with things as they were in the Golden Age, or with things as they will be in an impossible future. But except 331

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in the case of a small section of the educated people, the ideal is never that of a representative democracy. Whatever they may say about England, they would never wish to copy England. § 65. A Mohammedan prince, H.H. the Aga Khan, puts forward the most obvious objection to the full introduction of representative institutions. “If the real power were given over to the people’s representatives, how would they use it? . . . Whatever the material or educational test of the franchise, the result would be, under the present state of social civilization, that power would fall into the hands of individuals or communities who, while in many things abreast of the century, are in other things full of prejudices against the lower classes of their countrymen, unworthy of the days of the Tudors. It must not be forgotten that many of those who are demanding the highest political rights deny at this moment to their own dearest and nearest female relatives the simplest of human rights.”52 “The great majority of the people who retain their religious beliefs and social usages” (says another native ruler53) “would decidedly prefer their non-representation to their mis-representation by those who have given up those beliefs and those usages”—and such denationalized representatives the Congress politicians would undoubtedly be. Representative institutions have been found almost impracticable when the racial and linguistic divisions are as sharp as we find them in Austria-Hungary. The sharper religious and social divisions of India make them almost unthinkable. This, of course, is a truth which it is difficult for Englishmen to grasp. “It is apparently necessary for English politicians” (writes Sir Theodore Morison54) “to behold a country given up to anarchy before they can realize that popular institutions make for the disruption of a nation which is not yet compact and unified. If they looked beneath the delusive calm which the army maintains in India, they would behold all the passions which beget civil war, unscotched by a hundred years of unwilling peace.” “One must be compelled” (says Dr. J. P. Jones55) “to deny the srncerity of many who claim that this people is a nation which prides itself upon its patriotism, so long as the caste system dominates them and their ideas. The only tie which binds together these people is the spirit of opposition to this foreign government. Among the classes and the masses there is absolutely no coherence or unity of sentiment in any line of constructive activity. So that in the matter of self-government they would prove themselves to be sadly incompetent.” To mention no other objections, a representative assembly among these “children of inexorable inequality”56 would prove unworkable, because, by jumbling together high caste and low, it would turn ceremonial Hinduism into a code of impossibilities.57 Representative institutions all but a small loquacious section of the people almost certainly do not want. The idea is too alien. It would be too difficult (as has been said already) to get high caste and low to sit together at the Council Board. Indeed, it is probable that to a high-caste Hindu the idea of submitting himself to the suffrages of his inferiors could only appear as an indignity Where the representative system has been introduced obvious drawbacks appear in the working 332

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“Sir Macworth Young, the lately retired Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, has recorded his opinion on the subject of the advancement in local self-government in that province in the last eighteen years, during which Lord Ripon’s policy in that respect has been in force, to the effect that the people rarely manifest any interest in the election of their representatives, and the elected representatives rarely represent the real interests of their constituents. If any position on the Board is coveted it is that of the nominated, not of the elected, members, and District Boards in general are merely consultative, not executive, bodies, reflecting the disposition of the Deputy-Commissioner, whose appointment as President has been necessitated in almost every case by the prevalence of party feeling and sectarian strife. The absence of a wholesome public spirit in the rural community lies at the root of this failure, and until this want is supplied local self-government in rural tracts of the Punjab will be more or less of a farce.”58 “To those who watch carefully the working of this municipal franchise” (writes Dr. Jones, an experienced American missionary59), “and see how easily and speedily the natives have adopted all the vices and tricks of the representative system, it does not, by any means, seem an unmixed good. And the hardest critics of the system that the writer has met have been intelligent and loyal natives, who believe that this meed of self-government is fraught with evil.”60

Notes 1. See Preface. 2. An administrator like Sir E. C. Cox namely expresses his amazement (see The Nineteenth Century, December 1908) that ex-civilians who show favour to inconvenient political aspirations should be allowed to retain their pensions, quite forgetting that the pensions, though awarded under the regulations of the bureaucracy, are all derived from the purses of the Indian tax-payers, and that the duty of the pensioners surely to consult the ultimate interests of those on whose bounty he lives, rather than the interests of his former fellow-officials. (A view similar to Sir E. C. Cox’s is put forward in The Quarterly Review for July 1908, “The Unrest in India.”) 3. Mr. H. P. Mody, a Parsi, cites in his essay (The Political Future of India) the widespread character in the protests against the Partition of Bengal and the Punjab Colonization Bill, as evidence of the awakening of a sense of national solidarity and a consciousness of the duty of subordinating sectional interests to the good of the whole. How far the interest in these special grievances extended is, however, by no means clear. With regard to the Partition of Bengal, Mr. J. D. Rees, C.I.E., M.P., says that “it must be remembered that the rest of India takes no kind of interest in the question and, indeed, is not favourable to Bengali pretensions” (The Real India, 1908, p. 206). From Congress speeches I incline, however, to believe that the interest in the “grievance” is fairly widespread, though only, of course, among the educated classes. Compare also the following: “The European [******* * **] in India, in the interests of the Empire, and in order to win the confidence of the people, should so act as not to show any assumption of a Divine right to rule, or any air of conscious superiority, which, without strengthening his position, jars upon the susceptibilities of the people. I can quite imagine somebody objecting to the view I have expressed, and saying. “This must be some new sensitiveness that the Indians have developed, as their fathers rejoiced in honouring the rulers.’ Yes, it is new, but it

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4.

5. 6. 7.

is there, and it has to be taken into account. The Indian to-day is not behind his father in deference to constituted authority, but he is now learning to bow to authority in the abstract as distinguished from its concrete embodiment—the official. He has imbibed the English notions of might and duty, has learnt at the feet of broad-minded English scholars the lessons of independence and love of liberty, and he finds it impossible to behave like those who never had these privileges. It is no use, therefore, to fret at this spirit, which is one of the most direct results of the contact between England and India; but efforts should be made to foster it on right lines, and to encourage it, within due bounds” (Shaikh Abdul Qadir, “Young India: Its Hopes and Aspirations,” Asiatic Quarterly, April 1906). “The very contact with Europeans has had an effect on the national character and national ideals. In the absence of legitimate outlets the roused consciousness of latent energies turns into unreasoning discontent” (Mr. Ameer Ali, “Indian Race Characteristics,” Nineteenth Century, November 1907). In any case we must remember that it is too late to echo the thought embodied in the phrases of that good royal governor of Virginia who could say, in 1670, “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best of Governments: God keep us from both.” It can hardly be necessary to linger over what should by now be a truism—that “unrest” is not by itself a proof of the growth of hardships and poverty. It is usually the populations that are advancing in material welfare that become acutely conscious of advantages which are not yet theirs, rather than the hopelessly downtrodden peoples. (Thus, to take a stock instance, the French peasantry in 1789 were probably much better off than the peasantry of the other parts of the Continent at the same date.) “Feelings of hate and revenge” (says the Aga Khan, National Review, February 1907) “will in some hour when they are least expected and most dangerous break out from a materially prosperous but disaffected people. The wealthier such a population is, the more dangerous will it be if it ever rebels.” Nor, further, can we affirm, without great rashness, that the “disloyalty’’ is the effect either of the mildness or of the sternness of our methods. If all our Indian administrators were Prussian martinets, it may be that the courage to move would always have been wanting. If, on the other hand, they were all sympathetic philanthropists (the phrase, by the way, is not a tautology), it may be that the impulse to revolt would never have been strong enough to cause a movement. “Sedition is the natural outcome, on one side, of incompatibility of temper between a governed and a governing race, just as repression is upon the other; the two must die out together, either by the complete and final victory of one or other, or by a cessation of the racial hostility from which both spring. Given that it is undesirable either that the national aspirations of India or that the influence of English civilization in India should be allowed to die, and that these at present too often take the shape of sedition on the one hand and repression on the other we are left with the question, Is the present incompatibility of temper between Englishman and Indian remediable?” (Mr, K. E. Kirk, Nineteenth Century, October 1909). Representative Government, chap. III. Imperial Rule in India, 1899, p. 119. Cf. also Mr. S. M. Mitra’s Indian Problems, 1908, p. 30: “To allay the present discontent the rising generation must be taught the benefits of the British rule in India. The present generation has forgotten how India fared under the heels of the Mahratta Cavalry one hundred years ago; they have never troubled themselves to think of the blessings which they enjoy under British rule, and it was gross negligence on the part of British rulers not to tell the modern youth what has been done for their predecessors and for them, and how much they owe to the alien Government whom they denounce

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so glibly. So far there hardly exist half a dozen works on the subject of the benefits of British rule which might be made text-books in Indian schools and colleges.” Cf. Mr. K. K. Chandis “Education and Citizenship” in the Madras Christian College Magazine, March 1908: “Students now appear generally to believe too little, many of them looking on Englishmen as mere despoilers and enemies. If, therefore, an unprejudiced Indian of accepted credibility would explain in simple language the great privileges that Indians enjoy under the British Raj, and at the same time point out our great limitations, show us that we are only at the beginning of the race, and define with some clearness the path that is to be followed in the ultimately best interests of India and England, the gain to the State and to citizens would be incalculable. With the exception of Sir W. Lee-Warner’s book, which, there is reason to believe, finds no favour with the average student or citizen, I do not know of any book on Indian citizenship, whereas partisan and acrimonious writings appear in abundance, and are devoured with avidity.” Sir F. S. P. Lely points out forcibly the same need in the dealings of the administration with the peasantry. The earlier native official “was a man of the people, seldom knowing English, of conservative views, but loyal to his salt, and a friend, though often a bit of a tyrant, to the villagers. I have known such men in time of cholera clean up and disinfect their town in order to satisfy their superiors, but at the same time get sacrificial fires along the streets duly lighted by Brahmins in order to really meet the trouble. . . . They have been replaced by a race of educated intelligence who know English and can therefore understand the Secretariate speech, but are too much of the “Sahib’ to join the village circle. Whereas the former man sat on his cushion among his clerks, primus inter pares, the modern must have his chair and his table and, if possible, the solitary state of a separate room. Generally speaking, there is now no one of authority to say what the people think and to explain what Government means. That mission is made over to the Kal and the Kesari newspapers” (Suggestions for the Better Governing of India, 1906, p. 17). Some interesting descriptive paragraphs, showing the influence of the anti-English newspapers that reach the remote, simple, previously loyal villages, will be found in the Nineteenth Century for September 1909 (“Spiritual Forces in India,” by the Rev. N. Macnicol). 8. Cf. Sir T. Morison, Imperial Rule in India, 1899, p. 123: “No political opinion is so wide-spread as that India is getting poorer and poorer every year, and this belief is a constant source of ill-will and disaffection; it forms the burden of every complaint against the British rule, and is shared with melancholy conviction by those who take no part in political agitation.” Compare also p. 40, [******* * **] id. 9. Prof. N. G. Welinkar, “The Problems of Higher Education in India,” Asiatic Quarterly, April 1908. 10. It seems that some steps have recently been taken in this direction in the case of the University of Calcutta. There are, however, grave difficulties in the way of making the policy effective. The following, from the Educational Review, Madras, 1999, will make this clear: “We have more than once deprecated the action of the Supreme and Local Governments in thrusting Sir William’s (Lee-Warner’s) or any other text-book of Indian Politics on an unwilling people. Even if the book referred to be prescribed by every Education Department and University in India, nothing will be easier than to defeat the object of the Government. The subject-matter of the book must be explained by the teacher, and it does not require much imagination to suppose that the explanation will not in some cases redound to the credit of the. Government. On the one hand, teachers and schoolboys are ordered not to meddle with politics; while, on the other, they are forced to study a book which presents only the official case of the whole raison d’être of the Government of India. To say the least, such a policy appears to be somewhat inconsistent and unreasonable, and as such it is certain to be resented.”

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11. “In the debating societies which the students are sure to found, an English professor would have an opportunity of setting forth his views at length, and he would indeed be unfortunate in his endowments if he could not succeed in dismissing the case against the Government as it is usually presented” (Imperial Rule in India, p. 120). 12. What was stated by Lord Lytton thirty years ago seems to be equally true to-day: “Written, for the most part, by persons very imperfectly educated and altogether inexperienced; written, moreover, down to the level of the lowest intelligence, and with an undisguised appeal to the most disloyal sentiments and mischievous passions . . . these journals are read only, or chiefly, by persons still more ignorant, still more uneducated, still more inexperienced than the writers of them; persons wholly unable to judge for themselves, and entirely dependent for their interpretation of our action upon these self-constituted and incompetent teachers. Not content with misrepresenting the Government and maligning the character of the ruling race in every possible way and on every possible occasion, these mischievous scribblers have of late been preaching open sedition” (Speech in Council on the Vernacular Press Bill, 14 March, 1878, quoted by Lady Betty Balfour, Lord Lytton’s Indian Administration, p. 512). 13. “Many of these are unimportant journals of an ephemeral character with a circulation of a few hundreds only, and the number with a circulation exceeding 2000 copies is still small” (Memorandum on Indian Administration, 1909 [Cd. 4956]). 14. “Indigenous Indian newspapers pay badly, as their circulation is not large and their readers are mostly poor. In the infrequent case of the proprietor being a rich man, he is seldom liberal to his staff. On the whole, it may be said of Indians editing papers that the majority are men of small experience, and, though clever and ambitious, are already soured against the British Government; further, that, as little that is done by the Government or by British officials is so transparently right as not to be susceptible to misconstruction or adverse criticism, such editors, to the small extent of their knowledge, inculcate a good deal of error, and are more prone to indulge in hostile than favourable comments. . . . There are, of course, exceptions, for amongst the editors may be found men of high literary attainments. . . . But such men are rare . . . and some of them are so straitened pecuniarily that, viewing the monopoly of highly-paid appointments enjoyed by Englishmen, their minds are sometimes appreciably embittered against the Government” (Mr. S. S. Thorburn, “Education by Newspaper,” The Asiatic Quarterly, July 1902). 15. Indian Politics, Madras, 1898, p. 26. 16. Even in an Anglo-Indian journal (The Indian Daily News, Calcutta) appears the following admission: “A loyal, critical, unofficial opposition—that, we think, sums up the position of the Congress pretty fairly.” 17. See Proceedings of the Twenty-third Indian National Congress, Madras, 1909. 18. Contemporary Review, May 1908. 19. The practice adopted by papers as discreet as The Times, of persistently arguing that men like Mr. Banerjea are insidiously disloyal and promoters of sedition, at a time when Mr. Krishnavarma in The Indian Sociologist (see, e.g., Vol. V, No. 7, July [******* * **] is calling Mr. Banerjea “a sycophant” and a “self-seeking flatterer” whose “obsequious conduct” emphasizes “his moral ‘turpitude,” hardly seems the wisest course for a sane imperialist polity to follow. The fact that one “political” assassin referred to Mr. Banerjea’s writings among others as his source of inspiration is no proof of anarchical tendencies in those writings. Similar gloomy-minded fanatics would doubtless find equally strong incentives to political murders in the pages of the less reputable of the English journals with a “socialistic” bias. 20. I once received a most friendly letter from a former pupil, referring with regret to my lectures, “interesting and tedious as they were.”

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21. Since writing the above I have come across the following paragraph from Malthus, quoted in Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution, chap. IX.: “During the late dearth half of the gentlemen and clergy in the kingdom richly deserved to have been prosecuted for sedition. After inflaming the minds of the common people against the farmers and corn-dealers by the manner in which they talked of them or preached about them, it was a feeble antidote to the poison which they had infused coldly to observe that, however the poor might be oppressed or cheated, it was their duty to keep the peace” (Principle of Population, 7th ed., p. 438, note) . . . . It reads like an attack on the double dealing of Messrs. Banerjea and Lala Lajpat Rai in the National Review, or a leading article in the same subject in the The Times. 22. Mr. A. P. Sen, “Education and Sedition in India,” Westminster Review, August 1902. 23. The political value of this sort of training is discussed a length in E. Demolin’s A quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo Saxons? 24. “Nothing in the nature of a social student life begins to make its appearance until we come to the highest [******* * **] institutions” (Mr. Yusuf Ali, Life and Labour of the People of India, 1907, p. 149). 25. “In Trinity College, Kandy, the discipline and leadership of the college and school was largely entrusted to the boys and students themselves. After two years’ work the results were so marked that when the Principal was invalided home, the their Governor of Ceylon, Sir Henry Blake, G.C.M.G., wrote to him ‘In my opinion you have done exceptional service to education in Ceylon by the line that you have taken in Trinity College, where the development of manly qualities, without which education is but a broken reed, receives its due proportion in the teaching and training of the boys’” (Mr. A. G. Fraser, Education in India and Ceylon, Aberdeen, 1908, p. 28). 26. It is this fact which makes arguments in favour of the perfectly equal treatment of English and Indian candidates for the Civil Service (by simultaneous examinations in London and India for example) completely beside the point. The Civil Service examination docs not pick out the most suitable candidates for administrative work. The present system really assumes that there are thousands of quite capable youths in England, and examinational competition is introduced, not because it is good in itself, but because it is a convenient check on favouritism. The fact that many hundreds of Indian candidates could the examination-room do as well as, or better than, the selected candidates, is no argument whatever for equalizing the conditions, but rather the reverse. As it is, the system necessarily cuts out a number of the best in favour of the second-best candidates. It seems, however, the wisest system in the circumstances. 27. This I can vouch for from personal experience. Cf. also Dr. Miller’s remarks in the Madras Christian College Magasine for January 1908. 28. A curious instance of his capacity for inconsistency in argument is seen in the perennial attacks, made both by the Congress party and their English parliamentary friends, on the venality and tyranny of the police in India, while they perpetually insist on the moral fitness of the Indian for every kind of administrative work. Apparently we have chosen none but the morally unfit for service in the police! Or is it that the contact of the Indian with the Englishman in this department invariably causes moral degeneration? . . . More probably the real reason is that, to certain types of mind, police work is especially closely identified with Governmental activities; and everything that the Government in India does is bad. 29. Indian Problems, 1908, p. 7. 30. Mr. Justice Beaman, “The Situation in India,” Empire Review, February 1909. 31. Mr. J. D. Rees, The Real India (1908), p. 212. 32. “The Indian National Congress,” Calcutta Review, April 1904. 33. “Around the courts of the judges and magistrates the native lawyers congregate, and while their advocacy may insure the thorough sifting of the evidence on both sides,

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34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42. 42.

it is feared that it many cases they foment quarrels and foster litigation for their own advantage. The substantial professional incomes made by this very numerous body of lawyers scattered throughout the districts of India are drawn from the pockets of ryot farmers and cultivators, and constitute a burden from which they were originally free, and which, whatever its merits or its defects, is one of the outcomes of the present educational system. These legal coteries throughout the country are centres whence spread the restless ideas and political aspirations that pervade so large a section of the educated community” (The Edinburgh Review, October 1907, p. 272). The Bishop of Southampton, in The East and the West, January 1908. Ibid. Out of 626 members present at the twenty-third Congress (1908) I can count only eight Mohammedans. In 1904, out of 1010 they numbered thirty-one. (The Mohammedans number about one-fifth of the population of India; more than the population of any single European State except Russia, and perhaps Germany.) Indian Polity, 3rd ed., 1894, pp. 380–1. There is, of course, no simple test for deciding what classes (if any) are “the natural rulers” of a people. The Rev. J. A. Sharrock, late Principal of the S.P.G. College, Trichinopoly, points out in the Nineteenth Century for September 1909 (“Some Misconceptions about the Unrest in India”) that the Brahmins, who constitute only 5 per cent, of the total population, furnish 85 per cent, of the University graduates. A soldier would doubtless deny that a priestly class has any “natural” title to political power; but India has always shown some tendency to pass under sacerdotal domination. Though the new Indian claimant [******* * **] power always puts forward “education” as the ground of his claim, it is not easy to guess to what extent caste claims of a semi-sacerdotal character occupy his mind. Naturally such claims will be kept in the background when he is holding converse with Englishmen; and the assumption (probably, though not certainly correct) that the non-Oriental claim of educational superiority is what really fills his thoughts runs through all the literature which deals with Congress and the Universities. Such a claim, however, is not incompatible with a naïvely unquestioning belief [******* * **] distinctions, and an expectation on the part of Brahmin graduates of retaining political power, under a representative system, by influencing the votes of “natural” inferiors and by other ways of manipulating the political machine. “British Rule in India,” North American Review, April 1899. Mr. G. K. Gokhale, in his Presidential Address before the Indian National Congress, 1905. It is hardly necessary to linger over the familiar truth that the Congress party is drawn preponderantly from the less warlike peoples—those that, but for British protection, would speedily fall a prey to their more vigorous neighbours. “The men who are at present most prominent, who are spoken of as leaders of the popular party, do not really represent any large or important section. They represent class interests, essentially pacific. They are almost to a man the creatures of our own educational system, using the argot of Western reformers and revolutionaries. It suits them to talk very loud, to use high-sounding phrases. But they know, every one knows, that should they reap the whirlwind for which they diligently busy themselves sowing the wind, they would be the first to disappear” (Mr. Justice Beaman, “The Situation, in India,” Empire Review, February 1909). It is a little strange, however, that the claim (whether just or genuine is another matter) of a section of the people that they, as being thoroughly Westernized by English education, are the right people to be entrusted with political power, should be thus lightly treated with scorn by writers like Mr. Beaman and Sir George Chesney— as if on the surface it were a grotesque and preposterous claim. London, 1906; price 1s. 3d. Imperial Rule in India, 1899, p. 9.

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44. Cf. Mr. A. M. T. Jackson, I.C.S., “The Hindu Theory of Government,” Empire Review, September 1907. 45. Times of India, 7 August, 1909. 46. Raja Sir T. Madava Row, K.C.S.I., Political Opinions (Madras, 1890), p. 4. 47. Cf. also Sir Theodore Morison, Imperial Rule in India, p. 37: “The Government which wishes to create a national spirit must be based upon a principle which its subjects can reciprocate; it must place before the people a conception of Government which will evoke their enthusiastic loyalty.” 48. India, 18 June, 1909. 49. Mr. W. C. Bonnerjee, Bar.-at-law, Indian Politics (Madras, 1898), Introd. p. 5. 50. Mr. Eardley Norton, Bar.-at-law, ibid., p. 26. 51. Cf. Mr. A. P. Sen, “Education and Sedition in India,” Westminster Review, August 1902: “Further, it is a noticeable fact that the Indian political movements are invariably organized and led by those who are conspicuously successful in life.” 52. “Some Thoughts on Indian Discontent,” National Review February 1907. 53. Raja Sir T. Madava Row, Political Opinions (Madras, 1890) p. 114. 54. Imperial Rule in India, 1899, p. 31. 55. India: Its Life and Thought, 1908, p. 17. 56. Mr. Justice Beaman. 57. “The leader of this people the Brahman, is, in his way, ever more haughty than the Anglo-Indian. . . . Contact with an Englishman, even with the King-Emperor himself, is for him pollution, which must be removed by elaborate and exacting religious ceremonies” (Dr. J. P. Jones, ibid., pp. 22, 23). 58. Mr. A. Rogers, “The Progress of the Municipal Plea in India,” Asiatic Quarterly, April 1902. (Similar statements could, of course, be made in a description of rural England. The reader should bear in mind the difficulty of drawing comparisons in such matters with perfect justice to both populations.) 59. “British Rule in India,” North American Review, April 1899. 60. In this connection should be quoted, however, the paragraph which recurs year after year in the Government’s Moral and Material Progress of India: “The objects on which municipal [MISSING TEXT].

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COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

Edited by Pramod K. Nayar Volume III Commentaries, Reports, Policy Documents

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Pramod K. Nayar; individual owners retain copyright in their own material. The right of Pramod K. Nayar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-7655-2 (set) eISBN: 978-1-351-21216-8 (set) ISBN: 978-0-8153-8082-5 (Volume III) eISBN: 978-1-351-21200-7 (Volume III) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Publisher’s Note References within each chapter are as they appear in the original complete work.

CONTENTS

VOLUME III

1

2

3

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6

COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, POLICY DOCUMENTS

H.R. James, extracts from Education and Statesmanship in India (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), 74–91, 118–132

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Indian Educational Policy, Being a Resolution Issued by the Governor General in Council on the 21st February 1913 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1915), 1–47

19

A. H. Benton, extracts from Indian Moral Instruction and Caste Problems (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1917), 1–10, 31–32, 92–112

43

Extracts from The Calcutta University Commission [Sadler] Report (1919), Vol. 1: 19–30, 143–194, 318–326; Vol. 6: 2–6, 132–135, 169–171

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Extracts from Village Education in India: The Report of a Commission of Inquiry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), 15–23, 66–74, 129–137

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F. F. Monk, extracts from A History of Stephen’s College (Delhi, Calcutta: YMCA, 1935), 3–15, 111–131, 188–199

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Extracts from Progress of Education in India, 1937–1947: Decennial Review [Sargent Report], Vol. I (Central Bureau of Education-Ministry of Education, 1948), 155–160, 165–170, 231–240, 295–308

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Sister Nivedita, extracts from Hints on National Education in India (Calcutta: Brahmachari Ganendranath, 1923, 3rd edn), 6–65, 95–110

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1 H.R. JAMES, EXTRACTS FROM EDUCATION AND STATESMANSHIP IN INDIA (LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 1911), 74–91, 118–132

XI MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THE critics of State education in India are never weary of pointing out that its fatal defect is the absence of any moral and religious basis. Among those who say this are many whose attitude to educational effort in India is unquestionably friendly. Thus the Times correspondent, though guarded and moderate in finding fault, speaks of “the careless diffusion of an artificial system of education based none too firmly on mere intellectualism, and bereft of all moral and religious sanction.”1 Mr. S. M. Mitra, another discerning critic of its weak points, says: “Knowledge has been pursued without any regard for training in the moral virtues or in the development of character.”2 Now these and all similar criticisms, friendly or otherwise, must be admitted to have this much justification that all of us are agreed that the strengthening of character is the most important side of education, and that as yet we are far from satisfied with the degree of certainty we can feel that the education being given in India is effective in shaping character rightly. Yet these criticisms, like all the wise things that have been said about the moral and religious side of education since education was spoken of at all in India, remain mere words, until it has been shown practically how effect is to be given to this desire to give education in India a stronger moral foundation. For, in point of fact, admirable things have been reiterated about the importance of this side of education since quite the early days. Even when Charles Grant in 1797, before ever there was any State education at all, put forward his scheme for spreading the light of knowledge through India by means of English, the aim which he put first was moral improvement on the most comprehensive scale. “We now proceed,” he writes, “to the main object of this work—for the sake of which all the preceding topics and discussions have been brought forward—an inquiry into the means of remedying disorders which have become inveterate in the state of society among our Asiatic subjects, which 1

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destroy their happiness and obstruct every species of improvement among them.” He lays stress in particular on the effects of seeing “a pure, complete, and perfect system of morals and of duty enforced by the most awful sanctions and recommended by the most interesting motives.” Moral improvement is equally suggested by Lord Minto in 1811 as a reason for the restoration of Oriental learning. “Little doubt can be entertained,” says the resolution, “that the prevalence of the crimes of perjury and forgery so frequently noticed in the official records, is in great measure ascribable, both in Mahomedans and Hindus, to the want of instruction in the moral and religious tenets of their respective faiths. It has been even suggested, and apparently not without foundation, that to this uncultivated state of the minds of the natives is in a great degree to be ascribed the prevalence of those crimes which were recently a scourge to the country.” The primary object of the foundation of the Hindu College was no doubt to impart knowledge, the new knowledge of the West, which gave to Western nations their extraordinary superiority in the practical concerns of life. But David Hare was one of its first founders, and his connection with the college was undoubtedly moral in its nature. The close personal influence of such a man while he lived (he died in 1842) could not be without its effects. Indeed, its effects are living and visible to the present day in that cult of his memory which leads Hindus, alien in race and religion, to meet together on the anniversary of his death to do honour to his virtues and keep green the remembrance of his benefactions. Gratitude is a moral quality, and in this instance it has survived death. No doubt also Macaulay’s enthusiasm is for “intellectual improvement;” and his faith is that the way of improvement lies through the learning of English and the study of European literature. But it would be unfair to suppose that this zeal for pure knowledge and the impetus to educational effort which followed it are divorced from moral ideas. They were, on the contrary, inspired by an essentially moral idea, the idea of a general elevation in civilization. All that may fairly be said in criticism of Macaulay’s standpoint is that it was too easily assumed that more accurate knowledge would necessarily bring with it moral improvement and happiness. Yet there was definite moral instruction in Government institutions under the auspices of the General Committee after 1840. In that year Mr. Cameron, then a member of the committee, and from 1842 to 1847 its President, wrote in a Minute on the importance of moral training: “In most countries morality is taught as part of religion. Here we are prevented by the circumstances of the country from teaching morality in that manner. It is, therefore, more incumbent than upon other ministries of public instruction to teach morality in the form of Moral Philosophy.” In 1851 Mr. J. F. Thomas, one of the members of the Madras Council of education in a Minute criticizing sharply on many points the existing system, drew special attention to the very want of effective moral education which is fastened upon to-day. “Education without moral culture,” he wrote, “is probably as often injurious as beneficial to society; and at all events a system like that at present in force, which to a great degree overlooks this point, and which makes little or no provision for this most essential part of education, is so 2

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radically defective that I feel satisfied that although it may be upheld for a time under special and peculiar circumstances, it must in the end fail, and I hold that unless it can be shown that the people of this Presidency are opposed to receiving moral instruction, combined with intellectual, there is no ground for this palpable practical omission in the existing system.” There is no paragraph of the Despatch of 1854 directly bearing on the subject of moral education, but an earlier letter is quoted in support of the encouragement of education as calculated “not only to produce a higher degree of intellectual fitness, but to raise the moral character of those who partake of its advantages;” and a valuable testimony is later given to the actual efficacy of education in producing such effects. The Directors say: “We are sanguine enough to believe that some effect has already been produced by the improved education of the public service in India. The ability and integrity of a large and increasing number of the native judges, to whom the greater part of the civil jurisdiction in India is now committed, and the high estimation in which many among them are held by their fellowcountrymen is, in our opinion, much to be attributed, to the progress of education among these officers, and to their adoption along with it of that high moral tone which pervades the general literature of Europe.” The preamble to the Act constituting the universities in January, 1857, says nothing of moral education. The model of the Universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay was the London University, their declared aim was the test of proficiency in study and the affiliated colleges were non-residential. The method of education in the colleges, however, was what it had been before the establishment of universities, and what had been said in 1851 about moral education by the first historian of education in Bengal, Mr. J. Kerr, held good: “Whatever enlarges the mind or refines the taste, tends to improve character. All the studies of our colleges have thus, in a greater or less degree, the effect that is aimed at in a systematic treatise on moral science. If our students remain stunted in moral growth, it is not for want of instruction, which is imparted largely and in most attractive and impressive forms. The Education Commission of 1882 devoted separate sections to moral and religious training. Their preliminary remarks on the former settle once for all the limits of discussion: “The subject of moral training in colleges is replete with difficulties—difficulties, however, that are mainly practical. For there is no difference of opinion as to moral training being as necessary as intellectual or physical training, and no dissent from the principle that a system in which moral training was wholly neglected would be unworthy of the name of education. Nor, again, is there any difference of opinion as to the moral value of the love of law and order, of the respect for superiors, of the obedience, regularity, and attendance to duty which every well-conducted college is calculated to promote. All these have, by the nearly universal consent of the witnesses, done a great deal to elevate the moral tone and improve the daily practice of the great bulk of those who have been trained in the colleges of India. The degree in which different colleges have exerted a moral influence of this kind is probably as various as the degree of success that has attended the intellectual training given in them and has doubtless 3

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been different in all colleges at different times, depending as it does on the character and personal influence of the Principal and Professors who may form the staff at any given period. So far all the witnesses, and probably all intelligent men, are substantially agreed. Difficulties begin when the question is raised whether good can be done by distinct moral teaching over and above the moral supervision which all admit to be good and useful, and which all desire to see made more thorough than it is at present.” After a careful review of the conflicting opinions and practice, the Commission made two recommendations on the subject of direct moral instruction: (1) That an attempt be made to prepare a moral textbook based upon the fundamental principles of natural religion, such as may be taught in all Government and non-Government Colleges. (2) That the Principal or one of the Professors in each Government or Aided College deliver to each of the College classes in every session a series of lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen. These recommendations did not win the acceptance either of the Local or of the Supreme Government and have remained a dead letter. Some arguments used by the Commission in their report go far to remove any regret that might be felt on this account. They say: “In all colleges and under all courses of instruction the most effective moral training consists in inculcating habits of order, diligence, truthfulness, and due self-respect combined with submission to authority, all of which lessons a good teacher finds useful opportunities of imparting. The formation of such habits is promoted by the study of the lives and actions of great men, such as the student finds in the course of his English reading; and it may be hoped, by the silent influence upon his character of constant intercourse with teachers, whom he is able to regard with respect and affection. Nor, again, is there reason to believe that collegiate education of the present type has any injurious effect upon the life and character of students. On the contrary, the nearly unanimous testimony of those who have had the best opportunities of observing goes to show that in integrity, in self-respect, in stability of purpose, and generally in those solid qualities which constitute an honourable and useful character, the University graduate is generally superior to those who have not enjoyed the advantages which college training confers.” As regards direct religious teaching the Commission of 1882 report with no uncertain voice its impracticability. Government institutions cannot undertake such teaching owing to Government’s declared policy of religious neutrality. The Commission weigh carefully the complaints that have been made of the demoralizing influence of the exclusion of religion. They consider the remedy proposed “that Government should employ teachers of all prevalent forms of religion to give instruction in its colleges, or should at least give such teachers admission to its colleges if their services are provided by outside bodies.” They conclude: “We are unable to recommend any plan of this kind.” However praiseworthy the feelings that underlie such a proposal, “we are satisfied that no such scheme can be reduced to practice in the present state of Indian society.” It cannot be said that the subject of moral education has been neglected. If anything is wanting it is supplied by a resolution of the Government of India in 1887 4

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directed wholly to enforcing the necessity of careful attention to school and college discipline. “The question of discipline in schools and colleges,” it premises, “does not seem to have hitherto received any comprehensive consideration apart from the discussion of the subject by the Education Commission;” and it acknowledges that “the growth of tendencies unfavourable to discipline and favourable to irreverence has accompanied the general extension of education.” It advocates the firm maintenance of discipline in Indian schools and colleges, based on the standard recognized in the highest schools and colleges in England which nowadays does not err on the “side of severity. It then deals at length with the problem of discipline in schools, discerningly pointing out that, if right habits of discipline are formed in schools, the problem of collegiate discipline is materially simplified. Among the suggestions for schools are the introduction of the monitorial system, the building of boarding-houses, well-defined rules; and the value of training for teachers is especially insisted on. For colleges the suggestions are of weekly college meetings and recognized disciplinary powers (fines, suspension, rustication, expulsion) for both Principals and Professors. The value of the encouragement of physical exercise is emphasized, and teaching having a direct bearing upon conduct is recommended. The resolution concludes with an emphatic affirmation of the importance of the subject. “In conclusion I am to commend the whole subject to early and careful attention, for the importance of the considerations thus brought to notice cannot be exaggerated. The true interests of education are bound up with the solution of the problems now touched upon.” It would appear from all this that the importance of the moral side of education has by no means been overlooked in the sixty years that have passed since the despatch of 1854 formally adopted English education. If, as we have seen, there has been a steadily deepening sense of responsibility for the moral side of education in the policy of the Government of India, as evidenced by authoritative documents, and yet well-meant criticism continues to show that we have little ground to congratulate ourselves on the success achieved, the cause of failure must be sought otherwhere than in want of attention to the subject. A suspicion may take shape that the impediment lies in the nature of the task attempted. The education of character, which is presumably what is meant by moral education, is something very deep-lying, and depends on a number of factors of which school life is only one. Now it is not very difficult to put together a number of common-places on the importance of moral education. It may in some circumstances be exceedingly difficult to turn precept into practice. The thing to be done is so to train boys that they may grow up to be manly, truth-loving, courageous, law-abiding, with just notions of self-respect and of what is due to others. It is by no means easy anywhere to bring this to pass through the daily routine work of school and college, and in India there are hindrances of a very baffling nature. In any case the burden is laid upon the professed teacher in school and college. He it is who must bear the responsibility and do the work, if it can be done. It may be well then to listen to the comments of one whose profession is education on the last and most pointed government utterance on the subject, the very judicious circular of 1887. 5

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“I would respectfully beg leave to say a word or two with respect to the causal connection assumed in the letter of the Government of India to exist between the education imparted in our schools and colleges, and ‘the growth of tendencies unfavourable to discipline and favourable to irreverence in the rising generation.’ No one could be more sensible than I am of the imperfections of our educational system, but I cannot believe that schools and colleges have been largely instrumental in bringing about the state of things complained of. I consider, on the contrary, that we teachers have cause to complain that the tone of our schools has been prejudicially affected by the tendencies unfavourable to authority invading them from without . . . Indian society is breathing the same social and political atmosphere as all other civilized communities—an atmosphere which happens at present to be deficient in reverence for authority and in willingness to submit to it. Are the seeds of these tendencies sown in our schools and colleges and fostered and made to fructify there? I think not. Beyond what naturally follows from that emancipation of thought which is one of the first-fruits of a liberal education everywhere, I do not believe that the system of education pursued in India has had any hand in fostering ‘the growth of tendencies unfavourable to discipline and favourable to irreverence.’ My contentions that these tendencies belong to the world that lies outside our schools and colleges, that they colour the thoughts and feelings and aspirations of the grown-up generation, and that from this outside world they invade our schools and infect our pupils—these contentions are borne out by the two following considerations: first, that it was not till after the political and racial excitement of recent years had spread throughout India that the youth attending schools and colleges showed signs of turbulence and insubordination; and secondly, that these tendencies were practically confined to those provinces in the north of India where political and racial feelings were most bitter. In the Madras Presidency, where the feelings never ran very high, our educational institutions have hitherto enjoyed an almost absolute immunity from such disturbances; and to the honour of the students of this college, be it said, there has not, during the eighteen years I have been connected with them, been any other disposition manifested than that of cheerful and loyal obedience to the rules of the institution.” This commentary shows the whole question of the relation of the political and educational movements in a new aspect. Is it possible that cause and effect are being confused, when education is blamed, and that it is not the educational system which has produced political disaffection, but disaffection towards the existing order, otherwise generated, has first produced its effects in society at large, then invaded and injuriously affected the educational system. The relations of cause and effect are in a complicated material hard to disentangle, and where interaction is a necessary factor in the problem, mistake as to the ultimate causation is easily made. But the question here is not of the causes of “unrest,” but of the means of improving the moral influence of education. The writer of the memorandum from which the above quotation is made was Dr. Duncan, at the time Principal of the Presidency College, Madras, and afterwards for many years 6

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Director of Public Instruction in the Madras Presidency. His opinion in the matter is entitled to great weight, and what he further says on the subject may help to determine just conclusions on the difficult question of moral and religious education in Indian colleges and schools. Judgment of what has been done in the past and of what may be better done in the future depends closely on just conclusions as to what is possible. I will take first the question of religious education. When I see religious education seriously advocated as the basis of morality in Indian schools and colleges, I wonder if those who advocate it have any clear ideas as to what they mean. Which religion? In India there are many religions. “Have there not been, are there not religious beliefs utterly antagonistic to genuine morality? In spite of this people speak and write as if the problem of moral education would be solved were religious instruction provided for the young! It surely ought to be recognized that everything will depend on the moral character of the religious beliefs inculcated. No one would recommend the teaching of any and every religious dogma in Indian schools; and until such beliefs as may on moral grounds be taught, are separated from such as may not be taught, the question of religious instruction must remain one on which no practical policy can be adopted.” Dr. Duncan wrote thus in 1888. Now twenty years later the voices protesting the inadequacy of secular education and the indispensable necessity of religious education are many and powerful. Sir Andrew Fraser writes in October last in the Nineteenth Century “we want a higher type of education, a system that recognizes the moral and religious side of a man’s training as well as the intellectual and physical.” “The genius of Indian thought, the demands of Indian parents, the strong representation of Indian chiefs are all in favour of religious education.”3 Bishop Welldon, who knows a little of India and much of education, is reported a few weeks ago as declaring that he held with an intensity of conviction which it was difficult to express “that secular education, wherever it was given, and by whomsoever it was given, was a lamentable failure.” If one is seriously desirous of amending what is amiss with the educational system in India such utterances as these must give him pause. There is also something plausible and persuasive in the argument, especially when it follows on the failure, or assumed failure, of moral education without religion. Still one does not readily, perhaps, shake oneself free of the old prepossession that religious teaching is impossible in conjunction with modern education in India, which seemed so short a while ago a maxim universally accepted. At any rate we are entitled to inquire by what particular instrumentality it is to be done; done rightly; and done safely. For we have been apt to look upon religion in India as somewhat like a powder magazine, to be approached cautiously. Certainly there are difficulties. Illustrations quite remote from India will help to their clearer apprehension. Could we be content to found our school morality on the worship of Thor and Odin, of Hela and the Valkyries? Could we cheerfully revive in our colleges the many coloured polytheism of Greece and Rome? We should acknowledge there were elements of good in the religion of Hellas. There were also evil elements against which Plato and the philosophers inveighed before ever the zeal of the 7

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early Christians turned the gods of Greece into demons. There was the worship of Dionysus and Aphrodite as well as of Apollo and of Pallas Athene. In some cults human sacrifice survived. The thief, the murderer, and the adulterer all found their patron deity to pray to. In India, too, there are many and divers cults, and there is at all events danger of reviving religious cults in favour of evil morals rather than good. The problem is too hard for us. We take refuge in toleration. We tolerate all religions in colleges, so long as they do not actively propagate crime: we give free opportunity to religious teachers outside the guarded sphere of scholastic training. We do not actively assist religious teaching within it, because we are debarred from exercising any discrimination as to what we judge good or ill. We cannot secure that only the good shall come in: so we think it safer to admit none at all. There is a practical difficulty remaining also, if we should determine to make the experiment of aiding and abetting direct religious instruction. So far as colleges were intended to represent one religion only, like the Sanskrit College or Alighar, there would not be (as there is not now) any difficulty. But it is not practicable, even were it desirable, to make all schools and colleges sectarian. How can religious teaching be introduced, if the school or college authorities do not themselves take the responsibility for it? Only by admitting teachers from outside. This, however, gives rise to an objection which to the man who works in school or college is probably decisive: it would be to introduce rival authorities into college and school, the educational and the religious. There would be too great apprehension that this rival authority might undermine discipline for the teacher ever to acquiesce in it with an easy mind. It is not possible to discuss the subject exhaustively, and more might doubtless be said on both sides. The balance appears to the present writer to be decisively against the expediency of making a radical change in the policy hitherto followed by the Government of India in regard to religious education. It remains, then, that our education of character, so far as schools and colleges are concerned, must be independent of a specially religious basis. This does not, however, at all necessarily mean that it is cut off from all appeal to what is most morally persuasive in religion. The true essence of belief, as far as morals are concerned, is that God is on the side of righteousness. This it is which gives effective power to religion as a motive to morality. The appeal to this fundamental faith is not denied to the teacher on a purely secular basis of education. This belief involves no theological dogma and offends no religious susceptibilities. The appeal is, therefore, always within the secular teacher’s discretion. For the rest our task must be to make the best of the ordinary means of moral education: and the only practical question here is whether any means have been overlooked which might be employed; is there anything more which might be done now? “Morality,” Dr. Duncan well says, “must be taught in schools in the way in which it is taught at home, and in the social life of the young. Morality cannot be taught as a branch of knowledge forming part of the school curriculum, nor is a special text-book the best means of inculcating it. That danger of neglecting the spirit for the letter, which has to be particularly guarded against, 8

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when text-books are used in teaching the ordinary branches of knowledge, would be much more menacing were the attempt made to teach morality through a specially prepared. textbook.” This is well said and decisive against one of the two practical suggestions of the Commission of 1882. The second was for series of lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen. Now it is very certain that college addresses by the principal of a college to the college as a whole are very necessary as an incentive and support of the corporate life of a college. They should, however, deal with the duties of the members of a collegiate society rather than duties of members of the community in a wider sense. Such addresses should be made to students as students of the college (and of that college in particular), and should bear closely on the particular and present circumstances of life in the college. They should, in a broad sense, be lay sermons. A principal who is not full to overflowing with thoughts for such addresses can have very imperfectly realized the obligations and privileges of his position. If in particular cases, and for exceptional reasons, a principal feels unable to take on himself this responsibility, he may delegate the function to such members of the college staff as are fitted to discharge it. There is some loss of efficacy if the head of the college speaks by deputy, but the essential point is that there should be regular addresses, and that these addresses should concern themselves with the students’ present surroundings and responsibilities. If the student learns aright the lesson of his duties as a student, there will be no question later on as to his recognition of what is due from him as a man and a citizen. Addresses need not be very frequent, better not. Once or twice in a year should suffice; but there can be no hard-and-fast line drawn in the matter. Along with such direct and solemn incentives to right doing, the most potent instrument of moral education is, undoubtedly, good rules of discipline, considerately imposed and firmly enforced. The habit of obedience to rule has formal value in itself; willing obedience to good rules with a recognition that they are good is moral education of the most effective kind. In the main character must be formed by action; right actions from right motives trained into virtuous habits. As Dr. Duncan writes:—“Practical morality is an art which is learnt like every other art, solely by doing moral actions.” Hence the preponderant value of well-regulated school and college discipline. Yet even that cannot be fully efficacious of itself. So much depends also on the nature which the pupil brings for school discipline to mould and on the influences of his other surroundings, his earliest associations, his out-of-school companions, his home. These things cannot be regulated by the teacher: they lie almost absolutely outside the reach of his influence; and these outside influences are by no means always favourable. All the more pressing is his responsibility and the need for increasing the efficacy of moral teaching in the school. Undoubtedly the most important factor of all is the character of the teacher himself. And here again Government policy has not failed, but is on the right lines. “The Government of India,” says Dr. Duncan, “have rightly given the foremost place among their recommendations to the employment of trained teachers and the provision of efficient training schools”; and he is able to point with 9

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satisfaction to the attention which had already at that date been paid to the subject in Madras. Bengal, on the other hand, has lagged behind and is endeavouring with the happiest promise to make up ground now. The extreme importance of right selection of teachers in every grade, and especially in the highest, is not yet sufficiently recognized, at any rate not sufficiently provided for. In the matter of discipline also the support the teacher may count on getting might be made more assured. The enforcement of judicious rules is, as has been said, the chief educational instrument. There must be no doubt that the fearless enforcement of discipline by the teacher will receive support, if support is needed. This has not always been sufficiently well assured in the past. If these two things are better done: (1) unsparing effort made to secure that teachers shall be men of high character; (2) due provision made for establishing and maintaining sound discipline, Government will have done all that is at present possible for moral education. No radical change of policy is called for; only the better and more efficient carrying out of the policy long since adopted.

XV THE POLITICAL MOVEMENT IN ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION THE life of a community cannot be separated into unrelated compartments any more than the life of an individual. Each part affects the rest. The development of one faculty, or side of character, produces effects on other faculties, and influences the organism as a whole. And so the educational movement has, in a certain sense, been political from the outset. That is to say, in the very nature of things, and by reason of the essential constitution of the mind, it was impossible to educate a single native of India without thereby affecting his relation to British rule. Education enables a man to understand better society, government, and his own relation to both. An educated man is able to place himself in the universe; to realize better his true relation to what has gone before, and what will come after. If political ideas are in the air, the educated man will make acquaintance with them, and they will alter his mental outlook. So it might have been predicted, and so it was. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was, I suppose, the first English educated native of India. He reached man’s estate about the year 1802; and there was nothing that could be called English education publicly begun till 1817. He owed his education and his knowledge of English to his own genius and exertions. He was no enemy to British rule, though he relates in his brief autobiography that he began “with a great aversion to the establishment of the British power in India.” It was after he was twenty years of age that he first “saw and began to associate with Europeans,” and soon after, he says, “made myself tolerably acquainted with their laws and form of government!” He continues: “Finding them generally more intelligent, more steady and moderate in their conduct, I gave up my prejudice against them, and became inclined in their favour, feeling persuaded that their rule, though 10

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a foreign yoke, would lead more speedily and surely to the amelioration of the native inhabitants; and I enjoyed the confidence of several of them, even in their public capacity.” This, on a fair view, is typical of the normal effects of education in the general. That the natives of India, Hindu or Mahomedan, Mahratta or Madrasi, should naturally and spontaneously prefer a foreign government and admire manners and customs so unlike their own is altogether against nature. To suppose that antipathy to European ways, and criticism of European manners are new, and the pernicious effects of “English education,” is to be ignorant alike of the laws of human nature and the plain facts of history. The natural and “unenlightened” view of English manners and customs has been vividly drawn by Trevelyan in his “Competition Wallah”:—“But, on the other hand, many of our usages must, in their eyes, appear most debased and revolting. Imagine the horror with which a punctilious and devout Brahmin cannot but regard a people who eat the flesh of cows and pigs, and drink various sorts of strong liquor from morning till night. It is at least as hard for such a man to look up to us as his betters, morally and socially, as it would be for us to place amongst the most civilized nations of the world a population which was in the habit of dining on human flesh, and intoxicating itself daily with laudanum and sal-volatile.”4 This is from the natural standpoint of Hindu orthodoxy, and the effect of education could hardly be to deepen such aversion. It might do something to temper it. Neither is criticism of the British Government really anything new. Before the close of the eighteenth century, when the British administration of Bengal was still a novelty not twenty years old, Syed Gholam Hossein Khan, in the fourteenth section of his Seir Mutakherin, or “Review of Modern Times,” is at pains to set forth at length twelve causes of the decrease of population and revenue which he laments. The first is “that these new rulers are quite alien to this country both in customs and manners”; the second “their differing in language, as well as in almost every action and every custom in life.” And yet the Syed is in many respects an admirer and shows readiness to accord praise to the forceful foreigners, when in his judgment it is due. Some of his “causes,” curiously enough, such as inaccessibility to interviewers, frequent changes of appointments, excessive regard for promotion by seniority, are the commonplaces of criticism of the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy to this day. He even gives a large place in his sixth cause to the “drain.” “The sixth cause is that the English have deprived the inhabitants of these countries of various branches of commerce and benefit, which they had ever enjoyed heretofore.” Similarly, Ram Mohan Roy, in his evidence to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which was considering the, renewal of the Company’s charter in 1831, refers to the “large sum of money now annually drawn from India by Europeans retiring from it with the fortunes realized there.” There is really not very much difference in the point of view of Syed Gholam Hossein Khan writing about 1780, Ram Mohan Roy writing in 1831, and Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt writing in 1901, though the first knew little or no English, the second was educated before Government introduced any system of education, and the third is the fine flower of English education. The truth is that 11

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the criticism, sound or unsound, arises out of the circumstances,5 and would be in the minds of the peoples of India, altogether independently of their power of expressing it in English. All three may be said to be well affected towards British rule in the sense of willing it to continue. If we inquire into the causes of disaffection, it may plausibly be suggested that we shall find them to depend little on education, at least directly; indirectly they may depend a good deal. Disaffection is the contrary of affection. In the mildest degree it connotes merely the absence of affection, and passes from this through every degree of dislike up to settled hatred. Education has certainly not “produced in India hatred of all things English; not obviously of English literature, English games, English standards of conduct, English institutions: because the political party which voices the aspirations of the educated classes in India, and is charged with being disaffected, or allied with disaffection, is founded on an almost servile imitation of English standards and methods. As regards forms of government, it probably holds that men everywhere are well affected towards a government which they clearly see secures their welfare. Habit and sentiment are powerful adjuncts. A government is strong when it appeals to the national sentiment, and suits the traditional habits of the people who dwell under it. These latter supports have, from the circumstances, been almost wholly denied to the British Government in India. It was certainly so a hundred years ago, and it is doubtful whether these forces have as yet been very successfully rallied to it. That they might conceivably be rallied to it has not been beyond the pitch of a few daring speculators like Sir Theodore Mosison.6 The support of the interest of the people at large it has had, and the clearest thinkers believe it has now in an even greater degree. It may be asked whether education is or is not likely to produce in men’s minds a perception of their true interests. If, as must almost certainly be answered, it does tend to produce such a perception, the Government of India may be reasonably assured (superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) of gaining strength from the spread of education, so long as it does really what it claims to do, secure the best interests of the Indian peoples. This, it may still be believed, has on the whole been the effect of the spread of education in British India. One of the questions answered by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1831 was, “What is the prevailing opinion of the native inhabitants regarding the existing form of government and its administrators, native and European?” His answer has interest, and even some relevance, to-day: “The peasantry and villagers in the interior,” he wrote, “are quite ignorant of, and indifferent about, either the former or present government, and attribute the protection they may enjoy, or oppression they may suffer, to the conduct of the public officers immediately presiding over them. But men of aspiring character, and members of such families as are very much reduced by the present system, consider it derogatory to accept of the trifling public situations which natives are allowed to hold under the British Government, and are decidedly disaffected to it. Many of those, however, who engage prosperously in commerce, and of those who are secured in the peaceful possession of their estates by the permanent settlement, and such as have sufficient intelligence to foresee the 12

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probability of future improvement, which presents itself under the British rulers, are not only reconciled to it, but really view it as a blessing to the country.” And then he concludes: “But I have no hesitation in stating, with reference to the general feeling of the more intelligent part of the native community, that the only course of policy which can ensure their attachment to any form of Government would be that of making them eligible to gradual promotion according to their respective abilities and merits, to situations of trust and respectability in the State.” Now these concluding words express with very fair exactness what has actually been both the aim and the outcome of the whole movement for education, seen on its political side. We may make again, now, the claim which the Commission of 1882 made in reporting on the effects of higher education, “An estimate of the effect which collegiate instruction has had upon the general education and enlightenment of the people must in fairness be accompanied by a reference to the objects which it sets before itself.” Now, what were these objects? They reached, no doubt, to general moral and intellectual enlightenment; but they were also expressly directed to the well-defined and limited object of fitting men by education for the public service. Thus, a letter from the Court of Directors, dated September 5th, 1827 (eight years, be it noticed, before Macaulay’s Minute), has these words: “In conclusion it is proper to remark to you, though we have no doubt that the same reflection has already occurred to you, that, adverting to the daily increasing demand for the employment of natives in the business of the country, and in important departments of the Government, the first object of improved education should be to prepare a body of individuals for discharging public duties. It may, we trust, be expected that the intended course of education will not only produce a higher degree of intellectual fitness, but that it will contribute to raise the moral character of those who partake of its advantages, and supply you with servants to whose probity you may; with increased confidence, commit offices of trust. To this, the last and highest object of education, we expect that a large share of your attention will be applied.” Sir Charles Trevelyan, writing in 1838, says: “Another great change has of late years been made in our Indian administration, which ought alone to excite us to corresponding exertions for the education of the natives. The system established by Lord Cornwallis was based upon the principle of doing everything by European agency. . . . The plan which Lord William Bentinck substituted for it was to transact the public business by native agency, under European superintendence, and this change is now in progress in all the different branches of administration. We have already native judges, collectors, and opium and salt agents; and it is now proposed to have native magistrates. . . . The success of this great measure depends entirely on the fitness of the natives for the exercise of the new functions to which they have been called.”7 In 1844 came Lord Hardinge’s resolution, raising selection for employment under Government on educational grounds into a recognized principle. The Despatch of 1854, besides referring back in one of its opening paragraphs to the letter of September, 1827, and later on to the resolution of 1844, definitely puts increased fitness for employment in the public services as one of the chief aims of the educational system to be inaugurated: “We have always been 13

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of opinion that the spread of education in India will produce a greater efficiency in all branches of administration, by enabling you to obtain the services of intelligent and trustworthy persons in every department of Government, and, on the other hand, we believe that the numerous vacancies of different kinds, which have constantly to be filled up, may afford a great stimulus to education.” Further, the Despatch claims that a measure of success has already been won: “We are sanguine enough to believe that some effect has already been produced by the improved education of the public service of India. The ability and integrity of a large and increasing number of the native judges, to whom the greater part of the civil jurisdiction in India is now committed, and the high estimation in which many among them are hold by their fellow-countrymen, is, in our opinion, much to be attributed to the progress of education among these officers, and to their adoption, along with it, of that high moral tone which pervades the general literature of Europe.” This judgment is re-affirmed by the Commission of 1882, with stronger assurance. After the words already quoted, the report continues: “The reformers of 1835, to whom the system is due, claimed that only by an education in English and after European methods could we hope to raise the moral and intellectual tone of Indian society, and supply the administration with a competent body of public servants. To what degree, then, have these objects been attained? Our answer is in the testimony of witnesses before this Commission, in the thoughtful opinion delivered from time to time by men whose position has given them ample opportunities of judging, and the facts obvious to all eyes throughout the country and that answer is conclusive; if not that collegiate education has fulfilled all the expectations entertained of it, at least that it has not disappointed the hopes of a sober judgment.” This was in 1883. It remains to consider whether, on a careful balance, the same verdict may not be pronounced in 1911. The process so well known to us all, to which the quotations above refer, namely, the substitution of Indian for European agency in higher and ever higher positions of responsibility, has gone on continuously since 1883, sometimes with increasing momentum, and so far the favourable verdict has not been reversed. The consummation, the legitimate consummation, the consummation which was deliberately aimed at from the beginning, is the reformed Councils and the eloquent speeches of the leaders of Indian opinion, which we read daily when the Imperial and Provincial Councils are in session. The aims which are now being realized are, perhaps, even better expressed by statesmen of the type of Mountstuart Elphinstone and Sir Thomas Munro than by the public documents which have been quoted. In 1826 Elphinstone wrote in a private letter: “It has always been a favourite notion of mine that our object ought to be to place ourselves in the same relation to the natives as the Tartars are in to the Chinese; retaining the government and military power, but gradually relinquishing all share in the civil administration, except that degree of control which is necessary to give the whole an impulse and direction. This operation must be so gradual that it need not even alarm the directors for their civil patronage; but it ought to be kept in mind, and all our measures ought to tend to that object. The first steps are to commence a 14

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systematic education of the natives for civil offices, to make over to them at once a larger share of judicial business, to increase their emoluments generally, and to open a few high prizes for the most able and honest among them. The period when they may be admitted into Council (as you propose) seems to be distant. . . .”8 To Sir Thomas Munro he had written in 1822: “Besides the necessity for having good native advisers in governing natives, it is necessary that we should pave the way for the introduction of the natives to some share in the government of their own country. It may be half a century before we are obliged to do so; but the system of Government and of education which we have already established must some time or other work such a change on the people of this country, that it will be impossible to confine them to subordinate employments. . . .”9 Of Sir Thomas Munro his biographer, Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, writes: “Munro attached little value to Schemes for improving the education of natives unless pari passu steps were taken for extending to them a greater share in the honours and emoluments of office. His view was that the two things, education and higher employment, should go together.”10 The inner significance of the whole process was expressed in 1821 by Sir Thomas Munro himself with a force and truth which could not be surpassed; “Our present system of Government by excluding all natives from power and trust and emolument is much more efficacious in depressing than all our laws and school-books can do in elevating their character. We are working against our own designs, and we can expect to make no progress while we work with a feeble instrument to improve and a powerful one to deteriorate. The improvement of the character of a people and the keeping them at the same time in the lowest state of dependency on foreign rulers to which they can be reduced by conquest, are matters quite incompatible with each other.”11 Again he wrote in 1824: “No conceit more wild and absurd than this was ever engendered in the darkest ages; for what is in every age. and every country the great stimulus to the pursuit of knowledge, but the prospect of fame, or wealth, or power? Or what is even the use of great attainments, if they are not to be devoted to their noblest purpose, the service of the community, by employing those who possess them, according to their respective qualifications, in the various duties of the public administration of the country.”12 The very oddity and irrelevance of these quotations now is a measure of the distance travelled since 1820. It is not amiss that these earlier forms of thought should be called to mind for those, on the one hand, who are apt to ignore what advance has been made in admitting educated Indians to posts of high responsibility and for those on the other who are ignorant of the great results which higher education has actually achieved. Even Lord Morley himself misses this, when the best he can find to say for higher education in India is that it has not wholly failed.13 Not only has higher education not failed to achieve what in 1835 it set out to do, but it has triumphantly succeeded; perhaps it has even succeeded too well. For though its success in training well-qualified candidates for public service is the most direct fulfillment of the original aim and purpose, it is by no means the whole achievement, or even the greatest part of it. Trevelyan writes in the monograph: “On the education of the People of India,” from which quotation 15

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has already been made: “The same means which will secure for the Government a body of intelligent and upright native servants will stimulate the mental activity and improve the morals of the people at large. The Government cannot make public employment the reward of distinguished merit without encouraging merit in all who look forward to public employ; it cannot open schools for educating its servants, without diffusing knowledge among all classes of its subjects.”14 These predictions also have been abundantly fulfilled. The renewed productivity of half a dozen literatures, the revival of art and letters, alert and critical interest in the past history and literature of Indian races (voiced as it was, for instance, eloquently but with unflinching recognition of present “shortcomings,” by Dr. Ashutosh Mukhopadhyaya, Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, at this year’s Convocation) bear witness to the stimulation of mental activity. The capacity for combination shown by numerous associations for social, literary and recreative purposes is a moral endowment. All these new capacities and powers education has conferred on the classes who have been able to profit by it. The bounds of legitimate aspiration are also herein clearly settled. This education was instituted by the British Government to enable the peoples of India to take a larger and more important share in the work of administration. This larger share of responsibility and employment has been accorded to them. The process is in mid-career. That there should be differences of opinion as to the ultimate limits of the process and as to the extent which is the due limit at any given time, is only natural. The aspiration for a larger share than that already gained is perfectly legitimate, and Indians may combine to secure this larger share by constitutional means: it is equally legitimate to hold the contrary view and oppose further extension. The bounds of legitimate aspiration are the limits consistent with the stability of British rule. But what then of the bugbear of anarchism and unrest? Measured by this standard it shrinks marvelously. These intellectual and moral results are the direct product of higher education; discontent and conspiracy, if to be called products of education at all, are indirect products, like some harmful bi-product of a useful chemical process. The causes of unrest in the sinister sense are foreign domination, racial prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding, narrowness, want of education, lack of sympathy. Education is not directly a cause at all: indirectly it may, perhaps, be called a cause as putting these latent forces into activity. Education could never in any sound sense of the term lead to anarchist crime. A depraved and perverted nature may use the powers that education gives to evil purpose. A radically unsound education might help to produce criminals, but even so it must rather be from failure to supply deterrents than from positively supplying incentives. The education being given in Indian schools and colleges only contributes to the morbid condition of things that has produced political conspiracy and crime by its defects, by its unwholesome surroundings, by its failure to educate in any true sense at all. For want of foresight in allowing education to spread beyond the limits of effective control those in various degrees responsible for its organization must bear the blame. But the education itself must not be blamed: only the failure to make it effective. For the direct purpose of education in primary schools, in 16

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secondary schools, and in colleges alike, has been to train the will in obedience and in good habits, as well as to train the intellect. So far as the schools and colleges have failed in this, the purpose of education has been missed. All violence and breach of law are contrary to the very idea of education. The higher the education the greater the incompatibility of its influences with cruelty, treachery, physical violence and secret murder. Enlightenment must and does hate these things, and must still do so, even if it proclaimed the ultimate right of insurrection for national freedom. But in India enlightenment cannot proclaim the right of insurrection at all. For that enlightenment itself comes from the central power which holds together the congeries of races and creeds and peoples which make up modern India and alone gives unity alike to education and to political aspiration. The aim to destroy that central power would be not murder only but suicide as well. Success in that aim would inevitably throw back all the advance towards liberty made in the last hundred years, in which even the revolutionary aim itself owes such life and power as it has. It is just because all hopes of peaceful development and prosperity really are bound up with the maintenance of the one strong and stable government, that education must in proportion as it is true and thorough strengthen the forces that make for cohesion, not for disruption. The greater the independence of judgment, the deeper the insight that education gives, the clearer must be the perception of these truths. It is not meant in anything that has been said to question that the political developments of the last twenty years have given grave cause for anxiety and that their association with higher education in any sense is deeply to be regretted. We can no longer speak with the confidence of Sir Roper Lethbridge in defending “High Education in India” in 1882, when he wrote: “And for contradiction of the vague and unauthenticated aspersions on the character of the highly-educated section of the Indian community for loyalty, for morality, for religion generally, we need only look to the tone and character of that portion of the periodical press that is conducted and written by such men.” This we certainly can no longer say: but here in the rapid depravation of an uncontrolled press, we have (as I think Mr. Chirol himself shows) the real propagating agency of the gathering mischief, and not in education: and the regulation of the press, now that it has been firmly taken in hand, is already working a remedy.

Notes 1 Chirol, “Indian Unrest,” p. 322. 2 S. C. Mitra, “Indian Problems,” with an Introduction by Sir George Birdwood (Murray, 1908), p. 29. 3 “Indian Unrest,” by Sir Andrew Fraser. Nineteenth Century for October, 1910, p. 753. 4 Trevelyan (Sir George Otto), “The Competition Wallah” (Macmillan), 2nd ed., p. 346. 5 On the vexed question of “the drain,” the fair-minded inquirer should read chaps. viii. and ix. of Sir Theodore Morison’s recently-published book “The Economic Transition in India.” See especially p. 241: “The answer, then, which I give to the question, ‘What economic equivalent does India get for foreign payments?’ is this: India gets the

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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

equipment of modern industry, and she gets an administration favourable to economic evolution cheaper than she could provide it herself.” “Imperial Rule in India,” chap. x., cf. chap. iv. Trevelyan (Sir Charles), “On the Education of the People in India,” p. 156. Colebrooke: “Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone, vol. ii., p. 186. Ib., vol. ii., p. 143. Arbuthnot, “Major General Sir Thomas Munro,” p. 154. Ib., p. 148. Ib., p. 150. “British Democracy and Indian Government,” by the Right Hon. Viscount Morley, O.M. Nineteenth Century for February, 1911, p. 209. “On the Education of the People of India,” p. 159.

18

2 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY, BEING A RESOLUTION ISSUED BY THE GOVERNOR GENERAL IN COUNCIL ON THE 21 ST FEBRUARY 1913 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1915), 1–47

HIS Most Gracious Imperial Majesty the King-Emperor, in replying to the address of the Calcutta University on the 6th JanuComprehensive systems of education. ary 1912, said:— “It is my wish that there may be spread over the land a network of schools and colleges, from which will go forth loyal and manly and useful citizens, able to hold their own in industries and agriculture and all the vocations in life. And it is my wish, too, that the homes of my Indian subjects may be brightened and their labour sweetened by the spread of knowledge with all that follows in its train, a higher level of thought, of comfort and a health. It is through education that my wish will be fulfilled, and the cause of education in India will ever be very close to my heart.” 2. The Government of India have decided, with the approval of the Secretary of State, to assist Local Governments, by means of large grants from imperial revenues as funds become available, to extend comprehensive systems of education in the several provinces. Each province has its own educational system, which has grown up under local conditions, and become familiar to the people as a part of their general well-being. In view of the diverse social conditions in India there cannot in practice be one set of regulations and one rate of progress for the whole of India. Even within provinces there is scope for greater variety in types of institutions than exists to-day. The Government of India have no desire to centralise provincial systems or to attempt to introduce a superficial uniformity. Still less do they desire to deprive Local Governments of interest and initiative in education. But it is important at intervals to review educational policy in India as a whole. Principles, bearing on education in its wider aspects and under modern conditions and conceptions, on orientalia and on the special needs of the domiciled

19

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community, were discussed at three important conferences of experts and representative non-officials held within the last two years. These principles are the basis of accepted policy. How far they can at any time find local application must be determined with reference to local conditions. 3. The defects of educational systems in India are well known and need not be re-stated. They have been largely due to want of funds. Of late years there has been real progress in removing them. In the last decade1 the total The need of true expenditure from all sources on education has risen from 4 perspective. crores to nearly 7¼ crores. The progress has been especially great since Lord Curzon’s government introduced large measures of educational reform. In the last four years the number of those under instruction has increased from about 5⅓ to 6⅓ millions. Again, the formerly crushing weight of examinations has been appreciably lightened; a commencement has been made in the reform of university and college organisation; and the grants from public funds to private institutions have almost doubled in the past nine years. These facts speak for themselves. Nor must the great benefits, which education has conferred on India, be ignored or minimised. Criticism based on imperfect analogies is often unjust. It is not just, for instance, to compare Indian systems still for the most part in their infancy with the matured systems of the modern western world, or to disregard the influences of social organization and mentality. Again the common charge that the higher education of India has been built up on a slender foundation of popular education and that its teaching agency is inefficient, is one that might have been levelled against every country in Europe at some period of its history. India is now passing through stages taken by other countries in their time. 4. In the forefront of their policy the Government of India desire to place the formation of the character of the scholars and under-graduates under tuition. In the formation of character the influence of home and Formation of character the personality of the teacher play the larger part. There the main objective. is reason to hope—in the light of acquired experience— that increased educational facilities under better educational conditions will accelerate social reform, spread female education and secure better teachers. Already much attention is being given to religious and moral education in the widest sense of the term, comprising, that is, direct religious and moral instruction, and indirect agencies such as monitorial or similar systems, tone, social life, traditions, discipline, the betterment of environment, hygiene, and that most important side of education, physical culture and organised recreation. 5. The question of religious and moral instruction was discussed at a local conference held in Bombay and subsequently at the imperial conference held in Allahabad in February 1911. Grave differences of opinion Direct religious and emerged as to the possibility or advantage of introducmoral instruction. ing direct religious instruction into schools generally, and apprehensions of difficulty in the working of any definite system were put forward. Doubts were also expressed as to the efficacy of direct moral instruction when divorced from religious sanctions. In the, matter of moral teaching, however, the 20

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difficulties are undoubtedly less than in the case of religious teaching. The papers laid before the conference indicate that not a little moral instruction is already given in the ordinary text-books and in other ways. The Government of Bombay are engaged upon the preparation of a book containing moral illustrations, which will be placed in the hands of teachers in order to assist them in imparting moral instruction. Excellent materials for ethical teaching are available in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, portions of Hafiz, Sadi, Maulana Rumi and other classics in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Pali. The Government of India while bound to maintain a position of complete neutrality in matters of religion observe that the most thoughtful minds in India lament the tendency of existing systems of education to develop the intellectual at the expense of the moral and religious faculties. In September 1911 they invited Local Governments other than the Bombay Government to assemble local committees in order to consider the whole question. Such committees are still at work in some provinces. For the present the Government of India must be content to watch experiments and keep the matter prominently in view. Enlightened opinion and accumulated experience will, it is hoped, provide a practical solution to what is unquestionably the most important educational problem of the time. 6. There has been real progress of late years in the provision of hostels. In the last decade the numbers both of hostels and of resident male students have nearly doubled, and now stand at over 2,200 and over 78,000 respectively. The Government of India desire to see the hostel system Indirect agencies, e.g., hostels, develop until there is adequate residential accomschool buildings, traditions, etc. modation attached to every college and secondary school in India. But a hostel of itself will not achieve the desired end unless effective means are adopted for guiding students and assisting them in their work and in their recreation. Already in some first-class institutions in the country admirable arrangements have been made on European lines to secure the full benefits of the residential system. Again it is reassuring that traditions are growing up, that meetings of old boys are held, that debating and literary societies are becoming more common. All these require help which will in many cases best be organised in connection with the hostel system. Much has also been done of late to improve school buildings; but a large number of thoroughly unsuitable, not to say mean, squalid and insanitary buildings still exist in India. These will be replaced, as funds permit, by modern buildings designed upon sanitary lines and with a view to avoid overcrowding and to facilitate the maintenance of discipline. The Government of India hope that the time is not far distant when educational buildings will be distinguished as the most modern and commodious buildings in the locality, and scholars in India will have the advantages in this respect of scholars in the west. The influence for good of clean, well-arranged buildings with the concomitant domestic discipline can scarcely be exaggerated. 7. The claims of hygiene are paramount not only in the interests of the children themselves, though these are all-important, but also as an object-lesson to the rising generation. Hitherto want of funds and the apathy of the peoHygiene. ple have been responsible for the comparatively small attention 21

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paid to hygiene. In some provinces a simple course of instruction in hygiene is prescribed, at some period of the school course, but the lessons are often of too formal a type, are not connected with the life of the pupil, and fail to form his habits or to enlist his intelligence in after-life in the struggle against disease. In some areas there is a general inspection of school premises by a medical authority; but it is believed that little is done for the individual inspection of school children and that medical advice has not always been enlisted in regard to the length of the school day, the framing of curricula, and such matters. The Government of India commend to Local Governments a thorough enquiry, by a small committee of experts, medical and educational, into school and college hygiene. The scope of the enquiry will no doubt vary in different parts of India, but the following seem to be important matters for investigation:— (i) The condition of school houses, hostels and other places where pupils reside, from the point of view of sanitation. (ii) The professional examination of building plans from the hygienic point of view. (iii) The introduction of a simple and more practical course of hygiene; whether it should be a compulsory subject in the various schemes of school-leaving certificates, and whether it should be recommended to universities as part of their matriculation examination. (iv) The inspection, where possible, of male scholars, with special reference to infectious diseases, eyesight and malaria. (v) The length of the school-day, home-studies, and the effect upon health of the present system of working for formal examinations. (vi) The requirements in the way of recreation grounds, gardens, gymnasia, reading rooms, common-rooms, etc. (vii) The inspecting and administrating agency required, the possibility of co-operation with existing organisations and the provision of funds. Other cardinal principles of policy.

8. Other cardinal principles of policy may here be stated—

(1) The steady raising of the standard of existing institutions should not be postponed to increasing their number when the new institutions cannot be efficient without a better-trained and better-paid teaching staff. (2) The scheme of primary and secondary education for the average scholar should steadily, as trained teachers become available, be diverted to more practical ends, e.g., by means of manual training, gardening, outdoor observation, practical teaching of geography, school excursions, organised tours of instruction, etc. (3) Provision should be made for higher studies and research in India, so that Indian students may have every facility for higher work without having to go abroad. 22

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9. The provision of facilities for research cannot be postponed. In almost every branch of science and the arts, in philosophy, history, geography, language, literature, economics, sociology, medicine, public health, agriculResearch. ture, biology, geology, botany and in all the sciences applied to industry, not to particularise more closely, there is a wide untrodden field awaiting research. Among the essentials are good libraries, laboratories and collections, ample leisure and freedom in study, systematic collaboration of professors and students, an atmosphere engendered by the simultaneous working of many minds on numerous but interdependent branches of research. Only when they know the methods of research by which the knowledge they are to impart is secured and tested are teachers fully equipped for their work in the more advanced stages of education. 10. The propositions that illiteracy must be broken down and that primary education has in the present circumstances of India, a predominant claim upon the public funds, represent accepted policy no longer Primary Education, Comopen to discussion. For financial and administrapulsory and free education not tive reasons of decisive weight the Government practicable. of India have refused to recognise the principle of compulsory education; but they desire the widest possible extension of primary education on a voluntary basis. As regards free elementary education the time has not yet arrived when it is practicable to dispense wholly with fees without injustice to the many villages, which are waiting for the provision of schools. The fees derived from those pupils who can pay them are now devoted to the maintenance and expansion of primary education, and a total remission of fees would involve to a certain extent a more prolonged postponement of the provision of schools in villages without them. In some provinces elementary education is already free and in the majority of provinces liberal provision is already made for giving free elementary instruction to those boys whose parents cannot afford to pay fees. Local Governments have been requested to extend the application of the principle of free elementary education amongst the poorer and more backward sections of the population. Further than this it is not possible at present to go. 11. For guidance in the immediate future, with the necessary modifications due to local conditions, the Government of India desire Primary Education. General to lay down the following principles in regard to principles. primary education:— (i) Subject to the principle stated in paragraph 8 (1) supra, there should be a large expansion of lower primary schools teaching the three R’s with drawing, knowledge of the village map, nature-study and physical exercises. (ii) Simultaneously upper primary schools should be established at suitable centres and lower primary schools should where necessary be developed into upper primary schools. (iii) Expansion should be secured by means of board schools, except where this is financially impossible, when aided schools under recognised 23

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(iv)

(v)

(vi)

(vii) (viii) (ix)

management should be encouraged. In certain tracts liberal subsidies may advantageously be given to maktabs, patshalas and the like which are ready to undertake simple vernacular teaching of general knowledge. Reliance should not be placed upon “venture schools,” unless by subjecting themselves to suitable management and to inspection they earn recognition. It is not practicable at present in most parts of India to draw any great distinction between the curricula of rural and of urban primary schools. But in the latter class of schools there is special scope for practical teaching of geography, school excursions, etc., and the nature-study should vary with the environment, and some other form of simple knowledge of the locality might advantageously be substituted for the study of the village map. As competent teachers become available a greater differentiation in the courses will be possible. Teachers should be drawn from the class of the boys whom they will teach; they should have passed the middle vernacular examination, or been through a corresponding course, and should have undergone a year’s training. Where they have passed through only the upper primary course and have not already had sufficient experience in a school, a two years’ course of training is generally desirable. This training may in the first instance be given in small local institutions, but preferably, as funds permit, in larger and more efficient central normal schools. In both kinds of institutions adequate practising schools are a necessary adjunct, and the size of the practising school will generally determine the size of the normal school. As teachers left to themselves in villages are liable to deteriorate there are great advantages in periodical repetition and improvement courses for primary school teachers during the school vacations. Trained teachers should receive not less than Rs. 12 per month (special rates being given in certain areas); they should be placed in a graded service; and they should either be eligible for a pension or admitted to a provident fund. No teacher should be called on to instruct more than 50 pupils; preferably the number should be 30 or 40; and it is desirable to have a separate teacher for each class or standard. The continuation schools known as middle or secondary vernacular schools should be improved and multiplied. Schools should be housed in sanitary and commodious but inexpensive buildings.

12. While laying down these general principles the Government of India recognise that in regard to primary education conditions vary greatly in different provinces. In the old province of Bengal, for instance, where there is already some sort of primary school for a little over every three square miles of the total area of the 24

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province, the multiplication of schools may very well not be so urgent a problem as an increase in the attendance and an improvement in the qualifications of the teachers. In some parts of India at the present time no teacher in a primary school gets less than 12 rupees a month. In Burma all conditions are different and monastic schools are an important feature of the organisation. Different problems, again, present themselves where board schools and aided schools respectively are the basis of the system of primary education. Nor must it be supposed that the policy laid down in these general terms for the immediate future limits the aspirations of the Government of India or the Local Governments. Indeed the Government of India hope that the day is not far distant when teachers in primary schools will receive considerably higher remuneration, when all teachers will be trained, and when it will be possible to introduce more modern and elastic methods in primary schools. 13. Vernacular continuation schools are the only entrance to more advanced study which does not demand acquaintance with a foreign language; and it is in them that competent teachers for primary schools will be prepared. Technical and industrial progress also is likely to create numerous openings for men with a good vernacular education. In certain provinces owing to the popularity and cheapness of English education these institutions have declined. Vernacular continuation But in the whole of India in the last decade the number schools. of schools has increased from 2,135 to 2,666 and that of their scholars from over 177,000 to close on 257,000. The Government of India believe that these schools will become much more popular and useful when they are placed on a sound footing; they also think that it would be an advantage if an advanced vernacular course could be provided at selected centres for students desirous of becoming teachers in these continuation schools. 14. In some provinces special classes have been opened in secondary English schools for scholars who have been through the whole course at a vernacular continuation school in order to enable them to make up ground in English. There is much experience to the effect that scholars who have been through a complete vernacular course are exceptionally efficient mentally. Proposed expansion. The Government of India recommend arrangements on the above lines to all Local Governments and Administrations which have not already introduced them. 15. It is the desire and hope of the Government of India to see in the not distant future some 91,000 primary public schools added to the 100,000 which already exist for boys and to double the 4¼ millions of pupils who now receive instruction in them. For purposes of present calculation a sum of Rs. 375 per annum may be taken as a rough approximation of the probable average cost of maintenance of a primary board school. This figure provides for two teachers, one on Rs. 15 and one on Rs. 12 per month and Rs. 4 per month for the purchase of books and stationery, petty repairs, prizes and for necessary contingencies. This is, however, only an average figure for the whole of India. In India as a whole the average cost of a board or municipal school is at present Rs. 315 per annum. In Bombay the average cost of a primary school under any kind of management is now about Rs. 25

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437, but this figure includes the cost of the higher classes, which in some other provinces are classed as middle or secondary vernacular classes. 16. The education of girls remains to be organized. In 1904 the Government of India remarked that peculiar difficulties were encountered Education of girls. in this branch of education owing to the social customs of the people, but that as a far greater proportional impulse is imparted to the educational and moral tone of the people by the education of women than by the education of men, liberal treatment had been accorded for girls in respect of scholarships and fees. This policy has been continued. Efforts have been also made, not without success, to bring education, through the agency of governesses, within the reach of purda ladies, to increase the number of ladies on the inspecting staff and to replace male by female teachers in government and aided schools. The number of girls under instruction has risen from 444,470 in 1901–02 to 864,363 in 1910–11. But the total number still remains insignificant in proportion to the female population. The Government of India believe, however, that in certain areas there are indications of a swiftly growing demand for a more extensive education of girls. 17. The immediate problem in the education of girls is one of social development. The existing customs and ideas opposed to the education of girls will require different handling in different parts of India. The Governor General in Council accordingly hesitates to lay down general lines of policy which might hamper Local Governments and Administrations, and has preferred to call for schemes from each province; but he commends the following principles for general consideration:— (a) The education of girls should be practical with reference to the position which they will fill in social life; (b) It should not seek to imitate the education suitable for boys nor should it be dominated by examinations; (c) Special attention should be paid to hygiene and the surroundings of school life; (d) The services of women should be more freely enlisted for instruction and inspection; and (e) Continuity in inspection and control should be specially aimed at. 18. The difficulty of obtaining competent schoolmistresses is felt acutely in many parts of the country. In this connection it has been suggested that there is a large opening for women of the domiciled community, who have a knowledge of the vernacular and who might be specially trained for the purpose. 19. The importance of secondary English and in particular of high school education is far-reaching. Secondary education of one grade or another is the basis of all professional or industrial training in India. The inferior Secondary English output of secondary schools invades colleges and technical Education. institutions and hinders the development of higher education. At the Allahabad conference the directors of public instruction unanimously 26

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regarded the reform of secondary English schools as the most urgent of educational problems. The improvement of secondary English education has for some time occupied the attention of the Government of India and the Local Governments and it is hoped in the near future to remedy many defects of the present system. 20. In the last nine years the number of secondary schools has increased from nearly 5,500 to over 6,500 and the number of scholars from 622,000 to 900,000. The policy of Government is to rely so far as possible on private enterprise in secondary education. This policy, laid down in the despatch of 1854, was restated and amplified by the Education Commission of 1882, which, while doubtful as to how far the process of withdrawal on the part of Government should be carried, agreed that, whatever degree of withdrawal from the direct provision of education might be found advisable, there should be no relaxation of indirect but efficient control by the state. The admixture of private management and state control was again emphasised in the resolution of 1904. To this policy the Government of India adhere. It is dictated not by any belief in the inherent superiority of private over state management but by preference for an established system and, above all, by the necessity of concentrating the direct energies of the state and the bulk of its available resources upon the improvement and expansion of elementary education. The policy may be summarised as the encouragement of privately managed schools under suitable bodies, maintained in efficiency by government inspection, recognition and control, and by the aid of government funds. 21. Some idea of the extension of private enterprise may be gained by the reflection that, of 3,852 high and middle English schools, only 286 are government institutions. These figures, however, cover many types of schools, from the most efficient to the least efficient. Admirable schools have been and are maintained by missionaries and other bodies. But the underlying idea of the grant-system, the subvention of local organised effort, has not always been maintained. Schools of a money-making type, ill-housed, ill-equipped, and run on the cheapest lines, have in certain cases gained recognition and eluded the control of inspection. Schools have sprung into existence in destructive competition with neighbouring institutions. Physical health has been neglected and no provision has been made for suitable residential arrangements and play-fields. Fee-rates have been lowered; competition and laxity in transfer have destroyed discipline; teachers have been employed on rates of pay insufficient to attract men capable of instructing or controlling their pupils. Above all, the grants-in-aid have from want of funds often been inadequate. No fewer than 360 high schools with 80,247 pupils are in receipt of no grant at all, and are maintained at an average cost of less than half that of a government school, mainly by fee-collections. Especially do these conditions prevail in the area covered by the old provinces of Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam; a result due, no doubt, to the rapid extension of English education beyond the ability of the Local Governments to finance it. In Bengal and Eastern Bengal the number of high schools is greater than in the rest of British India put together, and the cost of their maintenance to public funds is proportionately less than a third of the cost prevailing in other provinces. A special inquiry showed that out of some 4,700 teachers in 27

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privately managed high schools in these areas about 4,200 were in receipt of less than Rs. 50 a month, some 3,300 of less than Rs. 30 a month, while many teachers of English and classical languages drew salaries that would not attract men to superior domestic service. The great variations in conditions in different parts of India point to the difficulty of making any but the most general statements about the results of private enterprise and the special measures that are needed to assist it to perform efficiently its work in the educational system. 22. Subject to the necessities of variation in deference to local conditions the Secondary English Schools. policy of the Government of India in regard to secGeneral principles. ondary English schools is— (1) To improve the few existing government schools, by— (a) Employing only graduates or trained teachers; (b) Introducing a graded service for teachers of English with a minimum salary of Rs. 40 per month and a maximum salary of Rs. 400 per month; (c) Providing proper hostel accommodation; (d) Introducing a school course complete in itself with a staff sufficient to teach what may be called the modern side with special attention to the development of an historical and a geographical sense; (e) Introducing manual training and improving science teaching. (2) To increase largely the grants-in-aid, in order that aided institutions may keep pace with the improvements in government schools on the abovementioned lines, and to encourage the establishment of new aided institutions where necessary. (3) To multiply and improve training colleges so that trained teachers may be available for public and private institutions. (4) To found government schools in such localities as may, on a survey of local conditions and with due regard to economy of educational effort and expense, be proved to require them. 23. The Government of India also desire that the grant-in-aid rules should be made more elastic so as to enable each school, which is recognised as necessary and conforms to the prescribed standards of manageGrants-in-aid. ment and efficiency, to obtain the special assistance which it requires in order to attain the fullest measure of utility. As larger grants become available and as the pay and the personnel of the teaching staff are improved, it will be possible for the inspecting officer to concentrate his attention more and more upon the general quality of instruction. Full encouragement can then be given to improved and original methods of teaching and courses; and gradually the grant-earning capacity of an institution will come to be judged on grounds of general efficiency and desert rather than by rigid rules of calculation. 28

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24. The introduction of a school course complete in itself and of a modern and practical character, freed from the domination of the matriculaModern side. tion examination, was recommended in the first instance by the Education Commission of 1882. In some provinces and particularly in Madras real progress has been made towards the accomplishment of this reform. The figures for 1901–02 and 1910–11 are:— 1901–02.

1910–11.

School Final (candidates).

Matriculation (candidates).

School Final (candidates).

Matriculation (candidates).

194 1,162

7,682 3,731 1,704 473

7,317* 1,360 946 538

782 3,766 2,206 702

Madras and Coorg . . Bombay . . . . . . . . . United Provinces . . Central Provinces . .

452

{

{

* School-leaving certificate.

In other provinces the school final examination has not yet been established except for special purposes. The total number of candidates in 1910–11 for the school final examination or leaving certificate in all British provinces was 10,161; that of candidates for matriculation was 16,952. 25. The principal objects of the school final examination are adaptability to the course of study and avoidance of cram. In those provinces in which a school final examination or school-leaving certificate has Secondary English Schoolnot been introduced the Government of India desire leaving Certificate. that it, should be instituted as soon as practicable. They suggest for the consideration of Local Governments and Administrations further developments of the system in regard to the character of the tests by which certificates are granted at the end of the school course. Before proceeding further, however, they restate and emphasise the three principles laid down by the Indian Universities Commission in paragraph 170 of their report. “(1) The conduct of a school final or other school examination should be regarded as altogether outside the functions of a University. (2) It would be of great benefit to the Universities if the Government would direct that the matriculation examination should not be accepted as a preliminary or full test for any post in Government service. In cases where the matriculation examination qualifies for admission to a professional examination the school final examination should be substituted for it. (3) It would be advantageous if the school final examination could, in the case of those boys who propose to follow a University career, be made a sufficient test of fitness to enter the University. Failing this, the best arrangement would appear to be that the matriculation candidate should pass in certain subjects in the school final examination, and be examined by the University with regard to any further requirements that may be deemed necessary.” 29

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26. The value of external examination cannot be overlooked. It sets before the teacher a definite aim and it maintains a standard; but the definite aim often unduly overshadows instruction, and the standard is necessarily narrow and in view of the large numbers that have to be examined must confine itself to mere examination achievement, without regard to mental development or general growth of character. On the other hand the drawbacks of external examinations are becoming more generally apparent, and attention was prominently drawn to them in the Report of the Consultative Committee on Examinations in Secondary Schools in England. They fail, especially in India, in that they eliminate the inspecting and teaching staff as factors in the system, that they impose all responsibility upon a body acquainted but little (if at all) with the, schools examined, that they rely upon written papers, which afford no searching test of intellect, no test at all of character or general ability, and that they encourage cram. 27. A combination of external and internal examinations is required. The Government of India consider that, in the case of a school recognised as qualified to present candidates for a school-leaving certificate, a record should be kept of the progress and conduct of each pupil in the highest classes of the school, and that the inspector should enter his remarks upon these records at his visits and thus obtain some acquaintance with the career of each candidate during the two or three years before examination. These records, together with the marks obtained by pupils at school tests, would be valuable and would supplement a test conducted partly through written papers on the more important subjects of instruction, but also orally and with regard to the pupil’s past career. The oral examination would be conducted by the inspector in consultation with members of the staff. A large increase in the superior inspecting staff would be required to work a system of this kind and safeguards would be necessary to protect teachers from undue influences; the Government of India are prepared to assist, with such grants as they may be able to afford, the introduction of any such system which may be locally practicable. The school-leaving certificate systems of Madras and the United Provinces fulfil many of the requirements of the reform in view, but their precise characteristics may not be found altogether suitable in other areas. Some such system, however, as has been sketched above, adapted to local conditions, would, it is believed, be most beneficial and do more than anything else to foster a system under which scholars would be taught to think for themselves instead of being made to memorize for examination purposes. Next to the improvement of the pay and prospects of teachers, which must accompany and even precede its introduction, this is perhaps the most important reform required in secondary English education. 28. No branch of education at present evokes greater public interest than technical and industrial instruction. Considerable progress has been made since 1904. Existing educational institutions have been overhauled Technical and Industrial and equipped for new courses. Scholarships tenable in Education. Europe and America have been established. Thanks to the generosity of the Tata family, seconded by liberal financial aid from the Government of India and His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore, an Indian Institute 30

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of Science, designed upon a large scale, has been established at Bangalore; it was thrown open to pupils in 1911. The establishment of a Technological Institute at Cawnpore for the chemistry of sugar manufacture and leather, for textiles and for acids and alkalis, has been sanctioned. Industrial schools have been opened in several provinces. Altogether the number of technical and industrial schools has risen since 1904 from 88 to 218, and the number of pupils from 5,072 to 10,535. 29. The system of technical scholarships tenable abroad is still on trial, and a committee is examining the whole question in England. It is not always easy to arrange suitable courses of study; and study abroad Technical Scholarships. puts the pupils at a disadvantage in removing them from the environment of Indian trade conditions. From the information available it appears that, of 73 scholars sent abroad, 36 have not returned to India while 18 are at present industrially employed in India. 30. The policy to be pursued in regard to technical and industrial education was discussed at the Allahabad conference. The Government of India accept the conclusions of that conference that progress should Co-ordination in Techcontinue along the lines generally followed hitherto, nical Education. viz., that— (1) The Indian Institute of Science, which provides for research, the application of new processes and the production of thoroughly trained managers, should be developed, as opportunity offers, and become eventually a complete faculty of pure and applied science; (2) The larger provincial institutions, which attract students from different parts of India, and afford instruction in practical methods of management and supervision, should in the first instance specialise along lines converging on local industries—a plan which will prevent overlapping and make for economy. Subsequently, as industries arise and the demand for managers and foremen increases, other and more varied courses may be found necessary; (3) The lesser industrial schools, minor weaving institutions, such of the schools of art as have an industrial bent, the artisan classes in Bengal, and trade schools generally, should be permanently directed toward such industries as exist in the localities where the institutions are situated. 31. The question has arisen as to how far educational institutions should develop on commercial lines. It has been decided that while educational institutions should in no case trade on commercial lines, in Technical education on certain cases instruction in industrial schools may be commercial lines. supplemented by practical training in workshops where the application of new processes needs to be demonstrated. In certain cases, also, it will be necessary to purchase and maintain experimental plant for demonstrating the advantages of new machinery or new processes, and for ascertaining the data of production. 32. Quite recently Lieutenant-Colonel E. H. deV. Atkinson, R.E., principal of the Thomason College, Roorkee, and Mr. T. S. Industrial openings for Indians. Dawson, principal of the Victoria Jubilee 31

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Technical Institute, Bombay, were deputed to enquire how technical institutions can be brought into closer touch and more practical relations with the employers of labour in India. Their report contains many suggestions which are under consideration, and emphasises the necessity of studying the demand for technically-trained men, of attracting Indian capital to industrial enterprise and of supplementing tuition at college by a period of apprenticeship. It also indicates that, while the field of employment or occupation in the highest grades is at present limited, the outlook for Indians is generally hopeful, provided the necessity for preliminary practical training is fully realised. 33. There are four government schools of art in India with some 1,300 pupils, of which two are mainly industrial schools or schools of design. Interesting developments are the rise at the Calcutta institution Schools of art. of a new school of Indian painting, which combines Indian treatment of subjects with western technique, and the foundation of an architectural branch in the institution at Bombay. But much remains to be done in connection with the indigenous art industries. This matter requires careful expert consideration. The Government of India will address Local Governments on the subject and for the present content themselves with advocating the importance and urgency of preserving for, and in, India scientifically arranged collections of the products of its ancient and modern arts and crafts. The understanding and appreciation of eastern art-work in Europe and America is draining good specimens in increasing volume into the public collections of those continents. 34. The relation of museums to the educational systems of India was discussed at the conference held at Simla in July 1911. Much valuable work has been done by the zoological and geological sections Museums. of the Indian Museum at Calcutta, which are now equipped on modern lines. The archaeological section of the same museum has recently been reorganised under the direction of Dr. Marshall, Director-General of Archæology. In provinces outside Bengal also there has been good progress in the right direction, but in the case of most local museums there is need of better equipment and a stronger staff. One of the most urgent needs in India is an ethnographic museum under scientific management designed to illustrate Indian civilisation in its varied phases. Otherwise students in the future will be compelled to visit the museums of Paris, Berlin, Munich and other places in order to study subjects, which should clearly be studied best on Indian soil. The Government of India will consult expert opinion on the subject; as at present advised they are inclined to favour the formation of a museum of Indian arts and ethnography at Delhi. Their accepted policy, though some overlapping is inevitable, is to develop local museums with special regard to local interest and to concentrate on matters of general interest in imperial museums. How to make museums more useful educationally and secure greater co-operation between museum authorities and educational authorities is a matter on which they have addressed Local Governments. 32

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35. The present scheme of agricultural education originated under Lord Curzon’s government and is, in fact, only seven years old. Previous to the year 1905, there was no central institution for research or teaching Agricultural Education. and such education as was then imparted in agriculture was represented by two colleges and three schools, in a more or less decadent condition. Very few Indians then had any knowledge of science in its application to agriculture and still fewer were capable of imparting such knowledge to others. In the year 1905 a comprehensive scheme was evolved under which arrangements were made both for the practical development of agriculture by government assistance and also for teaching and research in agriculture by subjects connected with it. A central institution for research and higher education was established at Pusa. The existing schools and colleges were reconstituted, improved and added to. Farms for experiments and demonstration were started, and as time went on, a change was effected in regard to agricultural education in its earlier stages. As now constituted the scheme of agricultural education has three main features, viz., (a) the provision of first class opportunities for the higher forms of teaching and research, (b) collegiate education and (c) the improvement of secondary and primary education. 36. The institute at Pusa, maintained at a cost of four lakhs a year, has 37 Europeans and Indians on its staff, engaged partly in research, partly in postgraduate education and the instruction, through short courses, of students or agriculturists in subjects which are not regularly treated in provincial institutions. There are now six provincial institutions, containing over 300 students and costing annually between five and six lakhs of rupees. Practical classes for agriculturists have also been established at various centres in several provinces. In the ordinary elementary schools, formal agriculture is not taught; but in some provinces a markedly agricultural colour is given to the general scheme of education. 37. Veterinary research is carried on at the Bacteriological Laboratory at Muktesar. The scheme of veterinary colleges has been thoroughly reorganised since 1904. There are now four such institutions, with 511 Veterinary Education. students, as well as a school at Rangoon. These institutions meet fairly well the growing demand for trained men. 38. The College at Dehra Dun has recently been improved; and a research institution has been established in connection with it. Indians can here obtain an education in forestry which approximates to that ordinarily Forestry Education. obtainable in Europe. 39. Instruction in the western system of medicine is imparted in five recognised colleges and fifteen recognised schools in British India. These now annually produce between six and seven hundred qualified medical Medical Education. practitioners. A Medical Registration Act has recently been passed for the presidency of Bombay, under which passed students of such schools are entitled to become registered; and a similar Act is now under consideration in the presidency of Bengal. In Calcutta there are four self-constituted medical schools, the diplomas of which are not recognised by the Government 33

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of India. Among recent developments may be mentioned the establishment of an X-ray institute at Dehra Dun, and the formation of postgraduate classes in connexion with the Central Research Institute at Kasauli. These latter include training in bacteriology and technique and preparation for special research; classes of practical instruction in malarial technique are also held twice a year at Amritsar under the officer in charge of the malarial bureau. 40. Other projects are engaging the attention of the Government of India, including the institution of a post-graduate course of tropical medicine. The practical want of such a course has long been felt; and the Government of India are now in communication with the Secretary of State regarding its establishment in the Medical College at Calcutta. The Calcutta University have expressed their willingness to co-operate by instituting a diploma to be open to graduates who have taken the course in tropical medicine. A scheme for a similar course in Bombay is also under consideration. The Government of Madras have submitted a scheme for the construction of a pathological institute and the appointment of a whole-time professor of pathology with a view to improve the teaching of that subject at the Madras Medical College. Other matters which are likely to come to the front at no distant date are the improvement of the Medical College at Lahore and its separation from the school, the improvement of the Dacca Medical School and the provision of facilities for medical training in the Central Provinces. 41. The subject of medical education is one in which the Government of India are deeply interested. It is also one that may be expected to appeal with special force to private generosity. A problem of particular importance is the inducement of ladies of the better classes to take employment in the medical profession and thus minister to the needs of the women, whom the purda system still deters from seeking timely medical assistance. One of the hindrances hitherto has been that Indian ladies are able to obtain instruction only in men’s colleges or in mixed classes. With a view to remedying this defect and commemorating the visit of the Queen-Empress to Delhi, certain of the princes and wealthy landowners in India have now come forward with generous subscriptions in response to an appeal by Her Excellency Lady Hardinge, who has decided to merge in this project her scheme for a school for training Indian nurses and midwives. The Government of India are considering proposals to found a women’s medical college and nurses’ training school at Delhi with the help of a subvention from government. Proposals are also under consideration for assisting the National Association for supplying female medical aid to the women of India (the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund) to improve the position of their staff. 42. There has been a marked development of legal education in the last decade. First it has been concentrated. In 1901 there were 35 institutions, colleges, classes and schools, containing 2,800 students. At the presLegal Education. ent time there are 27 institutions with a slightly larger number of students. The Madras and Bombay presidencies, Burma and the Central Provinces each possess a single institution; and in Bengal the instruction for the degree of bachelor of law has been restricted to certain colleges, although 34

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other institutions are still recognised for the pleadership examination. A law college has been established on a liberal scale under the University of Calcutta. This concentration has resulted in greater efficiency and greater expenditure. In 1901, the cost to government was a little over Rs. 7,000 and the total cost was 1¼ lakhs. At present the cost to government is over Rs. 45,000 and the total cost over Rs. 2,83,000. Secondly the courses have been remodelled and in some cases lengthened. The Government of India will be glad to see an extension of the policy of concentration and improvement. They also desire to see suitable arrangements made for the residence and guidance of law students. 43. There has recently been a considerable expansion in commercial education. Nine years ago there were ten colleges with less than 600 students, and government spent less than Rs. 4,000 upon these instituCommercial Education. tions. At the present time there are 26 institutions, three of which are under the management of government, the enrolment is now over 1,500 and the expenditure from provincial funds is over Rs. 22,000. The standard attained in the majority of these institutions is not, however, high, and the instruction given in them prepares for clerical duties in government and business offices rather than for the conduct of business itself. A project for a commercial college of a more advanced type in Bombay has been sanctioned and the Government of India are considering the question of making arrangements for organised study of the economic and allied sociological problems in India. 44. Good work, which the Government of India desire to acknowledge, has been done under conditions of difficulty by the Indian universities; and by common consent the Universities Act of 1904 has had benUniversity Education. eficial results; but the condition of university education is still far from satisfactory, in regard to residential arrangements, control, the courses of study and the system of examination. The Government of India have accordingly again reviewed the whole question of university education. 45. It is important to distinguish clearly on the one hand the federal university, in the strict sense, in which several colleges of approximately equal standing separated by no excessive distance or marked local Affiliating and teaching individuality are grouped together as a university—and Universities. on the other hand the affiliating university of the Indian type, which in its inception was merely an examining body, and, although limited as regards the area of its operations by the Act of 1904, has not been able to insist upon an identity of standard in the various institutions conjoined to it. The former of these types has in the past enjoyed some popularity in the United Kingdom, but after experience it has been largely abandoned there; and the constituent colleges which were grouped together have for the most part become separate teaching universities. without power of combination with other institutions at a distance. At present there are only five Indian universities for 185 arts and professional colleges in British India besides several institutions in Native States. The day is probably far distant when India will be able to dispense altogether with the affiliating university. But it is necessary to restrict the area over which the affiliating 35

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universities have control by securing, in the first instance, a separate university for each of the leading provinces in India, and secondly, to create new local teaching and residential universities within each of the provinces in harmony with the best modern opinion as to the right road to educational efficiency. The Government of India have decided to found a teaching and residential university at Dacca and they are prepared to sanction under certain conditions the establishment of similar universities at Aligarh and Benares and elsewhere as occasion may demand. They also contemplate the establishment of universities at Rangoon, Patna and Nagpur. It may be possible hereafter to sanction the conversion into local teaching universities, with power to confer degrees upon their own students, of those colleges which have shown the capacity to attract students from a distance and have attained the requisite standard of efficiency. Only by experiment will it be found out what type or types of universities are best suited to the different parts of India. 46. Simultaneously the Government of India desire to see teaching faculties developed at the seats of the existing universities and corporate life encouraged, in order to promote higher study and create an atmoHigher studies. sphere from which students will imbibe good social, moral and intellectual influences. They have already given grants and hope to give further grants hereafter to these ends. They trust that each university will soon build up a worthy university library, suitably housed, and that higher studies in India will soon enjoy all the external conveniences of such work in the west. 47. In order to free the universities for higher work and more efficient control of colleges, the Government of India are disposed to think it desirable (in provinces where this is not already the case) to place the preliminary recognition of schools for purposes of presenting candidates for matriculation in the hands of the Local Governments and in case of Native States of the durbars concerned, while leaving to the universities the power of selection from schools so recognised. The university has no machinery for carrying out this work and in most provinces already relies entirely on the departments of public instruction, which alone have the agency competent to inspect schools. As teaching and residential universities are developed the problem will become even more complex than it is at present. The question of amending the Universities Act will be separately considered. 48. The Government of India hope that by these developments a great impetus will be given to higher studies throughout India and that Indian students of the future will be better equipped for the battle of life than the students of the present generation. 49. The chiefs’ colleges advance in popularity. In developing character and imparting ideas of corporate life they are serving well the purpose for which they were founded. They are also attaining steadily increasing intellectual efficiency, but the Committee of the Mayo College, Ajmere, have Chiefs’ Colleges. decided that it is necessary to increase the European staff. The post-diploma course has on the whole worked satisfactorily and there is now a movement on foot to found a separate college for the students taking this

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course. Such a college may in the future become the nucleus of a university for those who now attend the chiefs’ colleges. 50. The grave disadvantages of sending their children to England to be educated away from home influences at the most impressionable time of life are being realised by Indian parents. The Government of India have been approached unofficially from more than one quarter in connection with a proposal to establish in India a thoroughly efficient school staffed entirely by Europeans and conducted on the most modern European lines for the sons of those parents who can afford to pay high fees. No project is yet before them, but the Government of India take this opportunity to express their sympathy with the proposal and, should sufficient funds be forthcoming, will be glad to assist in working out a practical scheme. 51. Few reforms are more urgently needed than the extension and improvement of the training of teachers, for both primary and secondary schools in all subjects including, in the case of the latter schools, sciTraining of teachers. ence and oriental studies. The object must steadily be kept in view that eventually under modern systems of education no teacher should be allowed to teach without a certificate that he is qualified to do so. There are at present 15 colleges and other institutions for the instruction of those who will teach through the medium of English; these contain nearly 1,400 students under training. There are 550 schools or classes for the training of vernacular (mainly primary) teachers; and their students number over 11,000. The courses vary in length from one to two years. The number of teachers turned out from these institutions does not meet the existing demand and is altogether inadequate in view of the prospects of a rapid expansion of education in the near future. The Government of India desire Local Governments to examine their schemes for training teachers of all grades and to enlarge them so as to provide for the great expansion which may be expected, especially in primary education. 52. As regards training colleges for secondary schools some experience has been gained. But the Government of India are conscious that the subject is one in which a free interchange of ideas based on the success or failure of experiment is desirable. The best size for a practising school and the relations between it and the college; the number of students in the college for which the practising school can afford facilities of demonstration without losing its character as a model institution; the nature of, and the most suitable methods of procedure in, practical work; the relative importance of methodology and of psychological study; the best treatment of educational history; the extent to which it is desirable and practicable to include courses in subject matter in the scheme of training, especially courses in new subjects such as manual training and experimental science; the points in which a course of training for graduates should differ from one for non-graduates; the degree to which the body awarding a diploma in teaching should base its award on the college records of the student’s work—these and other unsolved questions indicate that the instructors in training colleges in different parts of India should keep in touch with each other and constantly scrutinize the most modern developments in the west. Visits made by selected members of the staff 37

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of one college to other institutions and the pursuit of furlough studies would seem especially likely to lead to useful results in this branch of education. 53. The Government of India have for some time had under consideration the improvement of the pay and prospects of the educational services, Indian, Provincial and Subordinate. They had drawn up proposPay and prospects of the als in regard to the first two services and approved services. some schemes forwarded by Local Governments in regard to the third, when it was decided to appoint a Royal Commission on the Public Services of India. The Government of India recognise that improvement in the position of all the educational services is required, so as to attract first-class men in increasing numbers, and, while leaving questions of reorganisation for the consideration of the Commission, are considering minor proposals for the improvement of the position of these services. They attach the greatest importance to the provision for the old age of teachers, either by pension or provident fund. Teachers in government institutions and, in some areas, teachers in schools managed by local bodies are eligible for these privileges. But it is necessary to extend the provision in the case of board and municipal servants and still more in the cases of teachers of privately managed schools, for the great majority of whom no such system exists. It is not possible to have a healthy moral atmosphere in any schools, primary or secondary, or at any college when the teacher is discontented and anxious about the future. The Governor General in Council desires that due provision for teachers in their old age should be made with the least possible delay. Local Governments have already been addressed upon this subject. 54. The defective state of the education of the domiciled community has long been remarked. Many suggestions have from time to time been made for its improvement. An influential committee, presided Education of the domiover by Sir Robert Laidlaw, is now collecting funds ciled community. for the schools of all denominations except Roman Catholic schools. As in the case of secondary English education and for similar reasons the policy has been, and is, to rely on private enterprise guided by inspection and aided by grants from public funds. The Government of India have never had any intention of changing their policy. But in order to discuss the whole question and to obtain definite practical suggestions of reform they assembled an influential conference at Simla last July. 55. The recommendations of the conference were numerous and far-reaching. The Government of India are prepared to accept at once the view that the most urgent needs are the education of those children who do not at present attend school and the improvement of the pay and prospects of teachers. They are also disposed to regard favourably the proposal to erect a training college at Bangalore with arts and science classes for graduate courses attached to it. They recognise that grants-in-aid must be given in future on a more liberal scale and under a more elastic system. They will recommend to Local Governments the grant of a greater number of scholarships to study abroad. The proposals to re-classify the schools, to introduce leaving certificates, to include in courses of instruction 38

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general hygiene and physiology, special instruction in temperance and the effects of alcohol on the human body, and the several other detailed proposals of the conference will be carefully considered in the light of the opinions of Local Governments when they have been received. 56. The suggestion was put forward and largely supported at the conference that European education should be centralised under the Government of India. This suggestion cannot be accepted. Apart from the fact that decentralisation is the accepted policy of government, the course of the discussion at the conference showed how different were the conditions of life of members of the domiciled community In different parts of India, and how these differences necessarily reacted on their educational arrangements. The Government of India are convinced that although some difficulties might be removed, more would be created by centralisation. 57. The figures and general remarks contained in this resolution are general and applicable to all races and religions in India, but the special needs of the Muhammadans and the manner in which they have been Education of Muhammadans. met demand some mention. The last nine years have witnessed a remarkable awakening on the part of this community to the advantages of modern education. Within this period the number of Muhammadan pupils has increased by approximately 50 per cent. and now stands at nearly a million and a half. The total Muhammadan population of India is now 57,423,866 souls. The number at school accordingly represents over 16·7 per cent. of those of a school-going age. Still more remarkable has been the increase of Muhammadan pupils in higher institutions, the outturn of Muhammadan graduates having in the same period increased by nearly 80 per cent. But while in primary institutions the number of Muhammadans has actually raised the proportion at schools of all grades among the children of that community to a figure slightly in excess of the average proportion for children of all races and creeds in India, in the matter of higher education their numbers remain well below that proportion notwithstanding the large relative increase. The facilities offered to Muhammadans vary in different provinces, but generally take the form of special institutions, such as madrassas, hostels, scholarships and special inspectors. The introduction of simple vernacular courses into maktabs has gone far to spread elementary education amongst Muhammadans in certain parts of India. The whole question of Muhammadan education, which was specially treated by the Commission of 1882, is receiving the attention of the Government of India. 58. The Government of India attach great importance to the cultivation and improvement of oriental studies. There is increasing interest throughout India in her ancient civilisation, and it is necessary to investigate Oriental studies. that civilisation with the help of the medium of western methods of research and in relation to modern ideas. A conference of distinguished orientalists held at Simla in July 1911 recommended the establishment of a central research institute on lines somewhat similar to those of L’Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient at Hanoi. The question was discussed whether research could 39

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efficiently be carried on at the existing universities; and the opinion predominated that it would be difficult to create the appropriate atmosphere of oriental study in those universities as at present constituted, that it was desirable to have in one institution scholars working on different branches of the kindred subjects which comprise orientalia and that for reasons of economy it was preferable to start with one institute well equipped and possessing a first-class library. The Government of India are inclined to adopt this view and to agree with the conference that the central institute should not be isolated, that it should be open to students from all parts of India and that it should as far as possible combine its activities with those of the universities of India and different seats of learning. The object of the institute as apart from research is to provide Indians highly trained in original work who will enable schools of Indian history and archæology to be founded hereafter, prepare catalogues raisonnés of manuscripts, develop museums and build up research in universities and colleges of the different provinces. Another object is to attract in the course of time pandits and maulvis of eminence to the institute and so to promote an interchange of the higher scholarship of both the old and the new school of orientalists throughout India. But before formulating a definite scheme the Governor General in Council desires to consult Local Governments. 59. While making provision for scholarship on modern lines, the conference drew attention to the necessity of retaining separately the ancient and indigenous systems of instruction. The world of scholarship, Preservation of the ancient they thought, would suffer irreparable loss if the learning. old type of pandit and maulvi were to die out before their profound knowledge of their subjects had been made available to the world; and encouragement rather than reform was needed to prevent such an unfortunate result. Certain proposals for encouragement were made at the conference, viz.,— (a) Grants to Sanskrit colleges, madrassas, tols, patshalas, maktabs, pongyi kyaungs and other indigenous institutions in order to secure better salaries for teachers and to enable students by fellowships or scholarships to carry their education to the highest point possible; (b) The appointment of specially qualified inspectors in orientalia; (c) The provision of posts for highly trained pandits and maulvis; (d) The grant of money rewards for oriental work. The Government of India hope to see the adoption of measures that are practicable for the maintenance and furtherance of the ancient indigenous systems of learning and have called for proposals from the Local Governments to this end. 60. The functions of local bodies in regard to education generally and their relations with the departments of public instruction are under the consideration of the Government of India. But it is clear that if compreExperts required. hensive systems are to be introduced expert advice and control will be needed at every turn. The Government of India propose to examine in communication with Local Governments the organisation for education in 40

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each province and its readiness for expansion. A suggestion has been made that the director of public instruction should be ex officio secretary to government. The Government of India agreeing with the great majority of the Local Governments are unable to accept this view, which confuses the position of administrative and secretariat officers; but they consider it necessary that the director of public instruction should have regular access to the head of the administration or the member in charge of the portfolio of education. The Government of India wish generally to utilise to the full the support and enthusiasm of district officers and local bodies in the expansion and improvement of primary education; but the large schemes, which are now in contemplation, must be prepared with the cooperation and under the advice of experts. A considerable strengthening of the superior inspecting staff, including the appointment of specialists in science, orientalia, etc., may be found necessary in most provinces. In Madras an experienced officer in the education department has been placed on special duty for two years to assist the director of public instruction to prepare the scheme of expansion and improvement in that province, and the Government of India would be glad to see a similar arrangement in all the major provinces should the Local Governments desire it. 61. In the resolution of 1904 it was stated that arrangements would be made for periodical meetings of the directors of public instruction in order that they might compare their experience of the results of Interchange of views. different methods of work and discuss matters of special interest. The Government of India have already held general conferences at which the directors attended and they are convinced that periodical meetings of directors will be of great value. While each province has its own system it has much to learn from other provinces, and, when they meet, directors get into touch with new ideas and gain the benefit of experience obtained in other provinces. The Government of India are impressed with the necessity not only of exchange of views amongst experts, but also of the advantages of studying experiments all over India on the spot; and in a letter of the 7th July 1911, they invited Local Governments to arrange that professors of arts and technical colleges and inspectors of schools should visit institutions outside the province where they are posted, with a view to enlarging their experience. 62. Such in broad outline are the present outlook and the general policy for the near future of the Government of India. The main principles of this policy were forwarded to His Majesty’s Secretary of Conclusion. State on the 28th September 1911, and parts of it have already been announced. It was, however, deemed convenient to defer the publication of a resolution until the whole field could be surveyed. This has now been done. The Governor General in Council trusts that the growing section of the Indian public which is interested in education will join in establishing, under the guidance and with the help of government, those quickening systems of education on which the best minds in India are now converging and on which the prospects of the rising generation depend. He appeals with confidence to wealthy 41

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citizens throughout India to give of their abundance to the cause of education. In the foundation of scholarships; the building of hostels, schools, colleges, laboratories, gymnasia, swimming baths; the provision of playgrounds and other structural improvements; in furthering the cause of modern scientific studies and specially of technical education; in gifts of prizes and equipment; the endowment of chairs and fellowships; and the provision for research of every kind there is a wide field and a noble opportunity for the exercise on modern lines of that charity and benevolence for which India has been renowned from ancient times.

Note 1 i.e., 1901 to 1911.

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3 A. H. BENTON, EXTRACTS FROM INDIAN MORAL INSTRUCTION AND CASTE PROBLEMS (LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., 1917), 1–10, 31–32, 92–112

INTRODUCTION THE subject of this short treatise points to a political, administrative and moral problem of immense importance. Its right solution is of the deepest interest not only to India and its peoples, but also to the British Empire with all its Oversea Dominions. In short, it may even be maintained that the question is one of worldwide concern. About a fifth of the whole human race dwell within the Indian territories. Their extent and their well-defined natural features are calculated to form a possible sphere of immense political power, when the inhabitants have been moulded by sufficient civil and political experience, and have learned to keep their ranks and to march in step with their fellow-subjects elsewhere. India lies geographically in the centre of the self-governing British Dominions, each of them in all probability destined to attain an equal rank with the Great Powers of the planet. The Overseas Dominions’ ideal is that they shall remain united to the mother country “if not by constitutional arrangements at any rate by mutual service, mutual interests, and mutual devotion” (Mr. Balfour’s tribute to Mr. Chamberlain, Commons, 7th July, 1914). The Indian ideal should be at some distant date the attainment of a similar position. The tide of human affairs is working steadily and powerfully in this direction. Indian troops have been employed, fighting with the utmost gallantry the battles of the Empire at the same time in five different quarters. The Indian populations under British guidance may look forward to being bound together by a common language, a common law and a common interest in each other. Thus India should firmly hope to become in the course of centuries, a mighty, selfpossessed, self-governed, all but independent Power, only like the Dominions bound to a benignant Patron by devoted loyalty, hallowed in the lapse of ages. The progress of events and of the opinions and tendencies developed by the war, moreover, seems to indicate that, in order to settle the world’s peace on a sure foundation, a complete federation of the Mother country, of the Dominions and 43

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of all governments under British auspices, must be attempted and strenuously striven for without loss of time. If the prospect just suggested is to be realised, and India is ever to have a recognised place in the comity of nations, her people as a whole must acquire a character for patience, persistence, steadfastness and moderation in the conduct of public affairs, approaching those of the peoples, with which she desires to be associated in the administration of their share of the world. It must be remembered that for well-nigh a millennium the latter have been leading all mankind in teaching themselves and others the principles of government by the people for the people, while the task is still far from complete. India’s latest conquerors have been highly successful in advancing her material prosperity. No enemy has in their time ventured to assail her from the outside. Within her bounds life and property have always remained secure save for one limited period in a single province and its neighbourhood, when the Pax Britannica was interrupted. The successful administration of justice has ever been a strong feature of British rule, in glaring contrast with the times that preceded it. In fact, Indians have been furnished not only with great facilities for obtaining justice, but they have at the same time earned for themselves a great reputation for abusing them, in order to indulge their litigious instincts, and thereby wreak vengeance on their enemies. This indicates, it may be observed, not any defect of the Courts of Justice, but rather an urgent need for improving and strengthening the general conscience, so as to curb eristic propensities, nowhere so extravagantly displayed as in the highest philosophies dealing with the problems of the Universe, God and Soul, spirit and matter, reality and illusion. Following the example of the Roman conquerors of old in their dominions, the British were almost the first to introduce into the country grand highway communications, solidly constructed. In a modern State, however, in competition with all the countries of the world, in the age of scientific inventions, besides good roads, scores of other conveniences and appliances are demanded to meet human requirements. Without the conquest, it is hard to see how India could have secured the postal and telegraph services or the railway system extending to over 30,000 miles. She has an English and vernacular press, so vigorous as to require a certain amount of restraint and guidance. She has a complete system of agricultural land registration in connection with the land revenue administration. Municipalities and district boards have been instituted throughout the land; they render valuable service to their communities and serve to call out the leaders of the people and to initiate them in the work of local administration. The limit has almost been reached in applying the waters of all her magnificent rivers, to increase by irrigation agricultural produce and to bring under cultivation wide tracts, which otherwise must have remained barren waste. Much attention has been given to sanitation: much thought and money have been devoted to the prevention and extirpation of many diseases, which carried off or debilitated large masses of the population. Many other material boons might be indicated, for which India is indebted to her present rulers. 44

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In short, in developing the resources of the Indian Continent, in furthering trade, commerce and industry, in promoting the material comfort and welfare of its immense population, the Indian Government has a record which falls little short of any ideal that could have been anticipated. That is, it is admitted, a British way of looking at the material aspect of recent advancement; if an Indian were sketching the picture, it would doubtless be of a much more sombre character; Indians have but scant esteem for ideals of that nature; they would be much more readily gratified by a lively interest in their spiritual possessions and a similar strenuous effort to make the best of them. Turning then to the spiritual sphere of development, we find ourselves in a much less comfortable region. This cannot be attributed to any lack of amenability to mental culture on the part of the people, for they are on the whole kindly, docile, alert, keen-spirited, high and low one of the best-mannered peoples in the world, and they would appear to offer a very promising field for right spiritual treatment. There does not appear to be much to quarrel with for the present, all things considered, as to the extent of educational facilities. Leaving female education out of account, not as unimportant, but for the sake of simplicity merely, we find that elementary education already covers something short of one-third of the ground it occupies in more advanced communities. There is no doubt but that ethical training ought to be coextensive with secular education. The proverb, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” contains the soundest wisdom. In India we have to a very large extent neglected it. The Court of Directors’ Despatch of 1854, the Magna Charta of Indian Education, not only prohibits religious instruction in government (including municipal and board) schools and colleges, but also makes no provision for ethical training anywhere; it relies entirely for moral progress on improvement of the intellect. We have greatly enhanced this sad defect by imposing universally a system of examination for advancement in life through the public services and for preparation for the universities. This system leaves outside its scope both religion and morals, and so effectually discourages all voluntary attention to proficiency therein. The result is a plague spot among those who have received the higher education. The Indian education problem has been pressed on public attention by the operations of anarchists, which were constantly in evidence throughout the period covered by the last Quinquennial Report (1908–1912 inclusive). The agents for perpetrating the many hideous and menacing outrages of the last seven or eight years have been chiefly, if not entirely, either Hindu students or Hindus fresh from school or college. This feature is important; an explanation will be offered, why no Muslims appear amongst the offenders. The most notable was the deplorable outrage on His Excellency the Viceroy on the 23rd December, 1912, at Delhi, on his formal entry into the new capital; when a bomb was thrown which severely wounded his Excellency and killed an attendant. The years 1913 and 1914 up to the outbreak of war showed no improvement, a distressingly large portion of an Indian weekly paper being constantly devoted to anarchist crimes and trials in various places. Every week chronicled the occurrence of murderous 45

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attacks on distinguished persons and zealous public servants. The patriotic demonstrations throughout India, which the war evoked, appeared to allay the anarchic spirit for a number of months, but then there seemed to follow a vigorous recrudescence of the evil. During the year 1915 special tribunals presided over by three judges sat for long periods, if not continuously, occupied with the trial of cases described in the newspaper headings as “Political Conspiracies,” in which large gangs were accused of robberies (dacoities) accompanied with murder with a view to secure funds for the overthrow of the British Government. It is not possible to ascertain from the reports that the accused had all of them been students, but the fact that some were, appears incidentally. The Lahore case, the most notable of these State trials, with sixty-three accused, was traced to a student who held a scholarship at Oxford, awarded by the Panjab Government (Times, 17th November, 1915). In February, 1916, there were three Special Tribunals sitting in three provinces. That at Lahore was occupied with a supplement to the Lahore State Trial in which there were seventy-one accused and one thousand witnesses to be examined for the defence alone (Pioneer Mail of 12th February, 1916). The pressing need for effectual action, whether in or outside the Education Department, to put an end to the source of disorders, is more than ever clearly demonstrated. The urgency of the situation has been admitted by the government over and over again. At the opening of the Indian Imperial Council, on the 25th January, 1910, the Viceroy, Lord Minto, referred to the subject in these words: “The present dangers we are prepared to meet; the moral training of the rising generation our duty will no longer allow us to neglect.” More than three years after we have a full deliverance of the Government of India on the subject of education reform in the Government resolution in the Department of Education, dated Delhi, 21st February, 1913. I think it worth while to transfer the whole passage, although of considerable length, to these pages, because it will serve for easy reference and because it enables us to understand exactly where we are, so far as the Government is concerned, where there is no enigma involved.

“DIRECT RELIGIOUS AND MORAL INSTRUCTION. “5. The question of religious and moral instruction was discussed at a local conference held in Bombay and subsequently at the Imperial Conference held in Allahabad in February, 1911. Grave differences of opinion emerged as to the possibility or advantage of introducing direct religious instruction into schools generally, and apprehensions of difficulty in the working of any definite system were put forward. Doubts were also expressed as to the efficacy of direct moral instruction, when divorced from religious sanctions. In the matter of moral teaching, however, the difficulties are undoubtedly less than in the case of religious teaching. The papers laid before the conference indicate that not a little moral instruction is already given in the ordinary text-books and in other ways. The Government of Bombay are engaged upon the preparation of a book containing ‘moral illustrations,’ which will be placed in the hands of teachers, in order to 46

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assist them in imparting moral instruction. Excellent materials for ethical teaching are available in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, portions of Hafiz, Sadi, Maulana Rumi and other classics in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and Pali. The Government of India, while bound to maintain a position of complete neutrality in matters of religion, observe that the most thoughtful minds in India lament the tendency to develop the intellectual at the expense of the moral and religious faculties. In September, 1911, they invited Local Governments, other than the Bombay Government, to assemble local committees in order to consider the whole question. Such committees are still at work in some provinces. For the present the Government of India must be content to watch experiments and keep the matter prominently in view. Enlightened opinion and accumulated experience will, it is hoped, provide a practical solution to what is unquestionably the most important educational problem of the time.” This extract will afford a convenient text wherewith to summarise the chief points at issue and thereby give the reader a bird’s-eye view of the discussions that shall occupy our attention in the sequel. It appears a good omen, a sign of grace, that the Government bound by neutrality was able to countenance the discussion of religious and moral instruction at two conferences held at Bombay and Allahabad in 1911. The aloofness of neutrality might well have been expected to ban all reference to religion. Another good omen is that Government is watching experiments, that it sees clearly that the education problem to be solved is “unquestionably the most important educational problem of the time” and that it is hopeful of a practical solution. This sums up, it seems, the whole matter of a favourable nature to be found in the pronouncement. It betokens a benevolent neutrality. The neutrality would become still more benevolent, if it were only observed in practice or if it would only take itself away to limbo and resign the place it should never have occupied to something more English, more rational. If the business in hand had any concern with war or diplomacy there might be much to be said for it; for internal civil administration, where the business in hand is not to worst opponents by diplomatic art or somehow, where earnestness and sincerity should be the keynote, its introduction appears a sad mistake. It means literally, siding with neither of two parties. Who the two parties intended are, perhaps hardly any one knows. There are many parties and there should be kindness and goodwill to all. The most illustrious and the most talented advocate of Indian education at an important crisis, as will appear, failed to comprehend it. What can be hoped of people less capable? What of the ignorant masses? It originated with the Court of Directors in the Napoleonic era (Despatch, dated 7th September, 1808. Howell, p. 9). That is some excuse for its authors. Yet it is hard to understand how even they overlooked the principle of toleration expounded by English philosophy, first won for mankind after many persecutions, after a very troubled history and great expenditure of English tears and bloodshed. The Government of India does not appear to be bound by the principle of neutrality save by its own choice as to its expediency and by long use. Brought to a standstill, we may say, by pursuing it, it will have a fresh opportunity of considering 47

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its future adherence to it. In this connection some remarks of His Excellency the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, at laying the foundation of the Hindu University at Benares are well worth pondering. “But I am not terrified,” said His Excellency, “by the bogey of religious intolerance; rather do I think that a deep belief in and reverence for one’s own religion ought to foster a spirit of respect for the religious convictions of others and signs are not wanting that the day is dawning, when tolerance and mutual good-will shall take the place of fanaticism and hatred.” These words, it may be observed, are a worthy echo of the Royal Proclamation of 1858. The following brief notes touch on other leading features of our text to be discussed hereafter:— No common sense could advocate the teaching of religion in mixed schools. Both teacher and pupils would be a laughing-stock to the other spectators. Such unfortunately is human nature! There should be no doubt as to the efficacy of moral teaching divorced from religious sanctions, in India at least. The experiment of the Buddha, which lasted for about 1500 years and failed, appears to prove quite clearly that Indians attach the highest importance to the influence of spiritual religion on human conduct and have very little reliance on the teaching of morals which lacks this support. This has a very important bearing on the value to be assigned to the direct moral teaching imparted to pupils in Government schools and colleges. As little doubt should there be, that a teacher, not qualified to teach religion to any particular class of pupils, is not in a position to give them the special moral instruction required in accordance therewith. The quantity of materials for ethical instruction to be found in this or that quarter is, it is most humbly and respectfully submitted, a very secondary consideration; the special quality, having regard to the pupils concerned, is the first and most important point. These views will be advocated in the sequel by the writer to the best of his ability; he proposes to recommend a scheme of moral instruction in accordance with the various religions of the pupils, after it has been tested by an experiment in the Secondary Schools, where the need is most urgent, or in a portion of them. The sphere to which the experiment would be applied, its extent and the consequent cost would be left to the discretion of the authorities concerned. The resolution of the Government of India may fairly be regarded as containing a clear invitation to the outside public to render it assistance in solving a most baffling problem. Three years have passed, and, so far as I am aware, there has been no response whatever on the part of men of light and leading in the fields of religion, philosophy, literature, and politics, who might here find a subject worthy of elucidation by their best efforts. Is it not, I must ask myself with my comparatively slender resources, great rashness and presumption on my part, to dream of dealing with such a task? The only excuse I can offer, is that I am attempting it, faute de mieux; that this effort of mine may at least tempt those with the best qualifications to come to the rescue. 48

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Living at a distance from India I could scarcely have ventured to publish my notions without some more intimate acquaintance with what had been recently said and done on the spot, than is to be obtained by reading Indian newspapers. I am very grateful to the Indian Department of Education, which at the request of my old friend, the Honourable Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lieut.-Governor of the Panjab has favoured me with the official documents noted below,1 concerning educational doings. So I have been relieved of anxiety on this score. With a view to the effective disentanglement of our theme it appears necessary to discuss first, certain common features, pervading Indian existence, of a special character; and thereafter in succession a series of questions bearing on religion, state interference, morals, philosophy and history. The reader may not feel convinced at each stage of our progress that the ground we are treading is strictly relevant. He ought to bear in mind that we are dealing with ancient religions, strange to most of us, also with ancient communities the great masses of which are living in social conditions, which we have left long behind us. For the successful handling of such topics, it appears desirable that we should in some measure endeavour to create for ourselves a certain antique atmosphere, to which we are strangers. This may most easily be effected, it seems, by several historic sketches, which will serve to explain how the present position has been reached and to determine what modification of the same may be desirable and practicable. The first of these subjects to be dealt with is the curious union of singular, unique conditions of unknown antiquity, prevailing almost throughout the wide extent of the Indian territories. The two proposals, set out in the title page, may at first sight appear to have no intimate connection with each other or even to be antagonistic. As to antagonism, it may be observed, that in India, where caste is generally prevalent, the utterance of the word evokes no sentiment of moral disparagement, as it does in the West. The relation between the two, will, it is trusted, clearly appear from the following explanation. The moral instruction of the children of a community, with only one religion prevalent, is doubtless a very exalted and a very exacting theme. The Founder of Christianity thought proper to bestow special attention on children and to treat them with a distinction, which did not commend itself to the bystanders. A close imitation of His attitude and of His methods of teaching morality will be earnestly enjoined, because it appears to afford the best promise of success in the general treatment of the subject. A plurality of religions, even if they are not very numerous, greatly enhances the difficulty of the moral training of the young. A very considerable part of all the energies of all the churches in these islands, we can see, is devoted to the religious and moral instruction of young people. When the number of religions, cults, sects and castes is, as in India, without any limit (over 2000 we are told), the work of moral upbringing assumes an aspect of overwhelming magnitude and difficulty. The only hope of dealing with it successfully appears to lie in the possibility of utilising the agencies of the social framework, which causes the overpowering 49

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complexity, to provide also the means of coping with and overcoming it. Hence arises the urgent need for a rational explanation of the nature and origin of Indian caste, based on facts of no recondite character, which all can appreciate. Government and its supporters, the general body politic, we may say, cannot be expected to be content with accounts, based on mythology, tradition or the revelation of any particular religion, when it devolves on caste authorities most important public duties. The Indian Census Commissioner has pronounced the origin of caste to be an “insoluble conundrum.” Nevertheless a simple theory of the subject will be propounded in the next chapter and supported by all available argument. The writer hopes it may obtain acceptance, achieve at least a modicum of success. If he fail to make such headway in respect to both problems, he must resign himself to accept a verdict of failure, more or less complete, as regards the work in hand. Meanwhile he will confidently indulge the hope of a favourable issue. Should the notions he propounds be found anywhere near the mark, he is fully aware that much pioneer work will still remain for men on the spot, who alone can deal effectually with details in all their diversity. Before parting with the subject of religion we may profitably inquire, why the susceptibility to evil effects for religion is confined to Hindu students and does not affect Muhammadans. What I have to say on this topic is not addressed to any save those who, like myself, accept with fullest conviction that ancient precept, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” which was later on confirmed by its adoption by the Founder of Christianity on a memorable occasion. Notwithstanding, I do not say that public secular instruction may not in some cases prove adequate. Religious instruction, like secular, may be imparted either publicly or privately. It appears an absolute essential, however it may be got, and that is well illustrated by the two very interesting cases we are considering. The Muslims have a religion, which they sincerely believe and steadily practise; which they cannot cease to practise with impunity at the hands of their co-religionists. They have been very chary of subjecting their children to the risk of contagion in our schools, and they often delay their public secular education for years, in order that their religious instruction may be first attended to by private tuition or in their own maktabs (schools), thus handicapping them to some extent in the battle of life. In a community of this character public instruction may be secular without pernicious consequences. This is how Muhammadan students maintain, their moral balance and continue loyal and well behaved. It is altogether different with the Hindu. His peculiarities are extreme receptivity and toleration of dogmas and extreme religious sensibility. If any people may live without God in the world, it certainly is not the Hindus. The Hindu Pantheon contains divinities innumerable. Every object in Heaven or on earth, “everything good or evil, great or useful, strange or monstrous,” has divine significance attributed to it and moves to awe and reverence the ordinary Hindu. All rivers are more or less sacred, the most sacred being the Ganges and six others, and a favourite pilgrimage is the perambulation of their sources. There are endless holy places, 50

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and pilgrimages to them are one of the settled occupations as well as one of the usual diversions of Hindu existence. Again, as to toleration, a Hindu, we are informed, is not a man who believes Brahmanical or any other doctrine. In fact a Hindu may even adopt Muhammadan or Christian doctrines, like Rammohan Roy, and still remain a Hindu. A Hindu is a man who belongs to hirarchy of caste, headed by Brahmans, and who yields obedience to the rules of his own caste. These rules, any rate in the case of the higher castes, involve an interminable array of prescribed rites and ordinances for every day of his life, and still more injunctions for special days and special occasions, too tedious to contemplate. In the ordinary course the whole life of a Hindu is regulated by tradition, understood to have been received from inspired sages. The Higher Education, which directs his attention to a foreign literature and a history, of anything but a sedative character; to Science, which proceeds by observation and experiment and reasoning thereon grounded, and which can show wonderful results; to Philosophy, by which everything in heaven and earth is open to doubt and question, is the very antithesis2 of his former habits. The student naturally applies the new method to these traditions and to the ways and habits of his environment. He may find that they rest on no sound foundation and he is liable to despise and reject them. He may thus, losing his moral balance, be cut adrift from his moorings and be launched without compass or pilot on the ocean of life and so incur shipwreck; in fact he too often becomes an anarchist.

CHAPTER VI MORAL IMPROVEMENT AND REFORMATION

WE announced at the outset that one of the objects aimed at was to make the Indian peoples attain a political apprenticeship and ethos, approaching those of the best elements, with which they were associated. Now India is a very wide country, containing many nations differing in history, race, character, and religion. Moral training adapted to all these diversities must include very many varieties, widely apart, and must begin in each case with the present conditions of the particular unit under instruction. How is it possible, it may be asked, to unite and combine all these different features so as to reach a tolerably approximate character? Has this been considered; has any arrangement been provided, calculated to secure this desirable object? The candid admission is, that no such provision has been made, but it is maintained that nothing of the sort is needed, because every improvement in morals has a convergent effect, and will of itself tend to cause characters to approximate. All men are pretty near agreement about what conduct is good or bad, right or wrong. Good men, wherever they have come from or however diverse their up-bringing, it is the general experience, have no difficulty in getting on with each other, when they meet. If it were otherwise, the idea of a Heavenly Paradise, common to so many religions, would obviously be absurd. There are certain characters in history whom all 51

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men, in all ages, of all religions, have admired, for example Pericles, Epaminondas, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Sadi. The behaviour of the whole of vocal India at the outbreak of this war is a good illustration of the view contended for. Vocal India may be regarded as representing the small advanced sections in the local communities, into which the population would be divided from a religious standpoint for administrative purposes. A great moral problem, seriously affecting every one, was suddenly presented and it was answered with a unanimity which must have charmed the dwellers in all the lands of the Empire. The following is a good sample of what was common throughout the Indian Press at the time:— “India’s duty is clear to-day. She has never forgotten a benefit and never wavered, when the call of friendship demanded great sacrifices. Our great men have given their lives, their homes and their all for their friends. We are faced to-day by a common danger. The fate of India is interlinked with the future of England. Our duty is to stand as men so that the memory of our deeds may nerve the forces of coming generations. “Let us fight shoulder to shoulder in this great cause as a band of brothers. It is not always that the faith of a nation is put to trial. We have got a rare opportunity. Let us keep our faith in the wisdom of the Government. Let us nerve our hearts with the justice of our cause. There can be no question as to the issue. We must win.”3 In the next place it appears desirable that the principle of the specific to be recommended for our ailment, should be explained in advance. It depends, it will appear, on the power of habit and of mental adjustment to suit confirmed habit. Our complaint doubtless has its root in religion. Religions have a common feature; they are all framed in terms of the eternal: “One day is as a thousand years,” in each case. Yet religions, it must be admitted, have a beginning; they develop; their existence falls short of eternity; they disappear. The Polytheisms of the Mediterranean basin are gone; so also the Teutonic. Buddhism has mostly vanished from the Indian Continent, which it at one time pervaded. We know something of the history of Christianity. I pointed out what appeared to me a development as regards the recognition of conscience, as a guide for human conduct. At the Christian era slavery was universally prevalent, the slave population being perhaps in excess of the free (Gibbon, Cap. II.). Slaves were recommended to be obedient even to bad masters for conscience’ sake (1 Pet. ii. 18). The institution, thus recognised in the sphere of conscience, has disappeared among Christians in our time, as the result of a tremendous war. All the great religions took their rise prior to the discovery of the correct mechanism of the Universe and the phenomenal advance of Science, which has ensued. Science is a human possession of a different character from religion; ever under repair, it waxeth not old, so far as we know or can calculate. It proceeds on the principle of the Continuity and Uniformity of Nature, which is flagrantly at variance with many religious traditions. This clash of principle does not disturb many of the greatest intellects but it unsettles some, resulting in scepticism, unbelief, and rebellion against social usages and duties. 52

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In such a predicament what is the best remedy or palliative which can be suggested and how does it operate? The mischief to be overcome in India, like the advent of Science in the East, is a comparatively recent thing, but the West has had centuries of experience of the complaint. The result is, that the West would appear to be thoroughly convinced that the best plan is to give good heed to the old proverb: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it.” This means that every child, in the course prescribed for him, will have full instruction according to his years both in religious and moral principles, and all the time he will be required to live in accordance therewith; if he come short in any respect, he will find his life anything but a bed of roses. When religious truths are imparted to him, as he matures in years, he will be furnished with reasons for accepting them, sufficiently powerful to make him think once, twice, and again, before he thinks of parting with the beliefs to which he has been inured. After protracted consideration he may come to the conclusion, that what he was taught in his childhood is unsound, and that he must find something more reasonable and more reliable to replace it. He thus becomes converted, we shall say, to a new set of beliefs and he may have to modify his conduct accordingly. All the time this religious debate has been going on internally, he has been treading in the old paths, indulging in old habits, which have become a second nature to him; he will not dispense with any of them save with the utmost regret. He will maintain his confirmed attitude to relations, old friends, acquaintances and the society of which he was a member in all respects, so far as this is possible. A pathetic instance on record will serve to illustrate the position. I am to quote a few sentences from Sterling’s last letter to his friend Carlyle. Sterling had been an English clergyman, and in the course of time had found himself compelled to part with some Christian beliefs, among them, it would appear, the cardinal belief in a future life. The letter begins— “MY DEAR CARLYLE, “For the first time for many months it seems possible to send you a few words; merely, however, for remembrance and Farewell. On higher matters there is nothing to say. I tread the common road into the great darkness without any thought of fear and with very much of hope. Certainty indeed I have none. . . . Heaven bless you! If I can lend you a hand when there that will not be wanting.” We see that the effect of an important change of belief was to produce a mental adjustment; to. replace certainty by hope. Similar changes of belief might have the effect of expunging many pages of religious traditionary records, as altogether incredible. Similar mental readjustments would replace them, if necessary with the best available substitutes without any anarchy or social disturbance. Something of this sort is what occurs in the green tree in the West under most favourable conditions. We are now witnessing what occurs in the dry tree in India, 53

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where youths are crammed by the Higher Education with anything that will win marks in examinations for advancement in life. Conduct and character are taken no account of. The acquisition of any knowledge of religion and morals is of no avail whatever, however essential it may be to a well-ordered and useful life. Hotheaded youths, who have failed in examinations, on reaching manhood, lose their bearings and find no career so attractive as forming large bands to commit raids and robberies. The specious pretext is, that they wish to secure resources in order to liberate India from an alien Government, whose hands are full with a great war elsewhere. In the Panjab alone in the first half of May, 1915, two Special Tribunals were sitting for the trial of 2121 of such misguided would-be rebels and other malcontents, who have adopted their weapon of organised robberies in order to redress their grievances. We shall now proceed to explain proposals for calling to our assistance the wise men of the East, in order to extract from their stores of wisdom, the requisite materials for teaching the young to love good habits and ever to choose the path of virtue.

CHAPTER VII REMEDIAL MEASURES

So far no reference has been made to the reports of the Bombay and Allahabad Conferences on Moral Education, referred to in the Introduction. I am not conscious that I have been influenced by them in the foregoing discussions, which were for the most part complete before receipt of the reports. The great value, I attach to them, is due to their use for verification. The gist of these pages is contained in this sentence of the address of the Lord Bishop of Bombay:—“For I should have thought that at least one possible solution of this problem is, that at school the children of each religion should receive teaching in the morality inculcated by that religion.” I have been busy so far in supporting this thesis and what remains to be done is, to supply one working plan for putting it in execution. I am quite ready to believe that much better schemes could be furnished. The Bishop was strongly supported by two other speakers; one of them a Roman Catholic clergyman. Of two other speakers one placed his chief reliance on the inspiring influence of the teacher, expounding and practising sound morality, and the other on the excellent advantages of a good home. We may adhere to our own conclusions with fullest confidence without calling in question the enormous advantages of first-rate teachers and admirable homes, if they were only procurable. The Allahabad Conference might be said to be all but unanimous as to the desirability of moral and religious instruction proceeding hand in hand. There was not a single suggestion pointing to any means of obtaining this inestimable boon in Government schools, while the unalterable policy of the Government was adhered to. The method of moral instruction without religious instruction, with accounts of the attitudes of parents and others towards it, had been fully laid 54

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before the Conference in careful reports of the Directors of Public Instruction, expressly prepared for the Conference. A Muhammadan member of the Conference did not mince matters in giving his opinion as to the value of the method; he pronounced it a farce. This pis aller of so-called Direct Moral Instruction must be regarded as having the verdict of the Conference in its favour, seeing that its members were unable to propound anything to replace it. It may be as well to explain the nature of the tuition. Books have been provided for class lessons of a literary, historical, geographical or other nature with a moral tendency. The teacher is expected not only to give the particular lesson effectively, but also to enforce with power and enthusiasm any morals that may be extracted from it by the way; even by personal example “to illustrate and sanctify the efficacy of their precepts to young minds.” I am quoting the words of a Deputy Inspector. If the teacher fails to accomplish all this, it is not because the scheme is not a sound one, but because he should be regarded as a failure. I have commented on Direct Moral Instruction unfavourably on two previous occasions, and any number of objections could be urged against it, if the task were not too ungrateful. Enough has been said, I trust, to enable readers to judge for themselves. The best that could be said of it was, that it was a courageous effort to find a way out of the impossible impasse, caused by the necessary embargo on religion for moral teaching, due to the Government policy. The Government must be disappointed by the outcome; for it is not prepared to go boldly forward but prefers to wait and see what further light may be shed on the problem. The position is doubtless an awkward one but under the circumstances the decision seems to me a right and proper one. I will explain why. India may well be regarded as the most difficult country in the world to deal with as regardas moral teaching. Owing to its history, to the various origins of its races, to the various conquests that have occurred within historical times and before them, to the devices adopted by the conquerors to maintain their superiority to their predecessors and to the aborigines, and owing also to the various religions of the inhabitants, due to all these causes, it may safely be maintained that there are not merely one, two, or three systems of morality current but an indefinite and unknown number, corresponding to the various religions which have grown up with and dominated them. From a material point of view all the conquests save the latest have only been partial. From the religious and spiritual standpoint there has never been any conquest at all. My meaning will be apparent from a comparison with Europe. The Christian religion has pervaded all Europe and in consequence there is there practically only one religion and one moral system, because the religious divisions do not affect morals. Europeans, when they go to India, take their morals with them, and naturally proceed to apply everywhere the notion of the single system. There are exceptions; the Lord Bishop of Bombay for instance takes full cognisance of the fact to which I am endeavouring to draw attention. Other people have glimmerings of it one moment and forget it the next. This may be illustrated from the quoted paragraph of the Resolution. Reference is made first to what we may call the Cosmopolitan morality to be found in the class text-books, gathered we may say from promiscuous sources and distributed to all 55

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pupils indiscriminately. A little further on we find reference to the ethical teachings to be found in the classical writers of various Eastern Countries. One might be excused for inquiring why, if moral materials gathered from anywhere were suitable for Indian pupils, there was any need to rummage for them in ancient classics, was this not great waste of labour and effort? The truth is that there is in many minds a notion half alive, that material from these ancient books might be very congenial and suitable to Indians, but there is not in the same minds even a suspicion that the former materials ought prima facie to be regarded as quite unsuitable. This is my contention, which I laboured to establish when I proposed a definition of morality suitable to Indian conditions and especially to the business of the Indian Education Department. We must, I say, recognise numerous moralities in India in consequence of the present condition of its peoples, all divided into distinct social communities, separated from each other by rifts and fissures or by vast ravines. This recognition is the only means of advancement, the only resource, which affords a hope that they may in time be brought into a state of approximate continuous homogeneousness. Meanwhile each community, each moral4 unit must have its own approximate moral treatment, if there is to be peace in the land. The Directors’ reports seem to confirm these views. The people they consulted seemed hardly to understand what is meant by morals; some say they do not wish moral teaching, but they are all keen for having religion taught, the real fact being that religion according to their conception includes morals. They are, as already remarked, so far as the domination of religion is concerned, where our ancestors were some centuries back. It seems a piece of good fortune accordingly that the Government thought proper to call a halt. Having read so much in the various Reports about school discipline, obedience, respect for superiors and so on, I am led to suggest that a great moral improvement might be effected by slight physical training calculated to produce correct bearing and deportment. Village louts and yokels should not appear as such in the schools but be smartened up into the beginnings of men. I am induced to give this advice in consequence of what I see of our “Boy Scouts.” In perusing the evidence with regard to Direct Moral Instruction, our attention is constantly called to the existence of a sinister phenomenon, pervading Indian school life. It distresses alike all pupils and teachers, who admire honest work and fair play. In consequence of it neither pupils nor teachers have any time to bestow on either religion or morals. The sole cause of the trouble is the Examination Fiend, who, like the Government, is precluded from interfering with religion, but is entitled to do his Devil’s work in every other sphere. An unfair handicap is thus imposed on all who give fair attention to religion and morals, and a premium is bestowed on those who do not scruple to neglect them. There ought to be no hesitation about penalising the latter. The examination for Matriculation and all such like avenues for advancement in life ought to be duly guarded by a passexamination in religion and morals, as matters of the first importance, and by an ample deduction of marks in cases where the test is not fully satisfied. We are 56

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assured by J. S. Mill (“Liberty,” p. 193), who should be a good authority on such a subject, that there is no reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in them. Still less ought there to be any objection to examining pupils in morals and the religion they profess. It would be a fine feat indeed to make this fiend exorcise himself. I would not have it supposed that I attach any very serious importance to the suggestions offered in the two preceding paragraphs, as contributions to the solution of our problem. They may be regarded as mere obiter dicta arising out of the discussion. The solution to which I attach high importance is based on the fact that it has been proved, we may say twice over, that the task of teaching morals, to be efficiently performed, must be handed over to independent authorities who are not prohibited from invoking the aid of religion for the purpose. It is proposed accordingly that independent committees be constituted in each district, to give moral instruction to the pupils of all Government and Grant-in-aid Primary Schools in accordance with the religion of the pupil, not in the schools but in separate buildings specially adapted for the purpose. It is quite well understood that independence is a virtue, which cannot be conferred on a small body of men in an ordinary Indian District by a simple fiat. It will have to be cherished and built up in process of time by measures, sedulously contrived to attain that object. It should be understood, that the primary qualification for any gentleman’s being appointed to serve on such a committee would be a religious one. In India all religious organisations, such as there are, are merely local. The authorities in one place have no control over authorities elsewhere. Gentlemen would be appointed to the committees merely as individuals. In short there is no spiritual authority of the nature of a Church, and it would be a great mistake to do anything to create one. Let us suppose for the present, that suitable authorities of the right sort, open to no objection, have been properly constituted. The next thing to be settled is the method of instruction. It must be remembered that we are not dealing with advanced students of morals, capable of understanding definitions and reasoning based thereon, but with children who must be supplied with matter suitable to their intelligence and who must take what they are told for the most part on trust. It is submitted that the matter taught must be couched in the form of a precept, felicitously expressed in simple terms, which even a child can understand, in terms calculated, however, by their force and charm to produce a lasting impression on the youthful mind. Moral maxims of this high character can only be the product of moral discernment of no mean order, and in some cases it may be no easy task to discover and arrange them. There is a profuse abundance of the treasure demanded in Christian ethics; there must also, it is believed, be very ample store in the text-books of the Buddhist tenets. In support of my contention as to the method of teaching I would ask Christian readers to look within their own breasts, and to ask themselves with respect to their moral notions, on which they set the highest value, from what source they have obtained them? Is it not directly from the Gospel precepts or indirectly 57

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through the society imbued with these precepts, in which they have spent their lives? I should be immensely surprised to hear from them, that they were to any sensible extent indebted for the moral thoughts they treasure most either to the treatises of moral philosophers or to catechisms. To illustrate this matter reference may be made to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a subject of arduous study in the Scotch schools, which were established in every parish in consequence of the proposals of the Reformer John Knox, and which continued in existence down to the seventies of last century. The Catechism dealt at length with Effectual Calling, Justification, Adoption, and Sanctification. Nevertheless, in after life, when the Catechism was once got rid of, who ever gave a thought to these terms, which puzzled childhood, or heard of them in private conversation, or saw any allusion to them in the newspaper press or in any nontheological work? I entertain the sincere hope that both Hindus and Muhammadans may, if called on, have similar accounts to give regarding their religious possessions. The method of teaching may of course have to be varied, to adapt it to the means available and to the customs and usages of the localities and of the races concerned. Our next task is to settle how the Committees above proposed for presiding over religious and moral instruction should be constituted. We must remember that throughout British India the unit of Local administration is the district. Each district is in charge of the Collector and Magistrate or of the Deputy Commissioner; it has its District Board of which the Collector or Deputy Commissioner is Chairman. The Collector would be required to determine how the population should be divided from a religious standpoint into communities for religious and moral instruction, so that a committee might be appointed to represent each, to arrange its business with the District and Municipal Boards to draw up a religious and moral syllabus and to provide suitable buildings and establishment. Each committee’s scheme would have to be approved by the District and Municipal Boards, which would have to defray the cost. In preparing the syllabus the present religious and moral condition of the community would be the starting point as already indicated in Chapters II., IV., and V. (pp. 29, 71, 85). The committee’s business would be to maintain and improve the present status. In some cases the preparation of the syllabus would be easy, in some it might no doubt be a formidable business. The Muhammadans might be expected to be sticklers for the directions of the Euran and the Hadis, and might not care to admit much from extraneous sources; this would save the trouble of choosing. It would be for the Boards to decide whether the matter submitted was easily intelligible, sufficient and worth its cost. In the case of some of the committees there may not be available the learning in their own religious lore or the talent to manipulate it. Many of the committees would possess, it is presumed, exactly the same features and the less learned and clever committees might be advised and induced to copy the work of abler committees with like characteristics in other districts. Outside assistance might perhaps be obtained from the central Hindu College, Benares, and like bodies. All the difficulties in the way will 58

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only be discovered when an effort is made to surmount them. The first attempts should be regarded as a voyage of discovery in a new country. In selecting the first committee the Collector would of course consider, who among the leaders of the community seemed best qualified to deal with this important business and with the starting-off the committee on its career. It is suggested that in every case a section of the syllabus should be devoted to special local matter, moral proverbs, hymns and folk songs; also that each item of the collection should, if possible, have a marginal catchword. Vacancies in the committees might be filled by co-optation. It strikes me, that both to the District Boards and to the Committees it would be a great boon to have a pattern syllabus provided for them, even if it were for a different religion, say the Christian. The former would be able to decide by reference to the pattern, what was worthy of approval; the latter would understand what sort of product it was necessary for them to work up to, in order to obtain due sanction for their expenditure. I would suggest that it would be worth while for the Government to offer several handsome prizes for good specimens of a syllabus in the best literary style, drawn up according to directions supplied. With a view to the issue of such directions I will offer such ideas as occur to me. It would be necessary to restrict the pattern, to a convenient size, say 50 to 100 pages or so many words. It would contain a narrative of the barest facts of Christ’s life, simply told, with the most important Gospel precepts embodied. The precepts would be selected and simply copied. The selection would extend to other books of the New Testament and contain two or three texts regarding conscience. It would also extend to the Old Testament and to secular literature, both ancient and modern. I have not given much consideration to the secular side of the business; I will merely give a few specimens that occur to me at the moment, which might possibly find a place in the collection:— From Homer: “Aye to be first; fore all the rest.”

From Aristotle’s Ethics: “As it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a summer, so it is not one day or a short time, that makes a man blessed or happy.”

From Terence: “Being a man, nothing concerning man is outside my concern.”

From Kant, the declaration about the two infinities: “The starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

From Milton, the last two lines of the VIIth Sonnet: “All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.”

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From Carlyle: “Do the duty which lies nearest.” —“Sartor Resartus,” Bk. 2. 9.

I ought not to part with this proposal of a model without stating that I am in this matter suggesting imitation, as exactly as possible, of the procedure of the greatest Moralist of Humanity. His followers now number in all the continents about one-third of mankind. They are progressive and powerful and may be regarded as controlling the affairs of the world; the destinies of India are committed to one of their nations. The attention of each committee should be specially directed to the character of the precepts, so that they may be stimulated to ransack their great resources, in order to make a selection to match them, as nearly as possible. They were not arrived at by any reasoning, which common people could not be expected to appropriate and digest. They were propounded in plain terms, which the meanest could understand. They were characterised by charming simplicity, by artistic point and vigour, also by sweet and winning reasonableness, which commended them to the people at large. They were astonished, we are told, at His doctrine; great popular commotions were the result. There was, moreover, always a religious spirit enforcing the ethical doctrine; there were constant allusions to the Father Almighty. In the first address, of which we have any account, we find the words: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is in heaven.” It may be noted with regret that Animists and Primitive Tribes are outside our purview. The writer does not see how any recommendation can be made to the Government to go so low down as to have dealings of the nature suggested with believers in magic, sorcery, witchcraft, and such-like superstitions. I may be doing these classes injustice through unacquaintance with their character. I will therefore leave their case in the hands of persons who are able to profess that they do not lie under any such incapacity for handling it. It is to be hoped that the ten millions of Indian peoples in the condition supposed may in the process of civilisation, whether by conversion or otherwise, attain a higher status, which would permit of their case being dealt with on the ordinary lines. I have begun by explaining my proposals with regard to the pupils of elementary schools, because I wish to propound a complete scheme. So far, however, there is little harm being done in respect of pupils whose education stops at the elementary stage as has been noted (pp. 52–4). Their case is not urgent and the cost of dealing with them as a whole would be considerable, perhaps as much as an increase of 25 per cent, on the whole cost of education. The plague spot is in the Higher Schools and Colleges. It appears expedient to begin with them or better still with a convenient portion of them. If the plan succeeded with this portion, the experiment could be extended to the whole and afterwards, when there was no fear of failure, to the whole Indian system, primary as well as secondary. 60

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Suppose that it were decided to make the proposed experiment in any portion of a Province, private schools, receiving no support from Government, would have to be excluded from the operation. Without some legislation of a trivial character, it might not be possible to obtain from them the necessary facilities with regard to the adjustment of their time-tables, so as to enable the pupils at certain times to be absent for moral instruction. In no secondary schools or colleges of any description would there be any change in the programme of their studies or their arrangements save the proposed alteration of the time-tables. The buildings necessary for the new instruction would have to be found in the immediate neighbourhood or almost next door, so to speak, in order that as little time as possible might be lost in moving from the place of secular instruction to the other and vice versâ. The moral instruction would be quite independent of the secular, subject to a different authority and a different inspection; it would constitute a new department in the administration. Ethics would be treated as an entirely separate study, just like music, dancing, gymnastics, carpentry or the like. There would be a variety of ethical studies, to meet the wants of pupils of different religions and of different sects of the same religion. The pupils in each case would obtain their instruction by themselves; at the time of teaching there would be no intermingling and no contact with pupils of a different section. The buildings would have to be sufficiently extensive to permit of teaching being conducted according to the method suggested. It would be necessary that the authorities controlling both departments of education should be mutually obliging and accommodating for other reasons, but especially for the adjustment of the time-tables, so as, so far as possible, to secure economy in building. The arrangements for securing suitable text-books would be the same as suggested in the case of the elementary schools. The head of the District, or some authority independent of the Department of Education, would take the place of the District or Municipal Board in dealing with the committees charged with ethical education. These committees would require to be sufficiently numerous to meet the wants of the pupils attending the secular school. If there were very few pupils of any particular class, special provision would have to be made for them, unless the number was deemed negligible. Exemption from attendance at ethical instruction would be obtainable by parents from the head of the district or some one appointed by him for the purpose. It seems unnecessary to attempt further to elaborate details; difficulties will no doubt present themselves, but they will have to be disposed of, when they make their appearance. The Government would have to meet the whole cost of the experiment, whatever other arrangement might be found possible and fair, after it had succeeded. If the remedies suggested were found to answer, after being duly tested, and if they were extended accordingly, any adjustments shown by experience to be desirable being from time to time adopted, it might well be calculated that, instead of a few anarchists continuing to cause quite a disproportionate amount of commotion and unrest, there would be a great increase in the spirit of loyalty. The proper respect shown on all hands to the various Indian religions by the Government and 61

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by its officials and, mutually, by force of example by the various communities themselves should serve to increase the bonds of social union and to dispel causes of strife and illwill. Each individual affected by these measures should be enabled to feel some inches taller; he would be more determined than ever to support the authority, which not only protected the frontiers and maintained internal peace, but by arduous efforts in conjunction with the various communities sought by their moral improvement in accordance with their religious beliefs to minimise their ancient and outstanding differences, so as thereby to promote cohesion and to make them fairly homogeneous citizens, worthy of a great Empire. We have dealt with a great variety of subjects. Our discussions have travelled over extensive fields in Time, in the East and in the West. Considering their varied and discursive character it appears highly advantageous that here in conclusion I should attempt to gather together and briefly to set out the results we have arrived at as follows:— 1. At the outset I explained the high importance of the problem to be solved, for India, for the British Empire, even for the world at large. The clear invitation to render assistance in dealing with it was noted. The diversified nature of the discussion to be pursued in the fields of religion, morals, state action, philosophy, and history, as applied to a country with a number of special features pervading it, was outlined. 2. These special features included geological formation and boundaries, uniformities in respect of land settlement, administration, mode of human habitation and a peculiar social frame-work—caste to wit, corresponding to the prior conditions. The conclusion after examination of each prevalent uniformity was that they all held together, that each was part and parcel of the total complexus of conditions. The high antiquity and importance of the social framework was insisted on. The view of the caste system propounded was, that it was in origin a mere institution of matrimonial associations, gradually and spontaneously developed by the people themselves, in order to provide a supply of brides by ways and means more civilised and satisfactory than the old methods of raiding and kidnapping, recognised even by Manu. The Government experiment of Buddhism in establishing a system of morality in India without spiritual assistance and its ultimate failure was described. The numerous religions prevailing were adverted to; the difficulty in dealing with the Hindu religion, that of the great mass of the population, was considered and held not to be insurmountable. 3. The action of the Indian Government in education from the outset is curious. The business undertaken at the start was trivial; it was the useful expenditure of some small sums of money, especially one granted by Parliament in 1813. The Government was perpetually engaged while the conquest of India was in progress, in wars and conquests of immensely vaster importance at the time than the work undertaken in the interests of education, which was handed over to subordinate authorities and under the circumstances received little consideration. So far as appears from the evidence, mere bad luck had much to do with the policy 62

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actually adopted. The great English system of mutual toleration in religion, the very ideal of a policy for a country with more religions than any other, was apparently never thought of. Its place was taken by an obscure half-and-half arrangement of a plausible character, called neutrality in matters of religion, which has never been explained, perhaps never effectually thought out; it has been shown to be very distracting and misleading, even when handled by the highest talent. It is incompatible with, and of quite a different spirit from, the system of toleration. It appears to fix its attention on that part of the field of toleration which restricts the open action of the State in matters of religion and forbids proselytism and interference with religious observances. In practice it at the same time leaves room for unlimited interference with religions by indirect action, by the teaching of foreign sciences and literatures without any precautions taken, which has proved and is proving very deleterious. The Despatch of 1854, called the Magna Charta of Indian Education, in most respects an admirable State-paper ignored religion and morality. It made no provision for teaching either; it depended for maintaining and improving morality altogether on the culture of the intellect. A Commission was issued in India in 1882 to many experts of high distinction to inquire and report, how the provisions of this Despatch had been carried out. It made elaborate inquiries and it appears to have performed its task very satisfactorily in other respects, but unfortunately it gave no finding as to how far the so-called neutrality in matters of religion had been observed. There are indications that, if it had, a very serious and disappointing state of affairs would have been disclosed. The blame for this failure is to be ascribed both to oversight on the part of the Commission, which disregarded the general directions, and to the special instructions given it, in which the words “morals” and “religion” do not appear. The occurrence of these oversights is all the more surprising, seeing that prominent attention had been directed to the fact that the policy of neutrality was destroying religious belief by Howell’s Note, pp. 34, 35 (Appendix I.). The Commission proposed for colleges a moral text-book based on natural religion. The proposal was opposed to the system of toleration; very properly it has received no attention. 4. It was shown that in the West for the last 3000 years, where Polytheisms of a kindred character had prevailed, religion had been dominated by the State, until this system was changed at the time of the English Revolution. Then the first step was taken in the system of Toleration, which has since been completed and should be held applicable to all Governments under British auspices. The system is political and philosophic; it is not in origin a Christian principle; it is equally applicable to other religions, including the Muhammadan, for instance, in times of settled peace when no religious war (Jihad) is on foot. We went through the philosophy of the subject and we noted, so far as necessary, the legislation, by which it was applicable to the Government of India, but for the policy of so-called neutrality, adopted by Government on the executive side. That policy was shown to be at variance with the practice of the Government of India on various important occasions, also to be destructive of Indian religions and to allow no sufficient 63

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elbow room in dealing with morality and religion. It ought to be abandoned, and some such policy adopted instead as the following:— “The Government will regard all religions with impartial favour and respect; it will repress all acts which violate law, humanity, justice, or decency and all infringements of the rights of property, notwithstanding any plea of justification on religious grounds.” Or, to put it briefly, “Impartial favour for all religions with maintenance of the Law.” This is a condition precedent to the provision of effective remedies: its adoption would immensely improve the political situation and facilitate wellconsidered administration. 5. By philosophical discourse, based on the nature of religion and morality, and also on the experience of history, I sought to prove that instruction in morals must go hand in hand with instruction in religion. Religion, swaying human feeling through the imagination, I found to be the living motive power in operation, essential to producing and maintaining the required impression of the moral teaching imparted on the youthful mind. I felt assured, as we proceeded, that the arguments were sound. Assurance was rendered doubly sure, when it appeared that practically the whole weight of the opinions of the best experts in India enforced this view; also that the Government, in dealing with its most urgent educational problem, has thereby been driven to inaction and deliberation for a number of years, we may say, ever since the Allahabad Conference of February, 1911. We searched through history, ancient and modern, in order to acquire an acquaintance with the dealings of Governments with religion at various eras, and to ascertain what power the individual conscience was able to exercise at different stages. In ancient times religion controlled by the State dominated conduct; conscience had no weight of any consequence in comparison; it was not appealed to as an authority by Aristotle throughout the Ethics. In Rome, on the other hand, before the beginning of our era, in a community, in this and in many other respects unique, conscience had already obtained full stature. In the first century (60 A.D.) St. Paul, addressing converts in Borne, indicated it as a guide for human conduct, on a level with the Jewish Law. He and his fellow-workers regarded it as of equal authority with the Gospel they were preaching. Their example was followed down through the ages not only by Christian divines, but also by philosophers. Bishop Butler was the first who put the two authorities in competition, and he decided in favour of conscience. Recent philosophy gives conscience the paramount place in regulating human conduct. Mankind at the present hour may be divided into two sections: first, those whose conduct is dominated by their religion; secondly, those who can say their conduct is regulated by their conscience. Putting a large section of the European population into the more advanced category, we must declare that the Indian masses, all save a small portion of the educated fraction, who are on the same footing as most of the ruling race, belong to the first section; they are dominated by their religion and must be treated accordingly. Religion controls their manners and morals, as it did 64

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those of our ancestors who lived in the period prior to the initiation of toleration by the Toleration Act. So it follows, that if Government cannot interfere with the religions of its Indian subjects, as admittedly it cannot, so neither can it interfere with teaching them morals. In accord with this result, the people themselves, as was observed, quite generally conceive religion as including morals. The result arrived at is, that for the teaching of morals independent bodies, subject to no disabilities, must be created and cherished. 6. The most important point of all to remember in discussing morals for youthful Indians is, that India is not Europe but quite a place by itself with numerous unique features. In Europe there is practically only one religion and one moral system. I have maintained that owing to the events of history, immigrations, conquests, divisive policies, there are, so far as teaching the young is concerned, an unknown number of moral systems in India. I do not mean to say that they are essentially different—quite the reverse. The differences will be found in the form of expression, in the incidents chosen to express ideas, in the religious conceptions by which conduct is to be guided. I have also contended that the highest morality under all systems when perfected, is as nearly as possible identical. Many persons, I admit, show some signs of knowing how the case stands, but it seems only a glimmering notion they have: the next moment it is forgotten. The Government of India, for instance, seems to treat morality as if it were a drug or a chemical of uniform quality. It draws attention to the quantities of the article available in this, that, and the other quarter; it treats, the special qualities of morality as of no consequence whatever, as if they had no existence. Well, it is maintained in the sense just indicated that there are in India many moralities. If children are to be taught morals, they must be dealt with as they are received from the bosom of their families; the ways and manners, the religious and moral notions of the particular home must be suitably continued and, if possible, improved; all arrangements must be made on this basis. There must be authorities independent of Government, representing the various communities, regarded from religious standpoints, authorities who are not precluded from teaching religion and the teaching must be imparted in ways and forms adapted to the intelligence of the child. The Committees representing the various communities would in the first instance be appointed by the Head of the District; they might be maintained by co-optation. It would be their duty to draw up a suitable syllabus for religious and moral teaching, to appoint teachers, to arrange with the District and Municipal Boards for the times and places of teaching. Everything would have to be sanctioned by the District Boards, which would bear the cost. The introduction of a system of moral instruction is not so urgent in the elementary schools as in the higher schools and colleges, where the plague spot is to be found. Any scheme propounded had better form the subject of an experiment, on any scale deemed expedient, in the higher schools, before its general application to them, in case of success, and then to the elementary schools. All risk of failure would by this procedure be avoided. 65

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The scheme, it is hoped, sets forth one practical method of laying the moral foundation of that great destiny which India and its peoples may in the course of ages, by the favour of Providence, hope to attain. I shall be delighted if some better way be discovered. I shall be abundantly rewarded if this effort of mine should in any measure contribute to an object which I desire with all my heart to further.

Notes 1 (1) Report of the proceedings of a conference in Bombay on Moral, Civic and Sanitary Instruction, 1910. (2) Papers regarding the Educational Conference, Allahabad, February, 1911. (3) Three other series of documents of which no use has been made. 2 “Now,” says Sir H. S. Maine, “not only is all Oriental thought and literature embarrassed in all its walks by a weight of false physics, which at once gives a great advantage to all competing forms of knowledge, but it has a special difficulty in retaining its old interest. It is elaborately inaccurate, it is supremely and deliberately careless of all precision in magnitude, number and time. But to a very quick and subtle-minded people, which has hitherto been denied any mental food but this, mere accuracy of thought is by itself an intellectual luxury of the very highest order.” Maine’s “Village Communities,” p. 26. 3 Pamphlet, “The Great War,” by Jogendra Singh. 4 Nevertheless, we have here (in Berar) on the whole a fair average sample of Hinduism, as it exists at this time throughout the greater part of India; for we know that the religion varies in different parts of this vast country with endless diversities of detail. Berar Gazetteer, by Sir. A. Lyall. Of course if there be many varieties of religion, there must be as many of morality.— A. H. B.

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4 EXTRACTS FROM THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY COMMISSION [SADLER] REPORT (1919), VOL. 1: 19–30, 143–194, 318–326; VOL. 6: 2–6, 132–135, 169–171

CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. I. One of the most remarkable features in the recent history of Bengal, and, indeed, of India, has been the very rapid increase in the number of university students which has taken place during the last two decades, and more especially since the Universities Act of 1904. In 1904, 2,430 candidates presented themselves for the intermediate examination1 of the University of Madras, 457 for that of Bombay, and 3,832 for that of Calcutta These numbers in themselves were striking enough, considering that the universities were in 1904 less than fifty years old. But the numbers in 1917 were 5,424 for Madras, 1,281 for Bombay, and no less than 8,020 for Calcutta. This means that while the increase in numbers has. everywhere been striking, it has been much greater in Bengal than in any other part of India; nor is it easy to find any parallel to it in any part of the world. The flood of candidates for university training has put so heavy a strain upon the University and its colleges as to lead almost to a breakdown. It has brought out in high relief every deficiency of the system. And if justice is to. be done to a great opportunity, and the eagerness of young Bengalis for academic training is to be made as advantageous to their country as it ought to be, it has become manifest that bold and drastic changes and improvements in the system are necessary. 2. The full significance of these facts can perhaps be most clearly brought out by a comparison between Bengal and the United Kingdom The populations of the two countries are almost the same—about 45,000,000. By a curious coincidence the number of students preparing for university degrees is also almost the same—about 26,000.2 But since in Bengal only about one in ten of the population can read and write, the proportion of the educated classes of Bengal who are taking full-time university courses is almost ten times as great as in the United Kingdom. 67

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3. Nor is this the most striking part of the contrast. The figures for the United Kingdom include students drawn from all parts of the British Empire, including Bengal itself; those of Bengal are purely Indian. Again, in the United Kingdom a substantial proportion of the student-population consists of women; in Bengal the number of women-students is—and in view of existing social conditions is likely long to remain—very small indeed. Still more important, in the United Kingdom a very large proportion of the student-population are following professional courses, in medicine, law, theology, teaching, engineering or technical science. In Bengal, though the number of students of law is very great, the number of medical students is much smaller than in the United Kingdom; there are very few students of engineering; students of theology, whether Hindu or Islamic, do not study for university degrees; students of teaching are extraordinarily few; and there are, as yet, practically no students of technical science, because the scientific industries of Bengal are in their infancy, and draw their experts mainly from England. 4. It appears, therefore, that while an enormously higher proportion of the educated male population of Bengal proceeds to university studies than is the case in the United Kingdom, a very much smaller proportion goes to the University for what is ordinarily described as vocational training. The great majority—over 22,000 out of 26,000—pursue purely literary courses which do not fit them for any but administrative, clerical, teaching and (indirectly) legal careers. In the United Kingdom (if the training of teachers be regarded as vocational training) it is possible that these proportions would be nearly reversed. A comparison with any other large and populous state would yield similar results. Bengal is unlike any other civilised country in that so high a proportion of its educated classes set before them a university degree as the natural goal of ambition, and seek this goal by means of studies which are almost purely literary in character, and which therefore provide scarcely any direct professional training. 5. Yet another feature of the contrast, not only between Bengal and the United Kingdom, but between Bengal and all other countries with a student-population of comparable size, is the fact that while other countries have many universities, Bengal has only one. The 26,000 students of the United Kingdom are divided among eighteen universities, which vary widely in type; the 26,000 students of Bengal are all brought under the control of a single vast university mechanism, follow in each subject the same courses of study, read the same books, and undergo the same examinations. The University of Calcutta is, in respect of the number of its students, the largest university in the world. But it is a commonplace that a university, just because it is concerned with so individual a business as the training of the mind, can easily become too large When the students of Berlin approached five figures, it was felt that their numbers were becoming too great to be effectively dealt with by a single organisation, even though they were all gathered in a single city. The University of Calcutta has to deal with 26,000 students scattered over an immense province wherein communications are very difficult; it is responsible also for the educational control of more than eight hundred schools, a function such as no university outside of India is called upon to 68

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perform; and under these conditions it is unreasonable to expect that its governing bodies should be able to deal with their immense and complex task in a wholly satisfactory way. 6. The striking facts which we have attempted to set forth briefly above can only be understood in the light of the social conditions of the country, and of the historical development of its educational system. On these subjects we shall have something to say in the following pages. But in the meanwhile there is one part of the explanation which ought to be noted at once, since it may help to correct some false judgments formed on a superficial consideration of the figures. As we shall demonstrate later, the secondary school system of Bengal as a whole is extremely inefficient. It is impossible for the vast majority of Bengali boys to obtain from their schools a really sound general education, such as the schools of many other countries provide. For that purpose—and especially in order to obtain a good working knowledge of English, which is necessary for all important avocations— the young Bengali must go on to the university course; and having once begun it, he is naturally ambitious to pursue it to the end. As a very large number of our witnesses and correspondents have urged, the first two years of the present university course are occupied with what is really school work. The students in these two years form about 15,000 out of the total of 26,000. Only the remaining 11,000 are many strict sense to be described as university students, except by the accident of organisation which places them under university control. 7. But even if we consider only this reduced number, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that an unduly large proportion of the able young men of Bengal are being trained in a manner too purely literary. Evidence from all sides, from Indians and Englishmen alike, shows that though some few have found the fullest scope for their abilities, and are occupying with distinction positions of the highest importance, and though practically all the graduates of the University do find employment of one sort or another, there is in Bengal a large number of men who after having either obtained university degrees, or reached an earlier stage in the university course, find that there are no outlets available for them such as their academic standing justifies them in expecting. At first they not unnaturally “decline to take any post which they consider an inadequate recognition of the credential which has rewarded their laborious efforts. They thus lose chances, and sometimes spend months or years loitering about some district headquarters, and living on the joint family to which they belong. As a general rule, they sooner or later accommodate themselves to circumstances, but often with an exceedingly bad grace, and with a strong sense of injury.”3 When we consider the humble status and low pay of many of the posts with which university graduates are compelled to be content, it is impossible not to recognise that there is some justification for this sense of injury. It is impossible, also, not to recognise that a system which leads to such results must be economically wasteful and socially dangerous, and must in the end lead to the intellectual impoverishment of the country. 8. It is inevitable that men of ability who, after an arduous training, find themselves in such a situation should be deeply discontented, and should be inclined 69

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to lay the blame—as is the natural temptation of the dissatisfied in all lands, and above all in India—upon the Government of their country. The anarchist movement which has been so distressing a feature of recent years in Bengal has, by some, been attributed largely to the influence of these discontented classes; and undoubtedly it has drawn from among them many of its recruits This does not mean that the colleges of the University have been, as has sometimes been alleged, in any large degree centres of revolutionary activity. Naturally the wave of unrest which has passed over Bengal has found a readier welcome among students than in other classes of the population; the ferment of new political ideas, drawn from the West, has of course “worked most strongly among the students of western politics and thought But, according to the Bengal District Administration Committee, whose opinion in this matter is confirmed by that of the Sedition Committee of 1918,4 it has been in some of the high schools, rather than in the colleges, that the more reckless agitators have found their most fruitful fields. The reasoned discipline of scholarship is hostile to the madness of anarchy; and the better that discipline is made, the more sane and healthy must be its influence. 9. Nevertheless it must be admitted that the existence, and the steady increase, of a sort of intellectual proletariat not without reasonable grievances, forms a menace to good government, especially in a country where, as in Bengal, the small educated class is alone vocal It must be an equal menace whatever form the Government may assume So long as the great mass of the nation’s intelligent manhood is driven, in ever increasing numbers, along the same, often unfruitful, course of study, which creates expectations that cannot be fulfilled, and actually unfits those who pursue it from undertaking many useful occupations necessary for, the welfare of the community, any Government, however it may be constituted, whether it be bureaucratic or popular, must find its work hampered by an unceasing stream of criticism, and of natural demands for relief which cannot possibly be met. 10. The growing demand of the people of Bengal for educational facilities is one of the most impressive features of our age. It is in itself altogether healthy and admirable. It is increasing in strength and volume every year. But, owing in part to social conditions, and in part to the educational methods which the traditions of the last half-century have established, this powerful movement is following unhealthy and unprofitable channels; and unless new courses can be cut for it, the flood may devastate instead of fertilising the country. Thus the problem with which we have to deal is by no means purely an academic or intellectual problem. It is a social, political and economic problem of the most complex and difficult character; and the longer the solution is postponed, the more difficult it will be Its very elements cannot be understood without some understanding of the social conditions from which it has arisen. II. 11. The rapid growth in the number of university students which has taken place during the last two generations in western countries has been due very largely to the 70

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growth of industrial and commercial enterprise, which demanded, in the first place, an army of scientific experts and of administrators with wide outlook and trained imagination, and in the second place, an army of teachers able to create educated managers, clerks and workpeople. Until these demands became urgent, a quite modest number of graduates met all the needs of the old learned professions in all the western countries. But the yet more rapid increase of university students in Bengal has not been due to any such cause. It must be attributed in a large degree to social usages and traditions which are peculiar to India, and specially strong in Bengal. 12. In spite of their marked intellectual gifts, the Bengalis have not, especially since the Industrial Revolution, shown much capacity or inclination for commerce or industry. They have allowed even the retail trade of their own country to be captured, in a remarkable degree, by the Marwaris of Rajputana. The export trade of the country is mainly in the hands of Europeans, Armenians and Japanese. Since the days when the old hand-loom weaving industry was beaten by the products of machinery, the Bengali has taken very little part in the development of those large-scale industries to which, the soil and climate of his country lend themselves.5 With a few conspicuous exceptions, the coal-mines, the jute-mills and the great engineering enterprises of the Presidency are mainly controlled and directed by immigrants. Even the labour employed in mine and mill is almost wholly drawn from other provinces,6 so that in the great industrial city of Calcutta only 49 per cent, of the population is Bengali-speaking.7 Alike in industry and in commerce the main function performed by Bengalis is that of clerical labour 13. It is a complaint frequently heard among Bengalis that they are excluded from the most lucrative activities in their own country, and that this exclusion is due to prejudice. But there seems to be no tangible justification for this view. No disabilities are imposed upon Bengalis that do not equally weigh upon Marwaris, Parsis, Armenians or Japanese. The real obstacle is to be found in the strength of the tradition among the educated classes of Bengal which excludes them from practical pursuits. Hitherto tradition has forbidden men of the literate classes to take part in these occupations; and long abstention has perhaps bred among them a certain incapacity for practical callings. Fortunately there is evidence that this attitude of aloofness is breaking down.8 The very complaints of exclusion are in themselves a good sign. Still more promising are the wide-spread demands that the educational system should be given a more practical turn. Educational reforms alone will not suffice to bring about the needed change. But at least it is well that the people of Bengal should be beginning to realise that the system as it stands, into which they have thrown themselves with so much ardour, is doing nothing to help or to hasten the change, because its whole bias is still in favour of purely literary forms of training. 14. Since industry and commerce, playing, as they do, but a small part in the real life of Bengal, have hitherto contributed nothing to the development of the educational system, we must look to the other sections of the population for the elements of this remarkable movement These other sections are two: the agricultural population, and the professional classes. 71

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15. It is from agriculture that almost the whole Bengali people has always derived, and still derives, its livelihood, directly or indirectly, and the conditions of soil and climate decree that this must continue to be so, however great the commercial expansion of the future. But the agricultural needs of the country are not such as to demand or stimulate any marked educational development. The great landlords of the country—the zamindars—who were once mainly collectors of land-revenue for the State, and were turned into hereditary landowners by the Permanent Settlement, have never played in Bengal anything like the part played by the landowners of England, who filled the public schools and universities in order that they might be trained for the political leadership of the nation Nor have the zamindars been tempted to develope their estates by the application of scientific methods of agriculture. Legislation for the protection of tenant-rights has in some degree tied their hands. But in truth the rich alluvial soil of Bengal is singularly well suited to the methods of culture by the hand-labour of small-holders which have been gradually developed through centuries, and the mechanical, scientific, large-scale methods of the West are difficult to adapt to the economic and social conditions of Bengal, and perhaps also to some of its crops. Hence agriculture, equally with industry and commerce, has hitherto made no direct demand upon the educational system. 16. The great majority of the population of Bengal consists of the actual cultivators of the soil. Many of them belong to the lower castes of Hinduism, or are outside the pale of orthodox Hindu society, and these are generally illiterate. But more than half of the cultivators, especially in the prosperous regions of Eastern Bengal, are Musalmans. The Musalmans form 52.7 per cent, of the total population of the Presidency;9 in some districts of Eastern Bengal they number as much as 90 or 95 per cent.; and overwhelmingly the greater part of the Musalmans are cultivators. They also are, for the most part, illiterate; such rudiments of education as they obtain are valued mainly for religious purposes, and are commonly limited to the memorising of parts of the Quran, taught in the maktabs attached to the mosques. Hitherto the western educational movement has scarcely touched the cultivator, except through a primary school system which is, and always has been, largely out of touch with some of the economic needs of the community which it ought to serve. The cultivator has not yet learnt to value education as an equipment for his life he often fears, not without reason, that his children may be tempted away from the land by a system of training which has no bearing upon the work of the fields. 17. Yet in recent years recruits have begun to come to the University in increasing numbers even from the cultivating classes. The jute-growing lands of Eastern Bengal in particular enjoyed until the period of the war great prosperity; and this has enabled many cultivators to send those of their sons who are not needed on the land through the normal routine of high school and college leading to the degree. This is the recognised pathway to respectability and social advancement, the course that leads to Government employment, or to success in the legal profession, wherein the most respected names of Bengal are enrolled. It is the one 72

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channel of escape from the rigid social barriers imposed by the, system of caste. The adoption of academic ambitions by even a small proportion of the cultivating class is an event of great moment in the social history of Bengal. It may be the herald of a social revolution. But its immediate result, so long as the present system remains unchanged, must be to enlarge indefinitely the already swollen mass of aspirants after a purely literary training, and to increase that discontented intellectual proletariat whose rise has, been so disturbing a feature of recent years; it threatens also to drain away much of the best talent from the villages, to the detriment of the country’s supreme economic interest. The movement is but just beginning, it is not too late to transform its character and consequences by giving a more practical bent, and a more varied character, to the educational system. 18. But it is not from the agricultural classes, any more than from the commercial or industrial classes, that the eager demand for educational opportunities has come, which has led to the remarkable results described above. The classes whose sons have filled the colleges to overflowing are the middle or professional classes, commonly known as the bhadralok; and it is their needs, and their traditions, which have, more than any other cause, dictated the character of university development in Bengal. Many of the bhadralok are zammdars, great or small, or hold land on permanent tenure under zamindars; but they seldom or never cultivate their own lands, being content to draw an income from subletting. Many, again, make a livelihood by lending money to the cultivators; and the high rate of interest which they are thus able to obtain is often adduced as a reason why they have abstained from the more precarious adventures of commerce. They are thus closely connected with the agricultural community, over which they have always held a real leadership; and they are distributed in large numbers over every part of the country. 19. Relatively few of the Musalmans are counted among the professional classes. The great majority of these classes belong to the three great Hindu literary castes, the Brahmins, the Vaidyas (doctors), and the Kayasthas (writers), who are relatively more numerous in Bengal than are the corresponding castes in any other part of India. For untold centuries they have been the administrators, the priests, the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors, the writers, the clerks of the community. Every successive Government in Bengal has drawn its corps of minor officials, and often also many of its major officials, from among them, the British equally with their Muslim predecessors. They have therefore always formed an educated class, and it may safely be said that there is no class of corresponding magnitude and importance in any other country which has so continuous a tradition of literacy, extending over so many centuries. It has always been the first duty of every father in these castes, however poor he might be, to see that his sons obtained the kind of education dictated by the tradition of their caste. 20. But this traditional system of education, which has lasted for untold centuries, has always been predominantly, and in most cases exclusively, literary in character: even the Vaidyas learnt their medical science mainly from books and from oral tradition. When the British administrators began, in the early nineteenth 73

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century, to investigate the existing educational system, they found a network of elementary schools spread over every part of the country, supplemented by groups of tôls, or institutions of higher learning, where Brahmin gurus taught the traditional learning of the Sanskrit classics without fee. These institutions still exist, though in diminished numbers; there are still, for example, a number of tôls at the once famous Nawadip in the district of Nadia. They existed, of course, purely for the use of the learned castes. The Musalmans developed a similar system, though on a less elaborate scale; their maktabs for the elementary religious education of the many, and their madrassahs for the more advanced instruction of maulvis, confined themselves to the sacred learning in the Arabic tongue, and to the court language of Persian, which the Muslim conquerors had established in India; and so long as Persian remained the language of the courts, as it did until 1837, these schools were to some extent used also by Hindus, anxious to qualify for Government employment. 21. Thus both among the literate Hindu castes and among the Musalmans, the traditional systems of learning were almost exclusively literary and religious in character. They consisted in the memorising of vast masses of ancient writings, and commentaries thereon, handed down from generation to generation. They cultivated, in an extraordinary degree, the memory-power of the classes which had pursued these studies for centuries; and the influence of these methods was necessarily deeply felt when these classes began to devote their attention to western learning. Both in their concentration upon purely literary studies, and in their reliance upon memory-work, the indigenous systems of education helped to fix the character which was to be assumed by western education in India. 22. It was a great epoch in the history of India when the intellectual powers trained by so many centuries of culture began to be turned from the ancient learning of the East to the new learning of the West. The habits and traditions of the bhadralok made it natural that, when they seized upon the western system, they should mould it to suit their needs, emphasise its purely literary side, and leave undeveloped its more practical sides. But the transition could not be made in a moment. For half a century the new system competed with the old, and the allegiance of the bhadralok was divided between them, probably not without misgivings. What we have witnessed during the more recent years has been, in effect, the adoption by the Hindu bhadralok of the new western system as, in practice, a substitute for the old, and as the necessary training which all their sons must undergo. Meanwhile the Musalmans of the bhadralok class, for the most part, stood aside from the new system. Long accustomed to regard themselves as the ruling race, they retained their devotion to the traditional Islamic studies in Arabic and Persian, which they had hitherto found not merely culturally valuable, but also practically useful. In recent years they have increasingly demanded a fuller share of the new learning. And beyond them we see the mass of the cultivators, stirring at last from their age-long acquiescence in unchanging modes of life. 23. Such, in broad outline, is the explanation of the remarkable movement with which we have to deal. The problem before us is as inspiring as it is complex and 74

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difficult. We have to consider whether the system now existing in Bengal is capable of meeting the demand, which, has developed so rapidly in recent years, and will certainly develope yet more rapidly in the future, and, if it is not so capable, how it can best be modified. But these are questions which cannot be intelligently answered unless we first gain a clear idea of the stages through which the existing system has passed, and the ideals at which it has aimed; and unless we also analyse carefully its actual working.

CHAPTER VI. THE MUSALMANS AND THEIR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS. I—The problem. 1. Musalmans have their own traditions and ideals—traditions and ideals which are the common property of Islam but which cannot be wholly identical with those of any other community. Prominent among the ideals which sway the ordinary Musalman is the conviction that nothing would compensate him for the loss of conscious membership of the great Muslim community of the world. So, while the Bengali Musalman is genuinely anxious that his community should reap the full benefits of secular education., he is not prepared to take those benefits at the price of any real sacrifice of Islamic tradition or custom. Certain things he has with reluctance foregone; others he may concede; but reluctance there will always be, and that reluctance will be all the more real, because it is not so much individual as corporate, communal rather than personal in its instincts and unity. The feeling of the Musalman is tinged with a not unnatural pride. His traditional culture is the culture which was evolved during the great days of Islam. It recalls the University of Baghdad and Haroun-al-Raschid. It is something for a boy in a remote village in Eastern Bengal to find that he is following the same line of study as that taught in the Azhar Mosque at Cairo. “It has to be borne in mind,” writes Maulvi Abdul Karim, an ex-Inspector of Schools and a protagonist of English education, “that in Islamic countries the education that makes great statesmen and administrators is similar to that imparted in the madrassahs in this country.”10 To-day the Hindu, like the Musalman, looks out on the world which lies outside India and feels the impulse of a more than national life. But his ideals spring from the soil of India. To him India is the abiding background of his thoughts and hopes. The Indian Musalman, like the Hindu, is an Indian patriot and feels towards India as towards his motherland. But rooted in his heart are other ideals also, the ideals of Islam, the conception of a society at once cosmopolitan and exclusive, traditions which carry his imagination back to a past which holds, not only Indian history but much beside. “We beg to point out”, wrote the Musalmans of Calcutta in a petition which, they brought to us, “that no scheme of reconstruction can be useful or beneficial, unless it recognises the existence of conflicting ideals and conflicting interests in almost every sphere of life—social, political, and religious’—among the different sections of the population The

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principle and practice of education which might have proved beneficial in a country with uniform people, uniform interests and uniform ideals, must necessarily be modified to suit the special circumstances that exist in this country.”11

2. The chapter on the education of Musalmans in the Quinquennial Review of Education in Bengal, 1912–17, begins as follows:—12 “The Moslem population of Bengal is 23,989,719 out of a total of 45,483,077, that is to say, 52 7 per cent, of the total population of Bengalis Moslem Of the total Moslem population 22,988,168 are illiterate, while 62,301 only are literate in English This review records a certain amount of progress, but the figures are not reassuring It is impossible to lay too much stress on the urgency of raising the standard of literacy in the Moslem community of Bengal. The ideals of this community differ to some extent from those of the other inhabitants of the Presidency Their history and traditions are stored away in Arabic and Persian manuscripts They are followers of Islam and the illiterate are readily swayed by maulvis, who profess to be learned in Moslem law and to speak as its interpreters The largest Moslem population in Bengal is in the northern and eastern districts of the Presidency. The people of these parts are generally conservative, and their only concern outside their own immediate personal interests is the propagation of Islam The successful Moslem cultivator of these parts who desires to educate his son will send him to a madrassah to learn Moslem law, literature, logic, rhetoric and philosophy and to study Hadís and Tafsír.13 He is not interested in the study of Arabic for its literature, but only because it is the language of the Koran If a Moslem in Eastern Bengal wants to endow an educational institution, he founds a madrassah and puts it under the charge of maulvis, who claim to be versed in Islamic lore. One thing which it is necessary to emphasise is that the backwardness of this community is primarily due to the apathy of the people in the matter of education, and until this indifference is removed progress is impossible. Moslems represent more than half the total population of Bengal and until they are educated sufficiently to be able to take an interest in the affairs of public life, it is difficult to conceive of Bengal as a part of a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. Indeed it seems that; the only possible way in which these people can be made to realise their privileges and responsibilities as subjects of the British Empire is by giving them every facility for English education”

3. The great disparity between the educational progress of the Hindus and the Musalmans attracted the attention of the Indian Education Commission of 1882. They pointed out that, whereas 32.3 per cent of the population of the provinces of Bengal and Assam, as they were then constituted, was Muslim, the percentage of Musahnans under instruction in all schools of which the Provincial Education Department had cognisance was 14.4 only They quoted the Bengal Director of Public Instruction as having reported to them that— “During the last five years, out of 3,499 candidates who passed the entrance examination from these provinces, 132 or 3 8 per cent, only were Musalmans They ought to have been ten-fold more numerous Out of 900 passed for the first arts in the same period, Musalmans gamed only 11 passes or 1–2 percent., and out of 429 passes for the B.A., they gamed only 5 or 11 per cent. Hence, not only the number of Musalmans who pass the entrance is less than one-tenth of what it ought to be, but this painful inferiority steadily increases in the higher examinations”14

4. During the 35 years which have passed since the Indian Education Commission wrote their report, there have been many and great changes in India. While 76

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the Commissioners were still deliberating, Mr. Ameer Ali published an article in the Nineteenth Century in which he expressed the conviction that “unless effective measures of reform are adopted, and that without delay, the unsatisfactory condition of the Muhammadans threatens to become a source of anxiety and danger to British administration in India.”15 About this time Sir Syed Ahmad entered the lists against the general opinion of his co-religionists. By popular lectures and in the columns of his “two journals he fought the view which advocated an almost exclusive devotion on the part of Musalnans to an oriental education of a traditional type. He founded several associations and ultimately organised the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference. His greatest achievement was the establishment of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh. But he was not alone in his work. Writing in the Fifth Quinquennial Review of Education in India (1902–1907), Mr H. W. Orange, who was then Director General of Education in India, recorded the view that among the causes contributory to the improvements which were then taking place in the education of Musalmans “a high place must be assigned to the propaganda carried on by public-spirited leaders such as the late Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk and to the Muhammadan educational conferences annually organised by them.” All this has not been without effect. The Musalmans throughout the length and breadth of India have been deeply stirred. But the difficulties are deep-seated. The following passage in which the Indian Education Commission discussed the backwardness of the Bengali Musalmans might almost have been written yesterday:— “Various causes, some general and some particular, were assigned by the officers consulted as the obstacles which had barred the progress of education, both higher and lower. Among the general causes assigned by them were the apathy of the Musalman race; their pride, their religious exclusiveness; the love of their own literature among those of them who cared for any education at all; the idea so persistently held that education ought to be a free gift. Among the particular causes, a want of sympathy between Hindu teachers and Musalman pupils; a want of consideration in the arrangements of the Education Department and, perhaps above all, the depressed condition of the bulk of Bengali Musalmans,”16

5. If an Education Commission, with the whole of India as its scope, were now to investigate the reason why in the matter of education the Muslim community is still lagging behind the Hindu, we doubt whether they would get much nearer the truth than the Commission of 1882. After discussing the deterrent causes—a subject of debate, the report explains, even among the Musalmans themselves—it suggested that a candid Musalman would probably admit, that the most powerful factors are to be found in pride of race, a memory of bygone superiority, religious fears, and a not unnatural attachment to the learning of Islam.17 6. The recommendations recorded by the Indian Education Commission in connexion with the education of Musalmans were concerned mainly with secondary and primary education. The Commission proposed that Muslim education should be helped by special grants, scholarships and free studentships, by encouraging the addition of secular subjects to the curricula of Muslim schools; by prescribing special standards for Muslim primary schools; by the use of 77

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Hindustani as the principal medium of instruction in many primary and middle Muslim schools; by better provision for instruction in Hindustani and Persian; by the encouragement of higher education among Musalmans; by the training of Muslim teachers; by the appointment of Muslim school inspectors; by devoting special attention to Muslim education in the annual report of the Department of Public Instruction; by the encouragement of associations for the prosecution of Muslim education; and by the distribution to Musalmans of a larger share of Government patronage. 7. In 1871 Dr. W. W. (later Sir William) Hunter had published a book on the Musalmans of India, in which he attributed the general indifference towards western education evinced by the Bengali Muslim community to three main causes: (a) the want of Muslim teachers, (b) the absence of the provision of Muslim languages, and (c) the absence of religious education. “The truth, is”, he wrote, “that our system of public instruction ignores the three most powerful instincts of the Musalman heart. In the first place, it conducts education in the vernacular of Bengal, a language which the educated Muhammadans despise, and by means of Hindu teachers, whom the whole Muhammadan community hates The Bengali school master talks his own dialect and a vile Urdu, the latter of which is to him an acquired language almost as much as it is to ourselves. Moreover, his gentle and timid character unfits him to maintain order among Musalman boys, ‘Nothing on earth’, said a Muhammadan husbandman recently to an English official, ‘would induce me to send my boy to a Bengali teacher.’ In the second place, our rural schools seldom enable a Muhammadan to learn the tongues necessary for his holding a respectable position in life, and for the performance of his religious duties. Every Muhammadan gentleman must have some knowledge of Persian, and Persian is a language unknown even in our higher class district schools Every Musalman, from the peasant to the prince, ought to say his prayers in one of the sacred languages, Persian or Arabic, and this our schools have never recognized. . . . In the third place, our system of public instruction makes no provision for the religious education of the Muhammadan youth. It overlooks the fact that among the Hindus a large and powerful caste has come down from time’ immemorial for supplying this part of a boy’s training, while among the Muhammadans no separate body of clergy exists Every head of a Musalman household is supposed to know the duties of his religion, and to be his own family priest Public ministrations are indeed conducted at the mosques, but it is the glory of Islam that its temples are not made with, hands, and that its ceremonies can be performed anywhere upon God’s earth or under His heavens. A system of purely secular education is adapted to very few nations In the opinion of many deeply thinking men, it has signally failed in Ireland, and it is certainly altogether unsuited to the alliterate and fanatical peasantry of Muhammadan Bengal.”18

8. During the Muslim rule in Bengal there were madrassahs all over the country, and, as Maulvi Abdul Karim says, “every mosque was a madrassah in miniature.”19 Arabic scholars taught the theology, the law and the literature of Islam, and asked for no remuneration from their pupils. With the break up of the Muslim power most of these institutions collapsed But in the time of Warren Hastings and until 1837 Persian still continued to be the language of the law courts, and when Warren Hastings established the Calcutta Madrassah in 1782, he did so mainly for the purpose of training Musalmans to be officers in the East India Company’s

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service. When in 1837 Persian was discontinued as the language of the courts, the Calcutta Madrassah and other institutions which had been founded on similar lines ceased to be of value as training grounds for the public service. Other schools and colleges were open to them, but the Musalmans held aloof from English education, which they regarded with suspicion not unmixed with contempt, as being secular not religious, technical rather than liberal—not in fact, in their opinion, the education of a gentleman. The feeling of the community has been modified. During the last few years the Musalmans of Bengal have taken more and more advantage of the ordinary courses of instruction. Their enrolment in secondary schools and colleges has considerably increased. It has been suggested to us that this development is due to economic pressure as well as to an increased regard for the education which secondary schools and colleges impart. We have referred elsewhere to the pressure on the soil, which forces the cultivator to look for the support of some of his sons to callings which take them away from the land.20 The small landholder moreover finds that his rents do not go so far as they went once, and that more of his dependents are compelled to earn something for themselves. In spite of this a considerable proportion, of the Musalmans under instruction are still pupils in maktabs and madrassahs. Whenever private Muslim educational enterprise is concerned, it tends to develope purely Islamic institutions. Muslim associations often ask Government to increase the facilities for Muslim boys, but they plead at the same time for special Muslim institutions, special text-books, special inspecting officers. This means that the community is anxious for a system of education which will enable it to preserve its social and religious personality and its communal traditions. 9. The position was described by the Committee which was appointed by the Government of Bengal in 1914, and to which reference is made in the next section of this chapter. “Although there has been a tendency during the past few years for Moslems to take more advantage of the ordinary courses of instruction, and although the number of Moslems in various kinds of schools has increased, yet wherever private Moslem enterprise is concerned, it tends to develope purely Islamic institutions The reason is that there is still a strong feeling in the community that a separate system of education will preserve the social and religious independence of Moslems. We fully realise this tendency and at the same time we feel that, with the limited funds which are at the disposal of the Government for the encouragement of education, it is impracticable to insist that a Moslem boy shall, throughout his educational career, be educated in schools intended exclusively for Moslems. At the same time we cannot ignore the fact that a large section of the community regards general educational institutions with suspicion and we therefore think that it is still necessary for Government to aid and in some cases to maintain a number of separate institutions for Moslems In this connexion we record the following recommendation:— That, while it is necessary to maintain special institutions for Moslems, it is undesirable to develope further a system of education for this community separate from that of other communities The existing systems should be carefully examined to see where they fail to satisfy members of the community, and necessary modifications should be introduced.”21

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This general statement of policy, which should be read in connexion with the specific recommendations which followed it, applied to the education of boys and men and not to the education of girls and women. II.—The Progress of Muslim Education in Bengal from 1905 to 1917. 10. In 1905 the Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, was constituted This province ceased to exist on the 1st April 1912. During this period she educational progress made by the Musalmans of Eastern Bengal was marked Among the measures adopted by the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam for the encouragement of the education of Musalmans, the following were the most important22— (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

the introduction of Urdu teaching into selected primary schools; the provision of liberal grants-in-aid; the reservation of special scholarships and free studentships; the provision of extended hostel accommodation; and the appointment of a larger proportion of Musalmans to the educational services.

11. As regards hostels the following extract from the resolution of the Government of Bengal on the Quinquennial Review of Education in Eastern Bengal for the period 1908–1913 is of interest— “The question of hostel accommodation is of urgent importance. The great majority of Muhammadans live in the villages, and they experience great difficulty in finding homes for their boys who attend school in the towns. Suitable accommodation amidst desirable surroundings is expensive or not available, and parents are naturally reluctant to send that boys away to live in conditions which may be harmful to them. Many, it is believed, are prevented from educating their sons by these obstacles. The remedy lies in providing adequate hostel accommodation for Muhammadan boys in connexion with the schools Special efforts have been made during the quinquennium to effect an improvement in this direction, with the result that every college and nearly every Government high school has now a Muhammadan hostel. Private schools have been encouraged to follow suit. It is satisfactory to note a readiness among the Muhammadans themselves to provide funds for the establishment of hostels in towns where there are large aided schools.”23

12. Shortly after the territorial readjustment had been announced Lord Hardinge visited Dacca. On his return from there lie received in Calcutta on the 16th February 1912 a deputation, headed by Dr. (now Sir) Rash Behary Ghose. In reply to this deputation His Excellency said:— “When I visited Dacca I found a widespread apprehension, particularly among the Muhammadans, who form the majority of the population, lest the attention which the partition of Bengal secured for the eastern provinces should be relaxed, and that there might be a set-back in educational progress It was to allay this not unreasonable apprehension that I stated to a deputation of Muhammadan gentlemen that the Government of India were so much, impressed with the necessity of promoting education in a province which had made

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such good progress during the past few years that we have decided to recommend to the Secretary of State the constitution of a university at Dacca and the appointment of a special officer for education in Eastern Bengal.”24

The whole question of the proposed Dacca University is discussed in Chapter XXXIII of this report. 13. In 1913 the Government of India asked the various local Governments to consider and report on certain general questions affecting the education of Musalmans. The Bengal Government appointed a committee to consider the suggestions made by the Government of India Mr. W. W. Hornell presided over this committee as Director of Public Instruction. 14. We quote below what the Secretary to the Government of India in the Education Department said in his letter with regard to secondary and collegiate education (the italics are in the original):— “The reasons which have retarded the spread of secondary education among the Muhammadans are the poverty of the community, the linguistic difficulty, the demand for religious instruction and want of Muhammadan representation on the Governing Bodies of educational institutions The first has been to a large extent met by special Government scholarships and by endowments. This is essentially a matter for the local Governments and the community themselves I am merely to observe that in part of the country where Muhammadans are slow to enter institutions for technical and industrial timing (and it has been noticed that very few Muhammadans have been selected for the State Technical Scholarships) it may be found desirable to offer some special facilities by way of stipends or scholarships. As to the second, it is alleged that Muhammadans suffer when they have to study English through the medium of a prak**tic vernacular with which they are little acquainted. Special schools or classes may go far to meet this difficulty. The demand for religious instruction can be arranged for in privately-managed hostels attached to Government institutions. It is represented that, in certain parts of the country, the great majority of secondary schools are managed by Hindu bodies, and it was recently observed that, among the 100 ordinary members of the Calcutta Senate, only six were Muhammadans The establishment of special Muhammadan schools and colleges would simplify these matters But this is an expedient which for financial reasons cannot be adopted generally. And, where it is not feasible, a good deal may be done by reserving a certain number of vacancies for Muhammadan pupils in institutions which, by reason of their reputation, draw many applicants for admission and by safeguarding the interests of the community in other ways. A subsidiary difficulty which may sometimes present itself is that of advance from a semi-secular muktab to an institution of higher grade This, however, is a matter of arrangement in the codes of the various provinces. The suggestions which the Government of India think may be of practical utility in the matter of secondary and collegiate education are— (i) The improvement of existing institutions for Muhammadans, such as the Calcutta Madrassah, the Islamia College, Lahore, and Islamia schools (ii) The establishment of separate Muhammadan institutions in places where this can be done without detriment to efficiency or discipline and without unreasonable expense (iii) When this is not possible (and it is apprehended it will but seldom be possible) the addition to the staff of a school of a teacher or teachers who will be able either to teach classes in English through the medium of Urdu, or to give special help to Muhammadan boys where a knowledge of some other vernacular is desirable either for the study of English or for general reasons

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(iv) The maintenance of hostels for Muhammadans under private management with religious teaching (v) The appointment of a reasonable number of Muhammadans to the committees (where such exist) of Government institutions and to the governing bodies of aided institutions (vi) The provision of Muhammadan teachers and inspectors”25

15. The Committee examined the working of the secondary-school system in close detail and recorded in their report no less than sixty-seven resolutions embodying the requirements of the Musalnians with regard to it. The chief demands were (1) that there should be more schools in centres convenient to Musalmans and an easier access for Muslim pupils to schools already in existence; (2) that Musalmans should be more adequately represented on the governing bodies of schools; (3) that there should be more Muslim head masters and assistant masters; (4) that there should be more adequate and effective provision for the teaching of Arabic, Persian and Urdu, (5) that there should be more scholarships and free-studentships; (6) that there should be more hostels and that these should be under the supervision of properly qualified Musalmans; (7) that there should be an increase in the number of the special officers of the Education Department charged with the special task of fostering the education of Musalmans (such officers are at present the Assistant Director of Public Instruction for Muhammadan Education and the special Muslim inspecting officers), and that the work of these officers should be so arranged as to make their influence most widely and expeditiously effective. 16. On one matter the Committee laid special emphasis. It pointed out that the secondary school system comprised (a) Government schools, (b) schools managed by local bodies, (c) aided schools and (d) unaided schools, and observed that whereas the Department of Public Instruction had some control over Government schools and schools managed by local bodies and could impose on aided schools certain regulations by way of conditions involved in the acceptance of grants, the authority of the Department over unaided schools was slight; and that the real control over high schools generally rested with the University of Calcutta. In the face of this situation the Committee found it necessary to record in their report that “even unaided schools recognised by the University are public institutions and as such the University should insist on their being made acceptable to all classes and communities of His Majesty’s subjects in Bengal.”26 17. This suggests a general consideration which is of importance We have referred elsewhere to a certain popular suspicion of Government control over education.27 The Muslim community does not appear to share in this suspicion; on the contrary it still looks with confidence to Government and appears reluctant to entrust its destinies to any popularly constituted body. A note submitted to the Commission by Nawab Syed Nawabaly Chaudhury contains the following passage— “The appointment of a board for secondary education in order to advise Government about the distribution of grants and other matters of policy, was first proposed in 1914

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during the lifetime of the late Nawab of Dacca. He considered the scheme detrimental to the interests of Muhammadans and, on account of his opposition, the proposal was dropped. Last year again a resolution for creating an advisory board for secondary education was moved in the Bengal Legislative Council and all Muhammadan members and the member in charge of the Education portfolio opposed it and, consequently, the resolution fell through. The Muhammadans of Bengal consider it a question of vital importance in their own interest that the distribution of grants and the control of educational policy should rest with Government The creation of a large secondary education board, with powers to distribute grants and to advise Government on questions of policy, will be detrimental to the interests of Muhammadans Muhammadans will never be able to derive their full share from the institutions maintained or started by public funds, until a special treatment, similar to that accorded by Lord Hardinge and Lord Carmichael, be reserved to them. Muhammadans are afraid that the special facilities which now exist in secondary education will no longer exist, if secondary education be entrusted to a board. . . . From the experience of the University of Calcutta Muhammadans will be afraid that the advantages and special facilities which they now enjoy, and which they expect to get in future, will all be set aside by the board should it unfortunately be created.”28

18. As regards the language problem, the Committee pointed out that, while a Bengali Hindu who takes a high school course has only to read three languages, English, Sanskrit and Bengali, a Bengali Muslim boy who takes the same course has to read as many as five languages, viz., English, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Bengali, and that this burden of language has told seriously upon, the general educational progress of the Musalmans of Bengal. To lighten the burden, the Committee recommended that Urdu should be recognised by the University of Calcutta as a second language fox those whose vernacular is not Urdu.29 The deputation of the Musalmans of Calcutta which appeared before us made on this question the following statement:— “The Muhammadan leaders have come to the conclusion that though we cannot drop the study of any one of the five languages it is not necessary for every individual boy to study all of them The Muhammadan boy whose mother tongue is Bengali should receive his primary education in Bengali and should study a classical language, Arabic, Persian or Urdu . . . . . We can confidently assert that Urdu for a Bengali-speaking boy is even more difficult than Persian is for an Urdu-speaking boy.”30

19. The present regulations for the matriculation examination of the University of Calcutta prescribe that male candidates (some exceptions are made for women and girls) (a) should be examined in other subjects of which English is one, and in one of the following languages:—Sanskrit, Pali, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Classical Armenian, Classical Tibetan, Greek, Latin, and (b) that they should be required to write a composition in one of the following vernacular languages:— Bengali, Hindi, Uriya, Assamese, Urdu, Burmese, Modern Armenian, Modern Tibetan, Khasi. If the vernacular of a candidate is a language not included in the above list he has to take an alternative paper, either (i) in English composition, or (ii) in French, or (iii) in German. The proposal is that Urdu should be added to the languages under (a) above for those boys whose vernacular is not Urdu and who therefore do not offer it under (b).

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20. The Committee passed twenty-six resolutions on collegiate education and described the general position of the Musalmans in this regard in the following words:— “We notice with regret that, out of 14 746 students studying in arts colleges in Calcutta, only 1,154 are Moslems, and we appeal to Government to take such action as will enable Moslems to have a greater share in the facilities which are offered for college education. We consider the poverty of the community, its inadequate representation on the Senate, Syndicate and boards of studies of the University, as also on the governing bodies of colleges, the non-affiliation of colleges in Arabic and Persian, and the lack of hostel accommodation for Moslem college students are the chief reasons why Moslems do not take greater advantage of the collegiate system”31

21. The Committee recommended that no college should be given a grant-inaid unless there are professors of Arabic and Persian and Urdu on its staff, and that in order to enable the aided colleges to make this provision increased grants should be given where necessary. 22. In Chapter X of their report, which deals with religious and moral instruction, the Committee insisted that moral education for Musalmans cannot be separated from religious education. They desired to enforce religious observances in Muslim hostels and they urged the importance of Muslim pupils in all schools and colleges wearing their distinctive dress, including a cap.32 The question of religious instruction in hostels is discussed in Chapters XIX and XXXIX of this report. 23. The Governor of Bengal in Council dealt with the Committee’s report in his resolution No 1227-Edn, dated 3rd August 1916. On the general question of the educational progress of the Musalmans of the Presidency, the resolution said:— “The inequality of the progress in education made by the Hindu and Muhammadan communities is patent. The comparatively slow advance made by the Muhammadans more especially in the higher branches of education, has prevented them taking as full a part in the political, professional and industrial life of the province as the Hindus; and many of the present administrative difficulties in Bengal are due to the educational inequality between the two communities Comparatively few Muhammadans are engaged in professional pursuits They are largely outnumbered by the Hindus in industries and commerce The deficiency of Muhammadans qualified for appointment to administrative posts is a not infrequent source of embarrassment to Government Their disabilities are largely due to their having failed to keep pace with the Hindus in the matter of education The development of the country, in political as well as in other directions, is dependent on the uniform educational progress of the two mam constituents of the population and on their equal capacity to take advantage both of the opportunities now open to them and of the fuller opportunities which may be available hereafter The Government of India are anxious that all reasonable facilities should be provided for the education of Muhammadans, and the Governor in Council is convinced that it is in the interests both of the Government and the people as a whole that the Muhammadans who, in spite of recent efforts, have still much lost ground to make up, should receive such special facilities as may be necessary to enable them to benefit as fully as the Hindus from the educational institutions which are maintained, wholly or partially, out of public funds”

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24. As regards religious instruction, the Governor in Council expressed his sympathy with the desire of the Committee, but pointed out that the whole question of religious and moral instruction in schools was then (as it still is) under the consideration of the Government of India, and that, pending the issue of orders by that Government, the local Government were unable to take any action. 25. The Muslim deputations and representations which Ave have received (see Section VII below) laid stress on the subject of religious instruction and observances. The general contentions were (a) that religious instruction should be included in the courses of the University; (b) that provision should be made for religious instruction in all hostels in which Muslim students reside and that in all such hostels and in all colleges a room should be set apart for the prayers of the Musalmans; (c) that provision should be made for the religious instruction of Musalmans according to the tenets and practices of Islam in all those high English schools in which the students are wholly or mainly Muslim.33 26. The Governor in Council agreed to the introduction of the teaching of elementary Urdu in schools in order to facilitate the study of the Quran; the introduction of books, written in current Bengali, dealing with subjects of interest to the Muslim community; the direct appointment of a certain number of specially qualified Muslim head masters to Government high schools; the reservation of seats for Muslim boys in high schools and certain relaxations, in favour of Musalmans, in the rules regarding free studentships. 27. On the language difficulty the resolution said:— “His Excellency in Council has read with interest the remarks of the Committee on the difficulties which the Moslem community experience in connexion with the languages which its members desire to study owing to then association with Muhaminadan religion and history. He will forward to the University for their consideration the recommendation that Urdu should be included among the second languages which can be taken for the matriculation examination.”

The University has not as yet seen its way to make any change in the matriculation conditions referred to in paragraph 19 above. 28. Other demands put forward in this connexion are that Arabic should be excluded from all the Persian courses prescribed for examinations of the University; that Sanskrit quotations should be excluded from Bengali text-books;34 that a separate board should be established in connexion with the study of Bengali and that Musalmans should be adequately represented on it35 (the basis of this demand is the alleged rejection of books written in Bengali by Muslim authors as also of books which deal with Muslim traditions and heroes); that the study of the vernacular as a distinct subject should be excluded from the courses of the University.36 29. In the matter of hostel accommodation the Governor in Council desired that the Musalmans should be in as favourable a position and have the same facilities as Hindus. He accepted the principle that Government should establish hostels for Muslim, students in connexion with Government high schools, where the number 85

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of such pupils is sufficient to justify separate accommodation. He pointed out, however, that this was entirely a question of the funds at the disposal of the Government. Some of the representations which have been made to us contain complaints about the inadequacy of the hostel accommodation available for Muslim students in connexion with colleges not only in Calcutta but in the mufassal also. This point is dealt with in paragraph 48 below. 30. As regards collegiate education the Governor in Council said:— “The recommendations of the Committee on the subject of collegiate education mostly concern matters on which the Governor in Council is not competent to pass orders The contention of the Committee that in spite of the growing recognition of the value of hostels, the accommodation for Muhanmmadan students is inadequate is unfortunately only too true.”

So far as Government colleges were concerned the Governor in Council accepted the suggestion that a certain number of seats should be reserved for Muslim students. “The Governor in Council,” the resolution runs, “is prepared to reserve a definite proportion of places in Government colleges for Muhammadan students, and he accepts the suggestion that the ratio should be 25 per cent, which will for the present be regarded as the minimum and be liable to modification from time to time He will further consider whether similar action can be taken to ensure that Muhammadan students will be regarded as having a preferential claim to vacancies in aided colleges up to the same limit.”

The reservation for Muslim students of a certain number of vacancies in aided ‘arts colleges’ has since been ordered. 31. Some of the Muslim deputations which waited upon us complained that this order of the Government of Bengal which reserved for Musalmans 25 per cent, of the vacancies in colleges is not observed37 The number and percentage of Muslim students in the various types of university colleges in Bengal will be found in paragraph 45 below. Demands are put forward that the minimum of 25 per cent of vacancies should be raised. The percentages suggested are 30, 33, 40 and 50 according to the proportion of the Muslim population to the total population, of the area concerned.38 32. In order to increase the number of Muslim teachers, the Governor in Council agreed that the adequate representation of Musalmans on the managing committees and on the teaching staffs of schools should be a condition of grant-in-aid.39 33. It “is convenient at this point to sum up the more important arrangements which have been made by the Government of Bengal to facilitate and encourage the education of the Musalmans of the Presidency. The summary which follows is taken almost word for word from the Fifth Quinquennial Review of Education in Bengal.— (a) Twenty-five per cent, of the vacancies each year in all Government and aided colleges must be reserved for Musalmans. (b) In all Government schools a certain percentage of the vacancies each year in each class must be reserved for Musalmans. This percentage is fixed by the head masters in consultation with the divisional inspectors of schools and has reference not only to the Musalmans in the school, but also to the Muslim population of the locality

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(c) In order to provide funds for special scholarships in colleges and high schools, Government undertook the entire responsibility for the support of the madrassahs at Dacca, Chittagong, Hooghly and Rajshahi, thus setting free from the Mohsin fund40 a certain amount of money belonging to the fund. This amount has been utilised to establish a number of stipends tenable by Musahnans in arts and professional colleges and in madrassahs. (d) In order to remove, as far as possible, the disabilities of Muslim pupils in ordinary schools and colleges, the Government of Bengal have tried to insist on there being a Muslim element on the staff of every school, in addition to the teachers of Arabic and Persian. Annual reports have now to be submitted by the appointing authorities to the Director of Public Instruction, showing how vacancies during the year have been filled. A similar procedure is prescribed in respect to the appointment of clerks in offices (e) An Assistant Director of Public Instruction and five special assistant inspectors for Muslim education were appointed. Such appointments are not found outside Bengal (f ) In order to allow Muslim boys in colleges and schools to perform their jumma prayers, orders have been issued (1) that in all Government colleges work should be suspended for an hour about midday on Fridays, (2) that in Government schools the managing committees shall decide whether (a) the school shall be closed for a half-day on Fridays instead of on Saturdays (in this case schools would close on Fridays at 12-30 P.M.) or (6) work should be suspended for one hour on Fridays (g) Orders have been issued to divisional inspectors of schools to insist on the appointment of maulvis (viz, Muslim teachers of Arabic and Persian) where, in view of the Muslim population of the locality, a large number of Muslim pupils might be expected in the school (h) In order to mitigate the difficulties of Muslim students in Calcutta, a non-collegiate hostel with accommodation for 73 boarders was opened by the Bengal Government in Wellington Street, Calcutta, in July 1915. At the request of the Muslim community this hostel has been called the Taylor Hostel after Mr. J. A. Taylor, the Assistant Director of Public Instruction for Muhammadan Education; Government has also provided additional accommodation for 70 boarders in two wings which were added to the Baker Madrassah Hostel (the hostel for college students attached to the Calcutta Madrassah) (i) During the quinquennium a sum of Rs 84,000 a year was earmarked from 1914–15 from one of the recuring Imperial grants for the improvement of the education of Musalmans with special reference to what is known as the reformed madrassah scheme (see paragraph 60 of this chapter and Chapter XVI) This allotment has enabled the Education Department to increase the grants of all the six aided senior madrassahs and seven aided junior madrassaha and also to aid 55 junior madrassahs which had previously not been aided. ( j) During the quinquennium a scheme was worked out for establishing a Government ‘arts college’ in Calcutta for Musalmans. This scheme has been held up mainly on financial grounds The original Dacca University scheme included a college for Musalmans (see Chapter XXXIII of this report); (k) Facilities have been provided for Muslim students in connexion with professional colleges— (i)

The Civil Engineering College, Sibpur—The dearth of Muslim students in the various departments of this college was said to be chiefly due to the heavy charges that the students had to bear on account of messing. In order to remove this disability the Governing Body of the College proposed in 1914 that the charges on account of establishment, lighting, and superintendence of the Muslim hostel should be defrayed by Government, and that stipends should be paid to Muslim students according to a sliding scale These proposals were sanctioned by the Bengal Government who, in terms of then resolution no. 4147, dated the 16th November 1915, created four Mohsin

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stipends [see under (c) above] of Rs. 10 each tenable for two years in the civil engineering department of the College. (ii) The Medical College, Calcutta—The Government Resolution just referred to created six Mohsin stipends of Rs 15 a month and made them tenable in the Medical College [see under (c) above].41

III.—The present position. 34. The following table, which is based on the census of 1911, compares for each division of the Bengal Presidency, the number of Hindu and Muslim males and females (a) who are literate and (b) who are literate in English.42— Number of literate per 1,000 MUSALMANS

HINDUS

Division Dacca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Presidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Burdwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chittagong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rajshahi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Males

Females

Males

Females

238 8 249 8 208 4 262 7 130 5

28 5 35 5 11 6 20 1 94

60 1 96 1 150 4 80 3 76 7

15 32 70 22 17

Number of literate in English per 1,000 Division Dacca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Presidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Burdwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chittagong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rajshahi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

MUSALMANS

HINDUS Males

Females

Males

Females

36 0 62 5 26 5 30 3 15 4

6 18 6 5 2

37 79 12 4 46 34

03 1 4 04 02

It will be noticed that in the Eastern Bengal divisions, where the Muslim population is much the largest, the proportion of Muslim literates is much smaller than in the Presidency and Burdwan divisions. 35. According to the recently issued Quinquennial Review of Education in Bengal the total number of Musalmans under instruction on the 31st March 1917 in all classes of institutions both public and private was 864,195 Of these 817,105 are returned as in colleges and schools of public instruction, viz., institutions working in accordance with courses and standards recognised, or prescribed, either by the Education Department or by the University. 36. The number of Muslim students in ‘arts colleges’ (i.e., institutions teaching for the ordinary university degrees in arts and science) was 1,639 or 8.8 per cent, of the total number of students of all creeds, as against 810 or 7.3 per cent. in 1912. In professional colleges the number was 303 or 6.8 per cent. of the total 88

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number of students, as against 94 or 4.2 per cent. in 1912. In high schools the number was 45,179 or 20 5 per cent. of the total number, as against 26,629 or 18.3 per cent. in 1912. In middle English schools the number was 54,039 or 33.2 per cent. of the total, as against 43,238 or 34.1 per cent., and in middle vernacular schools 8,258 or 34.1 per cent., as against 10,598 or 29.7 per cent. in 1912.43 In primary schools Musalmans almost hold their own. Their number was 680,273 or 49.5 per cent. of the total of pupils under instruction, as against 525,980 or 42.8 per cent. of the total in 1912. 37. To sum up the position as regards schools of public instruction, on the 31st March 1917 the Musalmans represented less than one-fifth of the total number of pupils in the high stage, less than a quarter of the pupils in the middle stage and just over a fifth of the pupils in the high and middle stages of school education taken together. In other words, though, the Musalmans represent 52.7 per cent. of the population of the Bengal Presidency, their children constitute only about a fifth of the boys and girls who are receiving a secondary school education. On the other hand 56.6 per cent. of the children receiving primary education including the primary grade in secondary schools are Musalmans. 38. Of the total 817,105, which represents Muslim pupils in colleges and schools of public instruction, no less than 228,438 or 27.9 per cent. were in those Muslim primary schools (maktabs) which give some secular instruction according to recognised departmental curricula, or in madrassahs which teach the courses prescribed by the Education Department (viz., 2,07,495 in maktabs and 20,945 in madrassahs). 39. The ‘private’ institutions which are included in the official statistics are institutions which do not work in accordance with courses or standards prescribed, or recognised, either by the Education Department or by the University The statistics for 1916–17 show 62,920 pupils as being in those institutions in Bengal Of these students 47,183 or 75 per cent. were Musalmans, these figures include 25,458 boys and 7,393 girls, who were pupils of schools which teach nothing beyond the chanting of the Quran. 40. The following table indicates the educational progress of Bengali Musalmans during the last 35 years, i.e., since the Education Commission of 1882. The figures are all the more striking, because the figures in the first column include Bihar and Orissa, while those in the last column refer to the existing Presidency of Bengal only.—

Institution

Number of pupils in 1881–82 in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa 106

Colleges—General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Colleges—Professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . High English Schools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Middle English Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . Middle Vernacular Schools . . . . . . . . . . Primary Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3,831 5,036 7,741 218,786

89

Number of pupils in 1916–17 in Bengal. 1,639 303 45,179 54,061 8,258 680,273

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41. In 1917 the number of Musalmans who were Fellows of the Calcutta University was 7 out of a total of 110. No Musalman has been elected a member of the Syndicate since its reconstruction in 1904. In 1917 there was no Muslim member of the Students’ Committee of Residence nor was the Muslim community represented on any of the other administrative bodies of the University. But some representation of the Muslim community has since been arranged. 42. The number of Musalmans in the governing bodies of the colleges is inadequate. The Mymensingh College is the only one which has two Musalmans on its governing body. Eight Government and aided colleges have one Muslim member each, the remaining 23 colleges have no Musalmans on their governing bodies. 43. The table below shows how few Musalmans were employed in 1917 on the staffs of the various colleges. This is a serious difficulty arising largely from the small number of Musalmans available for appointment. An adequate number of Muslim teachers is necessary not only to secure confidence among the Muslim, students but also for the organisation of Muslim hostels for the provision of social life and tutorial guidance for the students of that community. TEACHERS OF

TEACHERS OF

ORIENTAL SUBJECTS.

OTHER SUBJECTS.

Hindus Total. Musalmans (Sanskrit, (Arabic and Europeans Hindus Musalmans Bengali Persian). and Pali)

Colleges

11 Government Colleges 9 Aided Colleges1 . . . . . . 8 Mission Colleges1 . . . . 11 Unaided Colleges . . . University Staff (Arts and Science). 6 Professional Colleges2 (except law) University Law, Ripon, Earle, and Dacca Law Colleges. TOTAL

30 20 18 33 25

15 8 1 4 5

... ...

137

47 4 11

213 120 78 231 125

17 8 ... 4 6

258 128 125 239 142

...

24

69

2

95

...

2

76

...

78

116

912

37

1,065

33

28

1 Some of the mission colleges are aided, but no mission colleges are included under the head aided colleges’ as used in this table. 2 The teaching departments of the Diocesan College for Girls and Loreto House are not included.

44. The deputation of the Musalmans of Calcutta referred to the fact that there was no Musalman on the staff of the University Law College. They stated that competent Musalmans were available44 Three Musalmans have been appointed since then. 45. The following table shows the number and percentage of Muslim students in 1917 in the various types of colleges:—

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Total number of students

Colleges

Total number of Musalmans.

Percentage of Musalmans

11 Government Colleges . . . . . . . . . 9 Aided Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Mission Colleges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Unaided Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . University Post-Graduate Classes Arts and Science 8 Professional Colleges (except Law) University Law, Ripon, Earle and Dacca Law Colleges

5,323 4,343 2,916 10,001 1,583

811 589 180 765 66

15·2 13·5 6·1 7·6 4·2

1,420 2,824

74 198

5·2 7·0

TOTAL

28,410

2,683

9·5

46. There is no Muslim college in Bengal but proposals for the establishment of an Islamia college in Calcutta are now under consideration. We have referred to this in Section V below.45 There are three Muslim high schools maintained by the Government of Bengal. The Anglo-Persian Department of the Calcutta Madrassah is a high school. The Anglo-Persian departments of the Government madrassahs in Dacca and Chittagong were recently transferred to the divisional inspectors as Muslim high schools Besides these high schools Government also maintains madrassahs teaching the reformed madrassah course.46 47. We have already shewn47 that in 1916–17 the Muslim pupils in the high schools of Bengal represented 20.5 per cent. only of the total number of students The percentage of the Musalmans who appeared at the matriculation examination of 1918 was 17.3 only 48. As regards residential accommodation, the following table shows the total number of Muslim students against the places available for them in. recognised hostels, i.e., college and non-collegiate hostels (for university students):—

Total number of Muslim students

Places.

Total number of Muslim students for whom hostel accommodation is available

The percentage of Muslim students for whom hostel accommodation exists.

Calcutta . . . . . . . . . Dacca . . . . . . . . . . . Mufassal . . . . . . . . .

1,241 250 1,192

515 180 335

41·4 72·0 29·8

TOTAL

2,683

1,050

39·6

IV.—The education of women and girls48 49. We have already stated (see paragraph 1 above) that according to the figures of the last census, the Muslim population of Bengal was 23,989,719. This figure 91

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includes women and girls, of whom 131,380 are in recognised colleges or schools. In 1916–17 there were two Muslim, girls only in colleges, 36 in high schools, 205 in middle schools, 129,341 in primary schools including maktabs, and 1,796 in special schools.49 No Muslim girl passed the Calcutta University matriculation examination in 1918. The recent Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal says that the demand for women’s education is steadily rising. “The advance of education among Moslem women of the upper classes ‘depends almost entirely upon the establishment and maintenance of strictly purdah schools which should he staffed by Muhammadan women and confined exclusively to Muhammadan girls There are a certain number of such schools already, and if any real progress is to be made the number of these schools must be increased. The difficulty in the way of increasing these schools is the dearth of teachers. If these schools are really to appeal to Muhammadans they must be staffed by qualified Moslem women and such women are almost unobtainable in Bengal.”50

50. Some of our witnesses advocated the house-to-house teaching of Muslim girls. Miss Bose, one of the Bengal inspectresses, wrote recently.— “The system of education by means of house-to-house visitation and in central gatherings is a great boon to purdah women, both. Hindu and Muhammnadan, and is very highly appreciated by people of both communities. . . . . I am sorry to say that some of these teachers are not competent to carry on the work. The women now employed with the exception of one or two have the most meagre education . . . . . The Muhammadans are still in their infancy, as far as female education is concerned, and need encouragement and help no doubt, but it is impossible to open new schools and zananas [centres] until we can secure the services of trained qualified teachers. A Muhammadan training institution—the scheme of which has had to wait for financial stringency owing to the war—is essentially needed for the purpose We shall never get qualified teachers until this is done.”51

51. The Muslim Education Committee52 recorded the opinion that a separate system of schools would have to be established and maintained for Muslim girls. It stated that the atmosphere of the existing schools was not congenial to Muslim girls and that it was therefore necessary to establish and maintain schools which would admit none but the daughters of Musalmans. The Committee did not, however, think it would be distasteful to the community if Muslim girls, where necessary, continued to attend the ordinary primary schools53 52. The Committee also recommended that provision should be made for the religious instruction of Muslim, girls in primary schools, the establishment in Calcutta and Dacca of model girl schools for Musalmans; the employment of Muslim women as assistant inspectresses; the endowment of liberal stipends for Muslim girl pupils; and the employment of more peripatetic women teachers for Muslim girls and women.54 53. On the question of the training of Muslim women teachers Begum Khajesta Bano Suhrawardy, in the course of a written statement forwarded to us, said:— “Indeed it is now difficult even to get non-Muslim Indian Urdu speaking trained teachers, having sufficient knowledge and capabilities of being useful in a secondary school. The teachers from Bankipore school appear fit only for primary education. Therefore

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unless a training school for Muslim teachers is established at Calcutta, on the lines of the one for Hindus of which Mrs. Mitter is the principal, the education of Muslim girls will remain seriously handicapped55

54. The Muslim Education Committee recommended56 that the University of Calcutta should be asked, where necessary, to make special arrangements for the examination under strictly purdah conditions of Muslim ladies. No application has ever been made to the University, but we understand that, if there was a demand, there would be no difficulty in meeting it. V—The proposed Calcutta ‘arts college’ for Musalmans. 55. We have already referred57 to the scheme for the establishment in Calcutta of a Government ‘arts college’ for Musalmans. At one time there were intermediate classes attached to the Calcutta Madrassah. In 1887 a question arose as to the raising of the status of the Madrassah to that of a first grade college and on the recommendation of the Principal of the Madrassah, Dr. Hoernle, and Sir Alfred Croft, who was then Director of Public Instruction, the Madrassah as an ‘arts college’ was amalgamated in 188858 with the Presidency College. The students, however, continued to appear at the university examinations as the students of the Calcutta Madrassah and to pay fees at the same rate of Rs. 2 a month. No restriction was imposed as to the number of the Muslim students who could be admitted to the Presidency College classes under these conditions. This arrangement continued till 1908 when the University disaffiliated the Madrassah. On the recommendation of Mr. (later Sir Archdale) Earle, Director of Public Instruction, and Dr. (now Sir) E. Denison Ross, the Principal of the Calcutta Madrassah, orders were issued by the Government of Bengal that 35 Muslim students should be admitted to each of the first and second year classes of the Presidency College at a fee of Rs. 2 a month. The number 35 was calculated on the average number of Muslim students who had during the immediately preceding years been under instruction in the first and second year classes of the Presidency College, as students of the Madrassah. We understand that in 1909 certain proposals which had been put forward in connexion with the Presidency College included the establishment of a Muslim arts college in Bengal, preferably in Calcutta. The suggestion was offered that such a college might be provided by removing the Calcutta Madrassah to a more suitable site and reorganising it on the model of the Aligarh College. 56. The gradual increase in the number of Musalmans passing the matriculation and intermediate examinations suggested to the Government of Bengal the desirability of reopening the question of a Muslim college; a scheme was worked out and in 1914 land was purchased in Wellesley Street, Calcutta, at a cost of Rs. 1,23,000. 57. The scheme is awaiting the issue of our report. We consider it desirable that a college for Musalmans should be established in Calcutta. This matter is dealt with in Chapter XXXIV. 93

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VI.—Madrassahs. 58. Maulvi Abdul Karim has informed us in his “Short Note on the Education imparted in Madrassahs” that during Muslim rule in Bengal there were madrassahs all over the country. He continues:— “Besides the well organised institutions of the kind every mosque was a madrassah in miniature Distinguished Arabic scholars, who devoted their lives to advancing Islamic learning, taught their co-religionists, without any remuneration from their pupils, theology, law and literature of Islam. Many of these institutions collapsed when the Musalmans lost their wealth and influence on account of the loss of sovereignty As in the beginning of British rule in India Persian was retained as the court language, it was necessary to have an institution, well-equipped and well-staffed, for the training of officers. Warren Hastings established the Calcutta Madrassah in order to meet this requirement. Its course of studies was so framed as to give Government servants a good training Some of the private madrassahs also adopted this course As long as a knowledge of Persian was a passport to posts of honour and emoluments, the education given in the madrassahs was very useful. When Persian was replaced by English and the provincial vernaculars, the madrassahs lost their utility and consequently also their popularity. But still a large number of orthodox Musalmans, who cared more for religious than for secular education, continued to send their children to the madrassahs instead of to the schools and colleges.59

59. Mr. Harley, the Principal of the Calcutta Madrassah, does not think that it is fair to treat madrassahs as mere theological departments, to provide special degrees and stipends for their students, and after that to leave them with no better prospects than they have at present. He reminds the Commission that students of madrassahs would in an Islamic country be qualified for Government posts.60 60. In the early part of the last century the madrassahs of Bengal (including those located in the present provinces of Bihar and Orissa and of Assam) were organised round the Calcutta Madrassah, the Principal of which held regular public tests for madrassah students, called the central madrassah examinations. Frequent efforts have been made to bring the Calcutta Madrassah and the madrassahs associated with it more into line with ordinary colleges and schools and more into touch with the requirements of modern life In 1903 the Government of Bengal had before them a proposal that from a certain stage in the course upwards two different courses should be taught in the Arabic Department of the Calcutta Madrassah—one partly English and partly oriental, the other wholly oriental. This proposal was rejected, mainly because it was felt that while a knowledge of English was to be acquired at the expense of oriental studies, the standard attained in that language would not be sufficiently high to justify the experiment. In a resolution issued by the Government of Bengal on the 24th February 1903 the view was expressed that, if a Musalman wished to learn English thoroughly, he should enter the Anglo-Persian Department of the Calcutta Madrassah, in which Arabic and Persian were taught as optional subjects for the matriculation examination. In 1906 Mr. (now Sir Archdale) Earle, as Director of Public Instruction, Bengal, reopened the general question of the education of the Musalmans of the Provinces of Bengal and of Eastern Bengal and Assam. A series of conferences were held in 1907 and 1908, and at these conferences the discussion centred mainly round 94

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two questions, (1) the institution of a title examination for madrassah students in literature, law and theology, similar to the Sanskrit title examination and (2) the revision of the course to enable madrassah students to acquire such a knowledge of English as would fit them for Government service and other profitable employment. There was considerable diversity of opinion on the question whether English should be made a compulsory subject in madrassahs The proposal that English should be made a compulsory subject was ultimately negatived, but the Muslim representatives of Eastern Bengal were unanimous in supporting it. In 1909–10 a conference representative of Muslim opinion in Eastern Bengal was summoned by the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam to meet in Dacca. This conference drew up a revised syllabus, but Mr. Sharp, the present Educational Commissioner, who was then Director of Public Instruction in Eastern Bengal and Assam, pointed out, in submitting the revised curriculum to Government, that it attempted too much and comprised a heterogeneous mixture of subjects. He was unable to recommend its general adoption. At this point Mr. Nathan took up the case. The position which he assumed was that the revised curriculum should be as simple as possible and should be introduced into as many madrassahs as financial considerations would permit. A second conference was held in Dacca in March 1912, when the proposals of the 1910 conference were taken as the basis of discussion, and modifications were suggested with the object of making the course simpler and more practicable. These revised proposals were before the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam when the territorial readjustment took place which resulted in the Presidency of Bengal; and, before any further progress had been made, the question of establishing a university at Dacca had been taken up. The committee appointed by the Government of Bengal to frame a scheme for the new University decided to adopt the suggestion of the Government of India that a department of Islamic studies should be included in the new University and appointed a sub-committee to work out the details. As the university course must necessarily be an extension of the course followed in the madrassahs, the subcommittee had to take into consideration the madrassah curriculum. The proposals made by the Dacca conference of 1912 were taken as a starting point and in 1913 after an informal conference, over which Mr. Nathan presided, a scheme known popularly as the reformed madrassab scheme was evolved, the adoption of which in all Government and aided madrassahs (except the Calcutta madrassah) was ordered by the Government of Bengal in their Resolution of the 31st July 1914.61 The proposals for the Dacca University Department of Islamic studies are dealt with in Chapter XXXIII of our report. The whole question of the courses of study followed in madrassahs is dealt with in detail in Chapter XVI. 61. In our opinion there can be no solution of the problem involved in the educational backwardness of the Muslim community, which does not include a persistent attempt not only to make madrassahs places of real intellectual culture and training but also to bring them into touch with the needs of modern life. The Government of Bengal resolution62 to which we have just referred prefaces its announcement by stating that the private madrassahs of the Presidency, though 95

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numerous, are, as a rule, small understaffed institutions in which a mere smattering of Arabic and Persian is taught, but practically nothing else. “Such an education is ill suited for the requirements of the present day. The students find themselves unable to earn a living and, for the most part, degenerate into useless members of society63 The leading Muhammadans of Bengal are fully alive to this evil and have repeatedly expressed their desire for a general reform of madrassahs. They hold that the course of study pursued therein, whilst not being exclusively secular, should be such as is likely to produce cultured Muhammadans fit to enter one or other of the careers open to educated men, and to play their part in, the various activities which go to make up the public life of modern India. They are alive to the need for scholars versed in the lore of Islam, but, while they recognise that scholars of this type will necessarily be few in number, they realise that, unless the community is to suffer, these exceptional persons must be genuine savants and real enthusiasts for religion and learning.”64

VII.—Muslim deputations and representations. 62. One of the striking indications of the interest which, the Musalmans now take in education was the number of Muslim deputations which waited upon us. We received deputations at Calcutta, Chittagong, Comilla, Dacca, Gauhati, Midnapore, Murshidabad Rajshahi and Rangpur.65 The resolutions of the All-India Muhammadan Conference and of the Bengal Presidency Muhammadan Educational Association were also submitted to us.66 These documents are printed in the volume of General Memoranda, and all the points raised therein are dealt with either in this chapter or in other parts of our report. 63. Among the points on which the deputations were emphatic was the desirability of providing increased pecuniary aid for Muslim students in the shape of stipends, scholarships and free studentships. They also urged that a certain proportion of Muslim students should be accommodated in hostels rent free. VIII.—Musalmans and, the problem of communal representation. 64. Practically all the Musalmans who have appeared before us or have favoured us with written statements are agreed in representing the present state of affairs in the University of Calcutta as unfavourable to the interests of their community. When, in 1912, the Government of India announced their intention of establishing a University of Dacca, they expressed the view that there seemed but little chance of a large increase in the number of Muslim university students until the Musalmans of Eastern Bengal had a university nearer to their doors, in the guidance of which they could have a voice (there were then only six Musalmans in the Calcutta University Senate) and in which there might perhaps be a Faculty of Islamic Studies. The question of the Pacca University is dealt with in Chapter XXXIII of our report. 65. A number of Muslim witnesses complain that neither the registered graduates nor the faculties of the Calcutta University have ever yet elected a Musalman to be a Fellow. Others, while not exonerating these electorates from blame for the

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way in which they have exercised their suffrages, recognise the fact that 80 per cent of the Ordinary Fellows of the University are nominated by the Chancellor and therefore complain that this right of nomination has not been fairly exercised. Maulvi Abdul Karirn, for example, writes:— “The reservation by the Chancellor of the power of nominating so many as four-fifths of the fellows, perhaps with a view to preserve the necessary equilibrium between the different communities interested in the University, should have secured the representation of the different communities on the different bodies of the University in proportion to their numerical strength and communal importance. Even if allowance were made for difference in educational advancement, their (i.e., the Musalmans) representation should, on no account, have been so absurdly disproportionate, as it is at present. That an overwhelming majority of even the nominated fellows should have come from one particular community is regarded as a grievance that calls for immediate redress There is no fixed principle according to which selection is made by Government It does not seem to have been always based on academic attainments.”67

The Maulvi, who contends that one-third of the Senate at least should be Muslim, will not hear of the suggestion that suitable Musalmans are not easy to find:— “If any one thinks that such a number of competent Musalmans in Bengal and Assam would not be forthcoming, he is not I am afraid, fully aware of the progress the community has lately made in education.”

66. The majority of our Muslim witnesses do not hesitate to attribute to this lack of Muslim representation in the University (and on the governing bodies of the several colleges) not only the inadequate proportion of the Musalmans among students of the University but also the continuance of conditions which are alleged by Musalmans to be prejudicial to the interests of Muslim students Most of these grievances are referred to in the course of this chapter; we summarise them below— (a) the lack of adequate provision for instruction in Persian and Arabic, (b) the difficulty experienced by Muslim students in obtaining admission into colleges, (c) the lack of hostel accommodation for Muslim students, (d) the encouragement by the University of a Sanskiitised Bengali, which is difficult for Musalmans to acquire, (e) the use by the University of books which are either uncongenial to Musalmans as being steeped in Hindu religion and tradition, or even positively objectionable to them, because they contain statements offensive to Muslim sentiment. Elphinstone’s History of India is cited as a case in point, (f ) the requirement that each candidate should write his name instead of giving a number, on the answer books shown up at university examinations. (It is suggested that this practice operates to the prejudice of Muslim candidates),68 and

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(g) the delay in the issue by the University of certain Arabic and Persian textbooks. Stress is also laid on the necessity for securing for the Muslim community ‘its fair share’ in the appointment of university examiners. We were informed by Nawab Syed Nawabaly Chaudhury that out of 895 examiners appointed by the Calcutta University in 1917 in subjects other than Urdu, Persian or Arabic, nine only were Musalmans. There were 44 examiners in that year in Urdu, Persian and Arabic.69 67. Some of the witnesses go so far as to charge the Calcutta University with indifference to Muslim representations. This view is emphasised in a note70 submitted to the Commission by Nawab Syed Nawabaly Chaudhury—a note giving expression to the views of those Muslim leaders of Bengal whom the Nawab had sounded. 68. Some of the leading Musalmans contend that the jurisdiction of the Calcutta University should be curtailed. The most carefully elaborated view on the subject from the Muslim stand point is to be found in the note from the Musalmans of Calcutta:— “Apart from any consideration of sectarian and separate interests, it is obvious that a university, such as we have in Calcutta, cannot possibly meet the educational requirements of 45½ millions of people. It is not possible for a single university to exercise efficient control over 62 colleges and about 800 high schools scattered all over the Presidency and to satisfactorily discharge the duties and responsibilities of maintaining discipline among more than 20,000 students in colleges and about 2 lakhs and 20,000 students in schools. Nor is it possible for a single university to satisfy the legitimate needs and aspirations of such a large number of people, considering the fact that centralisation of authority, as we have in Calcutta, means the over-concentration of the educational efforts of the Presidency at a single place and the under-estimation of the value and possibilities of the development of other places as centres of education”71

69. The questions raised in this note are fully discussed in Chapter XXXV of our report Here it is only necessary to say that we hope to see a general development of stronger centres of intellectual life in the various parts of the mufassal, Dacca being from the first chosen as the seat of a university. But Calcutta must always enjoy prominence in the educational life of the Presidency, because it is the focus of railway and other cornmunications, the headquarters of Government, the centre of intellectual activity in Bengal. Any board or public authority dealing with, education in the Presidency would find Calcutta the most convenient place for its regular meetings. There is no other place in Bengal so convenient for the purpose. What has to be devised therefore for higher education in the mufassal is a method of administration, which, without giving Calcutta a monopoly of influence in its direction, will avail itself of the intellectual resources of the metropolis, and take advantage of its experience. The central geographical position of Calcutta must be recognised and put to advantageous use. What has to be avoided is on the one hand over-concentration and disregard on the other hand

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of the local views and needs of the various Muslim and Hindu communities of the mufassal. 70. We addressed the following question72 to our correspondents:— “To what extent do you consider that the needs and interests of particular communities should be specially considered:— (a) in the government of the University, (b) in its courses of study, (c) in its residential and other arrangements?”

71. With few exceptions all our correspondents agree that in the matter of residential arrangements for students, the special needs of the various communities should be considered. Mr. Sharp says that “it is important that Musalmans should have their own hostels (to a considerable extent they now possess them) supervised by Muhammadan professors, and with arrangements for religious observance, which is much prized by this community.” Rai Brojendra Kishore Roy Chaudhury writes that “the Hindu and Muhammadan students ought to be placed in separate hostels built in entirely separate compounds with entirely separate arrangements regarding religious education”72 The staff of the Murarichand College, Sylhet, also recommend separate residential and messing arrangements for separate religious. denominations.72 Khan Bahadur Ammul Islam and Mr. Harley in their joint memorandum recommend that— “as far as possible separate hostels for Musalmans and Hindus should be constructed and, where this is not feasible owing to the small number of members of either community, they should have separate accommodation in the same house, with independent messing arrangements Seats should be reserved for Muhammadan students in colleges and hostels according to the population of the division. Hostel accommodation should be provided for Muhammadan M. A. and law students.”73

72. Some of our correspondents, Hindus, Muslims and British alike recognize the exigencies of the present situation but feel that an attempt should be made to provide mixed hostels for Hindus and Musalmans with separate feeding arrangements only. Maulvi Ahsanullah’s view is that— “Hindu and Muhammadan boarders should, as far as possible, be accommodated in the same place, separate arrangements bemg made for cooking and other purposes Combined hostels will be welcomed both from the scholastic and the economic point of view. They will greatly facilitate the growth of an intimate brotherhood among the students of different creeds and will permit of an organised tutorial system.”73

The Rev. W. B. S. Holland thinks that “students of all castes and religions can reside together in adjacent rooms and all that is needed is separate arrangements for food.” No reference is made by these witnesses to the difficulty of religious instruction. It is suggested on the other hand that the provision of common hostels for students of different faiths is only feasible if religious instruction, and possibly

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religious observances, are excluded from hostels. This question is discussed in Chapters XIX and XXXIX. 73. None of our correspondents have advocated any distinction being made as between community and community in the matter of purely secular instruction but some are of opinion that subjects representing communal traditions and scriptural languages should be included as alternative subjects in the university courses of study. Sir. Panchanandas Mukherji, Professor of Political Economy and Political Philosophy, Presidency College and a lecturer of Calcutta University, says that “as regards courses of study, the needs and interests of particular communities should be consulted with, reference to the study of the second languages and the vernacular.”73 Dr. Pramathanath Banerjea, Lecturer in Economics and Political Philosophy, Calcutta University, while disagreeing with communal representation in the government of universities favours the idea of the adjustment of the courses of study to the needs of particular communities.73 Mr. Langley of Dacca says that “courses of studies should be designed to meet the needs of the various communities, but narrow sectarianism in the selection of subjects should be discouraged,”74 74. Khan Sahib Mohammad Yusuf, Head Master Calcutta Madrassah, says “it is a universal complaint among Muhammadans that religious instruction has not been recognised as part of the curriculum”74 Shams-ul-Ulama Abu Nasr Waheed says “an Islamic course of studies, under a faculty of Islamic studies, combined with English, leading to the university degrees, should be provided. Every college should make provision for the teaching of Arabic, Persian and Urdu. The University should make provision for the study of the history of Islamic civilisation beginning from the intermediate stage”74 This question will be discussed in Chapter XVI Mr. M. A. N. Hydari thinks that “such subjects as Islamic history and such languages as Persian, Arabic and. Urdu should have a due place in the training of the university courses of study.”74 75. The witnesses who do not think that the needs of particular communities should be specially considered are either opposed to this consideration on principle or because they hold that any further special consideration is unnecessary. Mr. Surendra Nath Roy does not think that “particular communities have any real grievance either in the courses of studies or in the residential and other arrangements of the Calcutta University.” 76. The difference of opinion among our witnesses is more marked in the matter of communal representation in the government of universities. About 55 of our Hindu witnesses object to such communal representation, while 33 are in favour. 77. Sir Gooroo Dass Banerjee’s view is— “within the sacred precincts of the temple of learning all votaries should receive equal treatment, and none should claim any special favour”74

Mr P. Basu, Professor of Economics, Holkar College, Indore, says:— “As a general principle I consider special representation of any community as highly mischievous In university matters this is more so But as the needs of different communities

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differ much with regard to certain aspects of university life, to that extent specially competent persons for that purpose should be asked to give advice”74

78. Mr. Sasi Sekhar Banerjee, the Officiating Principal of the Krishnath College, Berhampur, says:— “The University being the centre of learning should be free from party considerations. There should not be any party government or communal representation in the University, but on its government only the best and most capable men should be enlisted, without any reference to nationality, so long as they will be able to serve the best interests of Government, of colleges and of learning”75

79. Dr. M. N. Banerjee, the Principal of the Belgachia Medical College, states unhesitatingly that the less we hear of communal interests in the University, the better. “The University is the only place where all races, creeds, and nationalities meet on common ground.”75 The Bengal Landholders Association have expressed themselves as being decidedly against the introduction of the ‘communal’ question in matters of university government and university education75 Sir E. G. Bhandarkar does not think that the centrifugal forces, which are so powerful in Indian society notwithstanding the contact of India with western civilisation for nearly two hundred years, should be further strengthened by the University, and in his judgment therefore “the needs and interests of particular communities should not be taken into consideration in the government of the University and in its courses of study. These should be arranged to meet the needs and interests of Indians, and Indians only.”75 80. Rai Yatindra Nath Choudhury of Barnagore would oppose any communal representation in the governing body of the University. In his view “what is wanted is good men, and not men selected in a haphazard way from any community, because they belong to it.” He admits, however, that in the department of oriental studies of the University and in the department of Indian history and antiquity there should be a certain percentage of men from the different communities, so that adequate consideration may be given to the needs and interests of each.75 Dr. Nares Chandra Sen Gupta, Vice-Principal of the Dacca Law College, records the view that “to look upon education from the point of view of sectional interests is a pernicious habit and should not be encouraged.” He suggests that questions in which the interests of Musalmans go against those of others “arise in the Senate once in fifty years or more” “For the sake of these rare occasions, it would be absurd permanently to weaken the Senate, by bringing in members who are there, not by virtue of their academic qualifications, but because they are supposed to look after the interests of a community.”76 81. The view of the Indian Association is that in the government of the University and in its courses of study the needs and interests of particular communities should not be considered76 This is also the view of Maharajah Sir Manindra Chandra Nandy of Kasimbazar, of Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru, of Sir Nilratan Sircar and of the Rev. Garfield Williams Mr. R. P. Paranjpye of the Fergusson College,

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Poona, deprecates the introduction of any communal considerations whatever into a university. He writes— “I am strongly of opinion that no communal considerations should be introduced in the government of the University The Senate and Syndicate should consist of the best men As regards courses of study, it is natural that some subjects may specially appeal to some special community, e.g., Persian and Arabic to Muhammadans, Sanskrit to Hindus, Avesta and Pahlavi to Parsis, Pali to Buddhists, etc The Senate, or at least the boards of study, should contain representatives of all the subjects which the University offers to teach and the University should aim at teaching all the subjects for which there is a demand It should so arrange its courses that they are not too narrowly sectarian. Thus I would deprecate a course of Sanskrit for Jains in which no books but those by Jain authors are prescribed. Every student of Sanskrit should have some knowledge of the literature contained in Sanskrit as a whole before specialising in one particular branch. In the matter of separate institutions for different communities I deprecate the foundation of communal universities or even colleges I am willing to allow only separate hostels at the most, but I would prefer a hostel for all classes, the messes only being distinct for different classes. In this way all classes of young men will have ample opportunities of coming together and will begin to feel unconsciously that they are Indians first and foremost and not members of their separate little communities only. This is the impression that I want them to take from their education and not merely the prescubed amount of booklearning in various subjects”76

82. Mr. K. Zachariah, Professor of History at the Presidency College, Calcutta, is himself a member of a small community, the Syrian Christian commumty of the Malabar Coast His view is that communal representation tends “to create factions and cause questions to be decided not on their intrinsic merit, but on party grounds;” that it also inclines to keeping the communities so represented “in a continued state of tutelage.” “There is nothing,” he observes, “so invigorating and healthy as having to stand up and fight without special favour.”77 83. Mr. Saratlal Biswas, Assistant Professor of Geology, Calcutta University, holds an intermediate position. He is in favour of Indian and provincial representation but not in favour of communal representation. He says:—“The government of the University, as well as its teaching departments, should be composed, as far as possible, of Indians, and preference should always be given to the people of Bengal.”77 84. Turning to the representative views of those Hindu witnesses who are in favour of communal representation, Kumar Manindra Chandra Sinha of the Paikpara Raj writes— “every effort should be given to secure adequate representation for the interests of particular communities, such as the Muhammadan and the domiciled Anglo-Indian, and every attempt should be made to include representatives of such communities in the deliberations of the University. This will help a cosmopolitan view being taken of problems affecting the University”77

Mr. P. N. Nag, the Head Master of the United Free Church Mission School, Chinsurah, says that “the needs and interests of particular communities should be specially considered according to their educational and numerical strength (a) in the government of the University and (b) in its courses of study.”77 102

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85. Rai Mahendra Chandra Mitra Bahadur would, in arranging for communal representation, not fix the proportion according to numerical strength but according to the number of students who receive education.77 Mr. Jogendra Nath Hazra, the Principal of the Midnapore College, is not in favour of fixing any proportion. His view is that “the Muhammadans and the depressed classes should have their representatives in sufficient numbers on the governing bodies of the University to look after their interests.”77 86. Rai Sahib Nritya Gopal Chaki, a pleader of Pabna, recommends separate electorates of Musalmans and of pandits from recognised tôls for the purpose of electing members to the Senate.77 Mr. N. C. Bardaloi of Gauhati thinks that “the needs and interests of particular communities should be specially considered regarding the control and management of the University. There should be enough non-official members representing different communities and people”78 87. The opinions of our British witnesses on communal representation are practically balanced, nine on either side The majority of those who oppose communal representation are in favour of communal colleges and even of communal universities. Mr. Archbold sees “great danger of weakening communities by giving them privileges”78 The Rev. Garfield Williams is in favour of communal representation in the government of colleges but not in the government of universities.78 88. The view of Mr E. N Gilchrist, Principal of the Krishnagar College, is that it is impossible to secure the fair representation of sectarian interests in a centralised university like Calcutta. He continues:— ‘On general principles I object to the representation of interests of this kind, as such, in a university The present Government policy regarding Moslems is an example in point In the Education Department the favouring of sections means the acceptance of lower qualifications than competition in the open market would give. Political reasons, however, may demand such a procedure, and they will demand separate representation. A glance at the many memorials on university representation from Muhammadans in Bengal will show how far the demands made are incapable of fulfilment simply because of a lack of qualified men By local universities, however, fair representation of sectional interests is far more possible”78

89. Mr S. G. Dunn of the Murr College, Allahabad, considers that the needs of particular communities should be met by the establishment of special universities, such as the Hindu University at Benares, or the proposed University of Islam at Ahgarh. He considers that such universities should be financed and in every way controlled by the communities which demand their establishment, and that public funds should not be used for them at all. His view is that, apart from these communal or sectarian universities, the needs and interests of particular communities should not be specially considered in the government or academic organisation of the universities—“a university in which such needs and interests are considered is a contradiction in terms.”78 Mr. Mark Hunter, formerly Professor of English in the Presidency College, Madras, and now the Director of Public Instruction in Burma, regards it as desirable that the special 103

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needs and interests of particular communities should not be lost sight of, but he holds that— “it is not to the interests of the University as a whole that persons academically considered of little or no significance should be given place and influence in the University simply as representing this or that community, to the exclusion of men of high academic qualification who are likely to be of real service in university work”79

90. Turning to those who are in favour of communal representation, Mr H. Sharp writes:— “The consideration of the needs and interests of particular classes is of great importance. Among such communities in Bengal would be reckoned the Musalmans (who though numerically just over half the population, form a minority among those who seek higher education), the Buddhists and the depressed classes The Musalmans require larger representation on the governing bodies This can best be arranged by the establishment of local universities at centres of Muhammadan population like Dacca and Chittagong and by the devolution of examinations”79

91. Mr. W. C. Wordsworth, Officiating Director of Public Instruction, Bengal, writes:— “I consider that (a) the Muhammadan community, (b) those engaged in European education, (c) those engaged or interested in women’s education, should have their needs and interests specially considered in the government of the University, in its courses of study, in its residential and other arrangements It is advisable that efforts should be made to interest the non-official and non-educational community, both Indian and European, in the affairs of the University. Of recent years the University’s interpretation of the needs of the public it serves has been mainly inspired by one dominant personality, with much resultant unrest. A more catholic Government would give wider satisfaction and disarm much hostility A more catholic constitution of the Senate might be accompanied by the reservation to Government of the right of nominating two members of the Syndicate, this could be used to nominate, e.g., a Muhammadan, when, as is usual, neither tie Faculties nor the Senate elect one”79

92. Mr. J. R. Cunningham, the Director of Public Instruction, Assam, thinks that Musalmans and others should be adequately represented in the government of the University.79 Mr. Langley says that “each community should be fairly represented, because each subscribes to the funds whereby the University is supported. By fair representation also the interests of various communities will be maintained.” 93. Out of 38 Muslim witnesses who answered Question 22, Sir Ali Imam is definitely opposed to communal representation; Mr Altaf Ali while agreeing with, the views expressed by the deputation of Musalmans of Calcutta, does not favour special Muslim representation in connexion with the Calcutta University because of the benefits which the Dacca University is expected to confer on his community; all the other Muslim correspondents, besides the oral witnesses and Muslim deputations, to whom reference has already been made, urge the desirability of Muslim representation on the governing bodies of the University. 104

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94. Sir Ali Imam’s view is:— “Except in residential arrangements, and in matters of food and religious discipline, no special arrangement is needed for any particular community The highest branch of education should be open to all communities alike, and in my opinion the endeavour of the University should be to discourage sectarianism and not to emphasise them. In matters of study the needs of all the communities are very much alike, and the universities cannot regulate them with a view to the encouragement of the education of any particular community”80

95. Turning to Muslim correspondents in favour of Muslim representation, Mr Z. R. Zahid Suhrawardy says:— “The Muhammadan community, backward as it is in education, should receive special consideration, and for this purpose the representatives in the Senate should be increased so as to secure at least one-third of the number of Senators from the members of that community On the Syndicate there should be the same proportion. Besides, every institution should have a few Muhammadan professors in the general line and not for Arabic and Persian only as at present”80

Maulvi Mohomed Habibur Rahman Khan, the Secretary of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, writes that “the various communities should be adequately represented on the various executive and academic committees of the University. The proportion of the representatives of the Muslim community, considering its number and existing educational condition, should be 40 per cent.”80 96. Khan Bahadur Mohammad Ismail, Vice-Chairman, District Board, Mymensingh, would divide the seats on the university bodies which are to be held by Indians equally between the Hindus and Musalmans. “The needs and interests of the Muslim community should be safeguarded by adequate representation in the Senate as well as in the Syndicate In the Senate besides the European members of the teaching profession, the number of seats should be equally divided between the Hindus and Muhammadans The tame proportion should be observed in the Syndicate also The office of the Vice-Chancellor should be filled by a Hindu, European and Muhammadan in rotation”81

97. Mr. M. A. N. Hydari writes:— “I am strongly of opinion that in the highest interests of university life, even from its purely academic side, it is necessary that the needs and interests of particular communities like the Muhammadan community should be specially considered in the government of the University, its courses of study and its residential and other arrangements”81

Mr. Wahed Hossam, the Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Educational Conference, says.— “The Indian universities are intended for all races and communities inhabiting India, and they preside over the higher education of the children of all classes and denominations Among the Indian races, the Hindu and the Muslim form an important section of the educated class as a whole Naturally, the educated men who form these two communities are taking a keen interest in, and desire to associate themselves with, the affairs of the universities But as a matter of fact, the Muslim element has hardly been represented in the several bodies which preside over the destiny of the Indian universities They are almost entirely in the hands of one community only”81

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98. Maulvi Abdullah Abu Sayied writes:— “Rightly or wrongly there is a strong feeling amongst Muhammadans that though they are numerically superior to other communities in Bengal, and are making every effort to advance in education, very little regard is paid to their requirements in the University”81

99. Mr. Justice Abdur Rahim writes:— “Speaking for the Muhammadans it is extremely important that they should be adequately represented in the government of the University, including the Senate, the Syndicate, the Board of Studies and the examining board, and also on the governing bodies of hostels, messes and lodgmgs. . . . As for the courses of study, I would recommend that Islamic history be recognised at least as an optional subject”81

100. Taking the whole range of the recorded opinions it appears that of our correspondents of all nationalities who sent written answers to the question, 65 are against and 78 are in favour of communal representation in the government of the University. IX.—Some remarks in conclusion. 101. We have thought it wise to set out the problem involved in the education of the Musalmans of Bengal, neither depreciating its difficulties nor seeking to conceal the existence of interests and views which are on the surface contending 102. We desire at this point to draw a distinction in regard to the question of communal representation. In matters of educational administration, as in other branches of administration, communal representation may in the present conditions of India be necessary and for certain purposes we have advocated it. But we are convinced that in making appointments to the principal teaching posts of a university it would be fatal to depart from the principle that the best qualified man should be appointed without reference to his race or religion. The university which departs from this principle will not make the contribution which it could and should make towards the solution of those vexed and perplexing problems of national life of which the subject matter of this chapter is one. 103. The recommendations which we have decided to make will be found in the later chapters of our report We think that a satisfactory solution of the difficulties is not unattainable It may be found—we hope it will be found—partly in the establishment of Muslim colleges, halls of residence and hostels in which the tone of thought will be congenial to Musalmans and their way of life and worship observed; partly by endeavouring to ensure that, where there are considerable groups of Muslim students in any college, their tutorial and social needs should be provided for, partly through a reconstruction of the university which should welcome the erudition of Muslim teachers and other Islamic scholars, chosen for their eminent learning not from Bengal only but out of the whole Islamic world, and should furnish them with opportunities of teaching and research; but chiefly through the growth of a conviction that in the highest education of the Presidency 106

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Musalmans and Hindus should co-operate, each considerately respectful of the other’s convictions and ready to preserve communal traditions within the wider framework of the university’s corporate life.

CHAPTER VII. THE EDUCATION OF BACKWARD CLASSES. 1. The Education Commission of 1882 devoted special attention to the education of certain special classes of the Indian community. Among those special classes the Commission included aboriginal tubes and low castes Their reason was “the wide sympathy which their backward condition and slender opportunities had excited.”82 To-day the problem is one of vital importance. The aboriginal tribes and low castes still send very few students to the University, but ambition is beginning to stir this long-voiceless mass to a definite and persistent effort to educate its children to rise in the world. Conversely there are signs of an awakening of the more advanced sections of Bengali society to the claims of the depressed and the more primitive classes. The Bengal official educational reports testify to the gradual disappearance of the prejudice, once universal among the higher Hindu castes, to their children sitting in school side by side, with, low caste pupils. We read in the recent Quinquennial Review of Education in Bengal of a Bengal Social Service League and of a society for the improvement of the backward classes of Bengal and Assam83 and we have referred elsewhere to the work done by the students of St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College, Calcutta, among the low caste inhabitants of a neighbouring busti.84 2. We cannot do more than allude in passing to this aspect of the problem of the future of Bengal, and indeed of India, but for the better understanding of this phase of that momentous question, we reproduce below from the Fifth Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal to which we have just referred, a list of depressed classes of the Presidency with an estimate, based on the figures collected for the 1911 census, of the numerical strength of each. The Educational Commissioner with the Government of India has lately attempted to define three classes of people as falling within the category of depressed classes, viz.:—(a) the depressed classes proper, i.e., untouchables, (b) aboriginal and hill tribes, and (c) criminal tribes. (a) Depressed classes proper:— Caste or tribe—

Number

Bagdi ................................................................. 1,015,738 Baun .................................................................. 313,654 Bhuinmah .......................................................... 91,973 Bhuiya ............................................................... 69,044 Bhumij ............................................................... 90,282

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Caste or tribe—

Number

Chamai .............................................................. 136,533 Dhoba ................................................................ 228,052 Dom ................................................................... 173,991 Dosadh .............................................................. 45,863 Han .................................................................... 173,706 Kaora ................................................................. 112,281 Kora ................................................................... 46,497 Mai .................................................................... 108,163 Muchi ................................................................ 455,236 Munda ............................................................... 67,252 Namasudias ....................................................... 1,908,728 Oraon ................................................................. 165,337 Pod .................................................................... 536,568 Santhal ............................................................... 669,420 Sunn .................................................................. 119,325 Tiyar .................................................................. 215,270

(b) Aboriginal and hill tribes:— Chakmas ............................................................ Ganos ................................................................ Hadis ................................................................. Hajangs ............................................................. Koches ............................................................... Tipaias ...............................................................

54,362 42,728 26,212 25,016 46,619 35,950

(c) Criminal tribes:— Bediyas .............................................................. Gains ................................................................. Kaoias (24-Paraganas) ...................................... Lodhas ...............................................................

8,503 380 64,483 7,4031

1 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912–13 to 1916–17 Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W. Horaell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para 608

The list above is arranged in accordance with the classification of the Educational Commissioner and it excludes certain peoples who, though they cannot be classed as depressed classes, are not Bengali Hindus or Bengali Musalmans, e.g., Nepalees, the Bhutias and the Lepchas of the Darjeeling hills, the Meches of the Duars, and the Maghs, etc. The education of these peoples presents a special problem which is not altogether dissimilar from the problem of the education of the depressed classes proper, though it is not by any means identical with it. These

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peoples are not taken into account in the figures which are quoted in paragraph 4 below.85 3. The principal home of the Namasudras is in the Dacca, Mymensingh and Faridpur districts of the Dacca division. Santhals live in considerable numbers in the Bankura, Birbhum and Midnapore districts of the Burdwan division. They are also found in the Dinajpur district of the Rajshahi division. The Garos, Hadis, Hajangs and Koches, who belong to the Bengal Presidency, inhabit the foot of the Garo Hills in the Mymensigh district. Chakmas, Tiparas and Maghs are to be found mainly in the Chittagong hill tracts and in the Cox’s Bazar sub-division of the Chittagong district. The Darjeeling hills are peopled by Nepalees, Bhutias, Lepchas and Tibetans, while the tea gardens of the Duars in the Kajshahi district are worked by coolies of many different races, chief among which are the Oraons, the Kols and the Mundas, whose home is in Chota Nagpur. 4. According to the latest official returns there were, on the 31st March 1917, actually under instruction in Bengal 77,054 boys and 8,973 girls of the depressed and other backward classes. Of these 194 boys were in university colleges: 2,022 boys were in the high stage of instruction, 2,684 boys and 23 girls were in the middle stage; and 70,861 boys and 8,908 girls were in the primary stage. The remainder, viz., 1,293 boys and 42 girls were in special and indigenous schools.86 One point is immediately suggested by these figures, namely, the small proportion of pupils in special and indigenous schools. The Indian Education Commission of 1882 recommended that the principle laid down by the Court of Directors of the East India Company in their despatch of 1854 and again in their letter to the Government of India of the 20th May, 1857, and repeated by the Secretary of State in 1863, viz., “that no boy be refused admission to a Government college or school on the ground of caste” be reaffirmed, and be applied “with caution to every institution, not reserved for special races, which is wholly maintained at the cost of public funds, whether provincial, municipal or local.” At the same time the Commission recommended “that the establishment of special schools or classes for children of low castes be liberally encouraged in places where there are a sufficient number of such children to form separate schools or classes, and where the schools already maintained from public funds do not sufficiently provide for their education.”87 5. One of the most remarkable features of the social life of Bengal during the last 50 years has been the sustained effort made by certain sections of the lower castes, and, particularly the Namasudras, to rise in the social scale Towards the total 86,027, which represents the pupils of the depressed classes under instruction, the Namasudra community contributed no less than 41,105—35,932 boys and 5,173 girls. One hundred Namasudra boys were reading in university colleges; 1,489 boys were in the high stage of school instruction, and 1,690 boys in the middle stage. In the course of the last few years special hostels for Namasudra students have been established at Dacca, Faridpur and Barisal, Dr. Mead of the Australian Baptist Mission has organised a high school for Namasudras at Orakandi in the bhil tract of the Faridpur district. The Namasudras themselves 109

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have started associations in various centres and are making strenuous efforts to spread education among their community. They have recently protested to Government against being classified with the depressed classes. They consider that this classification is a serious set-back to their social advancement. 6. There has been a remarkable increase in the demand for English education among the peoples of the Darjeeling hills. The Nepalees are taking the lead, but the Bhutias and Lepchas are not lagging far behind. This is largely due to the admirable educational work which is being done by the Church of Scotland Mission from its centre at Kalimpong. The present Deputy Inspector of Schools in the Darjeeling district is a Lepcha, and Kumar Tobgye of Bhutan, who was himself educated at St Paul’s School, Darjeeling, has a flourshing school at his Jong at Ha in Bhutan. The Maharaja of Bhutan has a similar school at Pumthang in Bhutan. The Ha School is moved every winter to Kalimpong, so that the boys may come under the influence of Dr. Sutherland and the other missionaries of the Church of Scotland Mission and see how a sub-division of British India is worked. We make suggestions elsewhere for the teaching of the language and literature of Tibet at the Calcutta University 7. The Rev. Hedley Sutton of the Australian Baptist Mission at Mymensingh told us that the Garos were beginning to come forward for secondary education and that a few of their most promising boys were looking forward to a university course. The Fifth Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal states that, on the 31st March, 1917, 1,780 pupils of the Garos and other primitive races, which inhabit the foot of the Garo Hills, were under instruction and that of these 134 were in secondary schools.88 8. Government maintains a high school at Rangamati in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and attached to this high school there is a special teachers’ training class for Chakmas and Tiparas. Free education is provided for the hill boys and girls of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and for the Arakanese Maghs of the Cox’s Bazar subdivision. There is a hostel attached to the Rangamati High School at which 50 hill boys are boarded free. Government has also recently provided a special hostel in connexion with the Rangpur Zilla School for boys of the Rajbanshi community. Special scholarships are also provided by Government for children of backward classes. 9. But the way has not yet become altogether smooth for the aspiring student who comes from the backward classes. Students of such communities as the Namasudra find it difficult to get accommodation in Calcutta. The late ViceChancellor of the University of Calcutta recently brought a resolution before the Bengal Council the object of which was to obtain a grant from Government for the construction of a special hostel for the students of these classes. In the course of the debate Dr. (now Sir) Deva Prasad Sarbadhikari told the Council that, in order to obtain admission to a hostel, a Namasudra had been known to assume a Kayastha name and to pose as a member of that caste. We hear that the Government of Bengal has recently made a special grant to the Calcutta University, on the strength of which some special messes are now being provided in Calcutta for 110

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students belonging to the Namasudra and other communities who are outside the Hindu caste system. 10. The Dacca University Committee remarked that convenient arrangements could not be made to receive Namasudras and others of lower castes in the general hostels and that it was to be feared that this general difficulty sometimes stood in the way of their receiving university education. The Committee therefore proposed that an extra hostel should be attached to the Dacca College and that it should be used for the accommodation of a special caste or castes such as the Namasudras.89 11. It is important that the new university and other educational authorities should give careful consideration to the needs and interests of the now backward classes, under which term we include the aboriginal peoples. We shall therefore suggest in later chapters of this report that:— (i) the proposed new central authority for secondary and intermediate education should appoint a standing committee to advise it on questions affecting the educational welfare of these sections of the community.90 (ii) in the future developments of secondary and intermediate education91 contemplated in this report, the needs of the now backward classes for hostel accommodation should be met,92 (iii) in Calcutta, and so far as may be found necessary elsewhere, intercollegrate hostels should be established in order to meet their requirements,93 (iv) in the University of Dacca a hostel should be provided for special castes such as the Namasudras who might otherwise find a difficulty in obtaining university education.94 We desire that the new opportunities, including those of secondary and university education and of preparation for the medical and teaching professions and for industrial and commercial careers, should be open effectively to all students of ability and promise.

CHAPTER XI. THE EDUCATION OF EUROPEANS AND ANGLO-INDIANS. I 1. There is throughout India and Burma a separate school system for Europeans and Anglo-Indians, who constitute what is known officially as the Domiciled Community in India. There is also a separate code of regulations for European schools, and this code starts by defining the term ‘European’ as signifying “any person of European descent, pure or mixed, who retains European habits and modes of life.” 2. We recognise the social and political importance of this section of the population of the Bengal Presidency and realise that any system of university or secondary education which ignores its peculiar needs could not be regarded as in 111

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any sense complete. We have not visited the representative European secondary schools, but have availed ourselves of the experience of one of our members and we print elsewhere a memorandum by Mr. Hornell entitled “The education of Europeans and Anglo-Indians”.95 3. In the Bengal Presidency there were on the 31st March 1917, in 79 recognised institutions for the education of Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 9,634 pupils of whom 8,959 were Europeans and Anglo-Indians and 675 were Indians. These institutions included some special schools, viz.:— (a) An apprentice night school in Calcutta. (b) A night school for the Bengal Nagpur Railway European and AngloIndian apprentices at Khargpur. (c) The Young Women’s Christian Association Technical and Commercial Classes, Calcutta. (d) The Government Training Class for women teachers at Kurseong. (e) 16 technical or commercial classes attached to schools. The remaining 59 institutions were secondary and elementary schools. The secondary schools are divided into two categories: (i) higher secondary, and (ii) secondary, while elementary schools are graded either as (iii) higher elementary or (iv) elementary. The origin and significance of these grades are fully explained in Mr. Hornell’s memorandum. All we need state here is that on the 31st March 1917 the number of pupils in higher secondary, secondary, higher elementary and elementary schools were 3,363, 1,032, 3,109 and 1,728 respectively. There were also 94 boys and girls taking supplementary courses in higher elementary schools. The elementary school course comprises an infant stage and six standards. The complete secondary school (the higher secondary school as it is called) is organised in three sections: (a) the preparatory school, (b) the general school, (c) the upper school. The curriculum followed in the preparatory section of a secondary school is identical with that followed in the infant section and the first four standards of an elementary school. The arrangement of the pupils of European schools, according to grades of instruction, was on the 31st March 1917 as follows:— Grades of instruction.

Boys

Girls.

TOTAL

Supplementary courses in higher elementary schools . . . . . . 45 Infant classes of elementary and higher elementary schools 2,334 and standards I to VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The preparatory section of secondary and higher secondary 1,537 schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The general section of secondary and higher secondary schools 989 The upper section of higher secondary schools . . . . . . . . . . . 161 TOTAL 5,066

49 2,429

94 4,763

1,095

2,632

599 88 4,260

1,588 249 9,326

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This total (9,326) is exclusive of 308 pupils in special schools.96 4. The European school system is essentially a denominational one, as the table below will show97:—

Institution1

No. of institutions.

Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jewish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-Conformist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Church of Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roman Catholic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Church of England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Undenominational (including Y.M.C.A.) . . TOTAL

5 1 4 2 38 14 15 79

Percentage of total No. of number of pupils in pupils. secondary, primary, and special schools 302 131 581 490 5,360 1,645 1,123 9,634

3 13 1 36 6 03 5 09 55 64 17 07 11 68 100 00

1 Ibid, para. 29

5. The European schools are mainly located in Calcutta and Howrah and in the hill stations of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong. The 9,232 pupils who were on the 31st March 1917 in the secondary and elementary schools for Europeans and Anglo-Indians of the Bengal Presidency were distributed locally as follows:—Calcutta and Howrah 6,159; Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong 1,955; Asansol 329; Dacca 174; Chittagong 176; along the East Indian Railway line 187; along the Eastern Bengal Railway line 75; along the Bengal Nagpur Railway line 177.98 6. The cost of the European school system of Bengal for the year 1916–17 was calculated to be Rs. 27,49,996. Towards this amount Provincial revenues contributed Rs. 8,32,150, while municipal grants amounted to Rs. 19,235. The balance was met as follows:—Rs. 10,55,427 from fees, Rs. 1,22,323 from endowments and Rs. 7,20,861 from subscriptions, donations and other sources. There are two general endowments, viz., the Bruce Institution—a fund left by the Misses Bruce, the daughters of an indigo planter, for the education and maintenance of AngloIndian girls, and the Doveton Trust, formed from the sale of the property of the Doveton College, the annual income of which amounts to about Rs. 5,500 and is spent on scholarships. The capital of the Bruce Institution is about 10½ lakhs and its annual income amounts to about Rs. 37,000.99 An anonymous donor has recently placed a capital grant of Rs. 10 lakhs at the disposal of the Government of Bengal to be spent mainly on the European schools of the Presidency. Some ten years ago the late Mr. Robert Laidlaw of Messrs. Whiteaway Laidlaw and Co., Ltd., placed certain funds at the disposal of trustees to be spent on European schools. These funds which have been added to by subscriptions are administered, by an organisation which makes occasional grants to the European schools of Bengal. The Roman Catholic schools do not participate these grants. 113

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7. Mr. W. H. H. Arden Wood, Principal, La Martiniere, Calcutta, writes as below on the general question of the education of Europeans and Anglo-Indians100:— “Europeans that are only temporarily resident in India usually send their children to England at an early age, some few may send their children to local schools in India for a few years. Of late years there has been a steady increase in the number of Europeans coming out to India to occupy comparatively subordinate positions in trade and commerce and in industries. Europeans of this class tend to become domiciled and in most cases are compelled by circumstances to educate their children in India. On the other hand, a small proportion of the more well-to-do domiciled. Europeans and Anglo-Indians send their children at a comparatively early age to England for education, and a larger proportion send their children to England at an age, say, from 14 years onwards, to complete their school education, and to receive technical or professional, or university education. Since the war began many children who would ordinarily have gone to England are being educated at hill schools and other schools in India. But the great majority of the children of the domiciled European and Anglo-Indian community receive the whole of their education in India. They are born, brought up, and, with the exception of the few who, by sheer ability and force of character, do exceptionally well, live and die in India. They are, in fact, natives of India and it seems to me to be in the interests of India to make the best of them that can be made”

8. Mr. Arden Wood deplores the fact that the number of European and AngloIndian boys who proceed to a university education from secondary schools in India is not as large as it should be. The Rev. Father F. Crohan of St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, pleads that the needs of the Anglo-Indian community should be studied and their higher education more powerfully encouraged. In spite of the fact that there is attached to St. Xavier’s College an important and efficient school, designed to meet the needs of the Domiciled Community, ex-pupils of the school are conspicuous by their absence from the rolls of the college. “As it is,” writes the Rector, “the university courses do not fit in with their secondary education. The I.A. and I Sc. courses overlap with those of Senior Cambridge and the new course of study proposed by Cambridge for the last school class will even overlap the syllabus of the B.A. and B Sc. This is a cause of much disappointment to many.”101

9. Mr. Hornell has described at length in his memorandum the history of the curriculum and examinations taken in European schools. He has also mentioned certain institutions affiliated to the Calcutta University, as occasionally preparing European and Anglo-Indian students for the examinations of that University; but he has endorsed the statement repeatedly made in official reports, that collegiate education for Europeans, as a thing apart from the collegiate education of Indians, is practically non-existent. The memorandum discusses the question why Europeans and Anglo-Indians so rarely attempt university courses; and among the causes mentioned is the want of adjustment between the European secondary school courses, which are directed towards the Cambridge local examinations, and the requirements of the University. We may cite the following figures. During 1917 the successful candidates at the examinations of the Calcutta University included

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only thirty-three European and Anglo-Indian students (20 men and 13 women); only nineteen candidates, thirteen boys and six girls, passed the Calcutta matriculation examination during the quinquennium (1913–17) and in the course of this period 73 European or Anglo-Indian students were successful at the Cambridge higher local examinations.102 10. The rules for the final examination of European secondary schools are peculiar to Bengal, where the Cambridge local examinations—which are accepted by Calcutta University as an equivalent for its matriculation and to some extent for its intermediate examination—are the prescribed tests. Class promotion is decided in European schools in Bengal by the school authorities, subject to the control of the Inspector; it is so decided in all schools for Indians, except that the control of the Inspector does not apply to the very large number of high schools, which are neither Government institutions nor aided. The Bengal Code for European schools prescribes an elementary school certificate examination and the present practice of the Education Department is to make obligatory the appearance at this examination of every pupil in the sixth standard of European elementary schools. No such test is imposed in Indian schools. 11. In July 1912 the Government of India held an important conference in Simla on the education of the Domiciled Community. The conference generally deplored the absence of Europeans and Anglo-Indians from university colleges and some of the members advocated separate arrangements being made for the university education of the Domiciled Community. Other members, conspicuous among whom was Mr. Kuchler, then Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, held that the provision of separate arrangements was impracticable. The conference finally recommended to Government:— (a) That a separate university arts college should be instituted, either affiliated, if possible, to a western university or self-contained, conferring its own degrees. (b) That, if this be found to be impracticable, there may be added, in connexion with at least one of the training colleges for teachers, arts and science graduate courses both for the advantage of the candidates for the teaching diplomas and also for such other Anglo-Indian students as desire to take advantage of them; and that the college be affiliated to a recognised university.103 12. The discussions which have followed the conference have made it clear that a system of university education for Europeans and Anglo-Indians, divorced on its instructional side from the ordinary university system, is something which is neither desirable nor practicable. If, as our witnesses hope, the University of Calcutta is so developed and strengthened as to take its place among the great centres of learning and higher education in the world, other residents of Bengal, besides those of Indian descent, will wish to avail themselves of its advantages. We hope that this will be equally true of the University of Dacca.

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II. 13. The education of the European and Anglo-Indian community is a matter of great social and political importance. It is natural and right that those Europeans in India who have always kept in close touch with, their native land should, if they can afford to do so, send their children to Europe for secondary and university or technological training. But there is a large and increasing number of families in the Domiciled Community who cannot afford the expense of educating their children in Europe. Their needs should be carefully borne in mind when the system of university and technological education in Bengal is reorganised and improved. 14. The European secondary school system will best be continued upon present lines of organisation; partly with a view to climatic conditions, because boarding schools in the hills are best adapted to the needs of European children in India; partly, because, as some of the younger Europeans leave India before their school education is completed, their secondary education should be more assimilated to English methods than is desirable or possible in high schools for Indian boys and girls; partly also, because European children derive benefit from the corporate life, which the best of the existing schools afford, and from the care which religious bodies devote to this branch of educational work. But the examination tests applied to the European secondary schools of Bengal should be adjusted to the university system of the Presidency and the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca should accord due recognition to the results of these tests. The authority which we shall propose for secondary and intermediate education should take European schools into account, and should accord them appropriate treatment in view of their exceptional position. We shall recommend in a later chapter that one of its members should be chosen with. a view to the representation of the educational interests of the Domiciled Community.104 15. In the industrial and commercial development of Bengal young men and women of the European Domiciled Commnunity should bear an important part. They should therefore have access to and be encouraged to avail themselves of, facilities for university and technological education of the best type.105 Separate institutions for university and technological training should not be provided for Europeans and Anglo-Indians, because the expense of such provision would be prohibitive, and because it is desirable that, intending as they do to earn their livelihood in India, these younger members of the European Domiciled Community should be brought into association, during the years of their university and technological training, with the young Indians with whom they will afterwards be brought into association in business or in other ways. We believe that the universities and technological institutions, developed on the lines recommended in this report, will meet effectively the needs of the Domiciled Community.105 16. But, with this end in view, it is necessary that the European secondary school system in Bengal should be more closely coordinated with the university system. The new authority which we shall propose for secondary and intermediate education106 will be in a position to review the needs of the European schools

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and to provide for the more advanced stages of their teaching being equated with that done in the intermediate colleges the establishment of which we shall recommend.107 We desire to emphasise the importance of making adequate provision in European schools for the teaching of the principal Indian vernaculars in order that the members of the Domiciled Community may take their due share in the future administration of India and in its industrial and commercial development. And, further, though care should be taken not to overload the curriculum or to jeopardise the claims of other studies, the teaching of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian should not be ignored in European schools. The openings for administrative and commercial careers which are likely to offer themselves in the Middle East make it desriable that the young men of the Domiciled Community should have increased facilities for learning modern oriental languages. 17. The Domiciled European Community should have effective representation upon the governing body of the University of Calcutta and we shall recommend that the Court of that University should include representatives of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and other important public bodies, as well as of associations which may contribute a substantial sum annually to the University or one of its colleges.108 The experience of the community should also be represented in the Court of the University of Dacca, and for this our recommendations will provide.109 Suitable residential accommodation should be provided in the university towns for students belonging to the Domiciled Community in order that the new opportunities for university education may be effectively opened to them. 18. Our attention has been drawn to the great work which European and AngloIndian women teachers might do in connexion with the education of girls and women in India. Women qualified by training and entering upon the work with sympathy and enthusiasm will find in it careers of great usefulness and of absorbing interest. The example of an increasing number of women of the Domiciled European Community making the teaching of their Indian sisters their lives’ work would do much to promote social unity and to further the welfare of India.110

MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE COMMISSION TO THE SUBJECTS COMMITTEE (APPOINTED IN CONNEXION WITH THE REFORMS.) RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT TO HIGHER EDUCATION. Introductory 1. The Calcutta University Commission find that the present system of university education in Bengal is wholly inadequate to the modern needs of the Presidency. They have ascertained that experienced opinion, both Indian and European, is almost unanimous in criticising unfavourably the quality of the trailing which is usually given, and in deploring its failure adequately to develope the intelligence and practical capacity of the students. The constitution of the University is obsolete. It hampers academic freedom and impedes reform. At the same time, it is not sufficiently representative of the interests involved. The financial resources of 117

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the University and the colleges are insufficient; the courses of study are uninspiring; the conditions under which many thousands of the students live in Calcutta and the mufassal are injurious to their health and character. If the present state of things is allowed to continue, the results will be unhappy for the social welfare, the political development and the material interests of Bengal. 2. The Commission have therefore reached the conclusion that a drastic reconstruction of the present university system should be undertaken without delay. This reconstruction will involve a reform of higher secondary education, including the intermediate classes and the high English schools, upon which the work of the University and its colleges depends. The character of the changes which the Commission propose, and the grounds upon which they are based, cannot be fully set forth in a short memorandum. But, as some of the most important of their recommendations deal with the relations of the Government of India and the Government of Bengal to the future Universities of Calcutta and Dacca and have a direct bearing upon the question of what part of public education, if any, should be transferred to popular control, the Commission think that it will be convenient if they communicate at once to His Excellency the Viceroy for the information of the Reform Scheme Committees those salient features of their plan which touch upon matters now under consideration by those Committees. Proposed teaching universities in Calcutta and Dacca. 3. The Commission propose the establishment of a teaching university in Calcutta, based upon a new and closer association between the University and those Calcutta colleges which can be so organised as to take part in this co-operative work, provisional arrangements being made for those other Calcutta colleges which may not at first be able to fulfil the conditions imposed. The Commission also recommend that the new University of Dacca should be a teaching university, largely of a residential type. They recommend that in both universities the direction of academic policy connected with teaching and courses of study should be chiefly in the hands of the teaching body. Further, they propose that those of the Moffusil colleges which may provide courses leading up to a university degree should continue for the present to be in association with the University of Calcutta and remain under its aegis, though with more adequate representation than at present; subject however to conditions which will confer upon those stronger colleges which may show potentiality of growth the opportunity of rising stage by stage to academic independence. 4. In the constitutions proposed for the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca the Commission recommend a wide departure from the form of government and administration now characteristic of almost all Indian universities. Close contact between the University and all kinds of experienced public opinion in Bengal is secured by the establishment of a large and representative Court, whose sanction will be required for any change in the University Statutes, and, either directly or through a committee, for any substantial expenditure. The co-ordination of 118

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the business of the University as a whole is provided for by a strong Executive Council. Within the University, financial and administrative business is in the main assigned to one organ, educational business to another. The Government of Bengal will have representation upon all the chief Boards of the two universities; and the Governor of Bengal, as the Chancellor of both, will be in intimate relation to all the more important sides of academic policy and business. Future relations of the universities with Government. 5. These proposals, which the Commission regard as indispensable to the welfare of the universities, involve a great change in the present connexion between them and Government. They would sweep away the detailed control now exercised by the Government of India over the regulations of the University of Calcutta and would involve the repeal of the Indian Universities Act, 1904, so far as Calcutta is concerned. They would establish a new and organic connexion between the University of Calcutta and the provincial Government, while giving to the University responsibility for its own educational affairs and freedom in adapting its work to the needs of the community; in the University of Dacca also, they would make the Government of Bengal the ultimate authority in all matters affecting public policy and public finance. But they propose to throw upon each university greater responsibility for the conduct of its educational affairs. 6. Under these conditions, an entirely new form of Governmental supervision will be required. The Universities both of Calcutta and of Dacca should be protected against interference by any other public body or by any department of Government in those matters of educational administration and policy which are assigned to their responsible care. The Commission would therefore strongly deprecate the transfer of the present kind of control over university education to the provincial Government however constituted. For the exercise of control over the details of the internal educational work of a university the Commission feel that Government, whether in its present form or in that which it may assume under new conditions is not the appropriate body. Relation of the universities with the Government of India. 7. There are clear indications that in future the university problem will become in an increasing degree an all India problem. Each university, as it wins reputation for special excellence in some branch of learning, will attract a larger number of students from other provinces. Developments of technological instruction in the universities will entail some specialisation of work, not only on grounds of economy but because of the special facilities for practical training offered by the industries of different districts. And, as the Indian universities extend their work of scholarly research, aid will be required not only from the Government of the province but from the Government of India, which alone can survey the 119

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whole field of India’s needs. Moreover, the new universities will require some central authority which will assure public opinion in India and the learned world in other countries that a high standard of excellence is upheld in the award of their degrees and which may serve as a channel of communication between them and the governments of other countries, and be ready to assist them in the very difficult task of recruiting such members of their staffs as it may be necessary to draw from other parts of India and from Europe and America. And the Commission think it highly desirable that the power of establishing new universities in British India or of modifying the fundamental Acts or Charters which govern their work, and of making changes in the Acts governing existing universities, should lie with the Government of India and not with any provincial Government. 8. However far therefore the process of devolution to provincial Governments may be carried in the sphere of education, there will remain many functions in connection with university affairs which the Central Government can alone perform. These functions are (a) University legislation; (b) visitation, in order to ascertain continued efficiency of the several universities; (c) co-ordination, in order to secure the most economical co-operation among the universities in the advancement of knowledge and in the provision of special types of instruction; (d) the encouragement of research, in order that the Indian universities may have the means of rendering greater service to knowledge; and (e) assistance in recruitment, so that each university may have access to every source from which is can draw the best available scholars and teachers to its staff. The Commission propose therefore that the Viceroy should be the Visitor of the two universities in Bengal, and are further of opinion that these and other Indian universities will require the aid of the Government of India through a special organisation, associating with itself from time to time expert knowledge from all parts of India and from the West. The Cominission would therefore strongly deprecate any form of transference to provincial Governments which would wholly divest the Government of India of responsibilities in regard to university education. They observe that it is not thought desirable by the Imahn Industrial Commission that the Government of India should devolve upon provincial Governments all its responsibilities in regard to scientific and technological education. Proposed reconstruction of higher secondary education. 9. The Commission are of opinion that university studies should begin at the level of the present intermediate examination, and that the training now given in the colleges during the two years of the intermediate course should be wholly remodelled and entrusted to distinct and separate institutions to which they suggest that the name of intermediate colleges should be given. This change, in support of which they have received evidence from experienced witnesses in all parts of Bengal and of India, they regard as essential. It is the pivot of their scheme

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and a most urgently needed reform. Many of the intermediate colleges ought, in the judgment of the Commission, to be attached to the best of the high English schools. Both on educational and economic grounds it is important that the link between the intermediate colleges and the high English school system should be close. The Commission are of opinion that the administration of the intermediate stage and of the high English schools should be unified. Proposed Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education. 10. For the control both of the intermediate colleges and of the high English schools the Commission are of opinion that a special organisation is necessary. In view of the deep concern of the University in this grade of education and of the fact that the University has hitherto conducted the intermediate work and has largely controlled the work of high English schools, the Commission hold it to be essential that the universities should be strongly represented on the proposed new authority for secondary and intermediate education. They also desire to see an adequate representation of the interests of the Hindu and Muslim communities; and, as it is their hope that the new system will render some of its chief services in preparing boys for agriculture, and for industrial and commercial callings as well as for the lower grades of Government service, they think the Board should include representatives of agriculture, commerce and industry. It should also include representatives of medicine (including public health) and secondary education. They believe that these functions can be fulfilled with a Board of workable size, by the use of consultative committees. 11. The Commission therefore recommend that a Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education be established, with functions which would be partly executive and partly advisory. In regard to its executive functions the Board would act under the supervision and financial control of Government, and in its name. It should exercise a general supervision over all the institutions (i.e., intermediate colleges and high English schools) within its sphere and should grant recognition to high English schools and intermediate colleges, should plan their various courses of study, and should conduct the examinations corresponding to the present matriculation and intermediate. It should inspect all the intermediate colleges and high English schools and report upon their work. It should prepare estimates and should expend, under such conditions as Government might define, the funds allotted by Government in each year’s budget for the provision, maintenance, inspection and examination of the intermediate colleges and high English schools. 12. The part of education which would thus be dealt with by a Board under the Minister or Member is conveniently separable from the other parts of public instruction. While forming part of a great whole, it has a distinct character and lends itself to special administrative treatment. It may be designated as higher secondary education.

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Summary. 13. The recommendations of the Calcutta University Commission, so far as they bear upon the future relations between Government and the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca and upon the administration of the proposed intermediate colleges and of the high English schools in Bengal, may be summed up as follows:— (a) The Commission recommend that the Viceroy should be the Visitor of the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca, and the Governor of Bengal their Chancellor. In order that there may be a link between all Indian universities and due connexion between them and the supreme Government, the Commission suggest that in future the Viceroy should be the Visitor of all reconstituted universities in British India. (b) The fundamental points of university legislation described in paragraph 7 above should remain with the Government of India. (c) There should be an organisation in connexion with the Government of India for the assistance of the Viceroy in the discharge of his duties as Visitor of the universities. This organisation should be supplied with information by all Indian universities; should conduct at intervals of, say, five years general surveys of their work; should advise the Viceroy with regard to any appeals which may reach him as Visitor; should be ready to assist the universities in recruiting their staffs; and should be a connecting link between the Indian universities and a means of keeping them in touch with the university work of other countries. In the opinion of the Commission it is important that the Government of India should have funds out of which they may make supplementary grants to the universities in aid of special studies and research which are required in the general interest of India and for which provincial subsidies or private benefactions may not be forthcoming or are insufficient. (g) The reconstituted University of Calcutta and the new University of Dacca will be closely associated with the provincial Government but should not be subjected, to detailed control in their educational affairs. While the question of other Indian universities does not fall directly within the reference of the Commission, the latter would contemplate similar relations being established between Government and other universities which may hereafter be reconstituted or founded upon a plan of supervised responsibility. (e) The intermediate grade of instruction, now part of the university course, should be completely remodelled and be given in distinct institutions, many of which would necessarily for reasons of economy and educational unity be associated with high English schools. The Commission recommend that [Illegible Text] Bengal the recognition and supervision of the intermediate colleges and of high English schools, together with the conduct of examinations in both, should be entrusted to a small Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education, acting under the 122

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superintendence and financial control of Government and representative of the two universities, of Hindu and Muslim opinion and of experience in agriculture, industry, commerce, medicine (including public health) and secondary education. 14. The Commission consider that it is not within their province to express an opinion as to whether education in Bengal in whole or in part should be reserved or transferred. But they recommend that, whether university and higher secondary education (the latter comprising the proposed intermediate colleges and the high English schools) are treated as transferred or as reserved subjects, it should be stipulated (i) that the internal educational affairs of the universities, when the latter are reconstituted or established upon the plan proposed, should not be subject to detailed control by external authority, and (ii) that the intermediate colleges and high English schools should be administered by a small Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education, representative of the kinds of experience required for the reorganisation and superintendence of this grade of education, assisted by such Consultative Committees as may be found necessary, and acting as an organ of the provincial Government, to which it should annually submit estimates and under whose financial control and general supervision it should carry on its work. M. E. SADLER, President. ASUTOSH MOOKERJEE. W. W. HORNELL. ZIA-UD-DIN AHMAD.* P. J. HARTOG. J. W. GREGORY.* RAMSAY MUIR. G. ANDERSON, Secretary. CALCUTTA. The 21st November 1918.

APPENDIX XIV. SUMMARY OF THE REPORT OF A CONFERENCE HELD AT SIMLA ON 20TH AND 21ST AUGUST 1917 TO CONSIDER THE QUESTION OF ENGLISH AND VERNACULAR TEACHING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The members of the Conference were as follows:— The Hon’ble Sir Sankaran Nair, KT., C.I.E., B.A., B.L., Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. The Hon’ble Mr. H. Sharp, M.A., C.S.I., C.I.E., Officiating Secretary to the Government of India. G. Anderson, Esq., M.A., Assistant Secretary to the Government of India. 123

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PROVINCIAL DELEGATES.

Madras. 1. The Hon’ble Mr. J. H. Stone, M.A., C.I.E., Director of Public Instruction. 2. T. V. Sivakumara Sastriyar, Esq., B.A., L.T., Lecturer, Teachers’ College, Saidapet. 3. The Revd. W. Meston, M.A., B.D., Bursar and Professor of English, Madras Christian College. 4. Rao Bahadur K. Sesha Ayyar, Head Master, Municipal High School, Mayavaram.

Bombay. 5. 6. 7. 8.

The Hon’ble Mr. J. G. Covernton, M.A., C.I.E., Director of Public Instruction. V. B. Naik, Esq., M.A., Superintendent, New English School, Poona. G. K. Devadhar, Esq., M.A., Servants of India Society, Poona. K. Natarajan, Esq., B.A., Editor, Indian Social Reformer, Bombay.

Bengal. 9. The Hon’ble Mr. W. W. Hornell, M.A., M.R.A.S., Director of Public Instruction. 10. Rai Bahadur Dr. Purnananda Chatterji, B.A., B.SC., Inspector of Schools, Rajshahi Division. 11. Khan Bahadur Maulvi Ahsanullah, M.A., M.R.A.S., Inspector of Schools, Presidency Division.

United Provinces. 12. 13. 14. 15.

The Hon’ble Mr. C. F. de la Fosse, M.A., Director of Public Instruction. The Hon’ble Sir Sundar Lai, Kt., C.I.E. Rai Bahadur G. N. Chakravarti, M.A., LL.B., Inspector of Schools. Khan Bahadur Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Bar-at-Law, Allahabad.

Punjab. 16. The Hon’ble Mr. J. A. Richey, M.A., Director of Public Instruction. 17. The Hon’ble Khan Bahadur M. Fazl-i-Husain, M.A., Bar-at-Law. 18. Bakshi Ram Rattan, B.A., B.T., Head Master, Dayanand Anglo-Vedic High School, Lahore.

Bihar and Orissa. 19. The Hon’ble Rai Bahadur Dvarika Nath, B.A., LL.B. 124

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Central Provinces. 20. Pandit Kanhayalal Guru, M.A., Inspector of Schools, Chattisgarh Division. 21. Pandit Sitacharan Dube, M.A., B.L., Pleader and Chairman of the District Council, Hoshangabad. His Excellency the Viceroy delivered a speech at the opening of the Conference, in which he drew attention to the past policy of the Government of India in this matter; and to the importance both of encouraging and developing the vernaculars and of improving the teaching of English; and to the desirability of determining the relative position of the English and vernacular media, having in view the one object, viz., that the pupil should derive the greatest possible benefit from his schooling. Sir Sankaran Nair in opening the formal proceedings, of which he acted as chairman, said that that the intention was to see how far modifications in the present system might be effected so that pupils might (a) obtain a better grasp of the subjects which they are taught, and (b) complete their course with a more competent knowledge of English than at present. The printed record of the proceedings contains a full report of the speech of His Excellency the Viceroy and summaries of the discussions which followed. Those portions of the proceedings which record formal questions on the agenda paper and which relate to the adoption of resolutions are reprinted in the following sections:— “3. The Chairman. . . . . invited opinions on the teaching of English and drew attention to the following questions on the agenda paper:— (a) “At what period in a pupil’s career should English be taught as a language? Is it better for him, from the point of view of his ultimate mastery over the language, to start its study at an early age or only to receive such instruction after he has been well grounded in a vernacular?” (b) “Do the younger pupils gain a satisfactory knowledge of English by their instruction through the medium of that language or do they merely gain a smattering of incorrect and unidiomatic English?” (c) “What is the general experience of those boys who have passed through the vernacular middle course and then studied English at a high school? How have such boys distinguished themselves in the matter of English in comparison with those who have studied from an earlier period through the medium of English?” (d) “By what methods should the teaching of English be conducted? Does the present system attach too much importance to a knowledge of English literature as against the necessity of learning to speak and write the English language correctly? Should the teaching in the early stages be entirely oral or not?” (e) “Do the pupils in a vernacular middle school, as a rule, acquire a better knowledge and grasp of the ordinary school subjects than those 125

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of a similar age who have been instructed through the medium of English?” 8. The following resolutions were then put to the meeting:— (1) “Those pupils who come to the English schools, after some years of study in the vernacular ordinarily do better in subjects other than English than those who have begun the earlier study of the English language.” Messrs. Richey, Fazl-i-Husain, Kanhayalal Guru, Sitacharan Dube, Bakshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Dvarika Nath, Devadhar, Naik, Covernton, and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal. (2) “Those pupils who come to the English schools after some years of study in the vernacular ordinarily are and continue to be generally weaker in English than those who began their English studies at an earlier stage.” Messrs. Sivakumara Sastriyar, Sesha Ayyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdul Raoof, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan, and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal. Messrs. de la Fosse, Richey, Hornell, Fazl-i-Husain, Meston, Stone and Covernton accepted the proposal with the deletion of the words “and continue to be.” 13. The following resolutions were. . . . . . put to the vote:— (3) “From the point of view of proficiency in English, pupils should begin their study of the language as early in the school course as possible.” Messrs. de la Fosse, Sivakumara Sastriyar, Sesha Ayyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Richey, Hornell, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Meston, Stone, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal, (4) “In existing conditions pupils should ordinarily begin their studies in English between the ages of 9 and 11, and after three years of study through their own vernacular.” Messrs. de la Fosse, Sivakumara Sastriyar, Sesha Ayyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Hornell, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Meston, Stone, and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal. (a) Messrs Sesha Ayyar and Dvarika Nath preferred to substitute ‘two’ for ‘three’ years. (b) Messrs. Richey, Fazl-i-Husain, Sitacharan Dube, Kanhayalal Guru, Devadhar, Naik, and Covernton accepted the proposal with the substitution of ‘four’ for ‘three’ years.

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19. The Chairman . . . . . . referred to another group of questions on the agenda paper which dealt with the medium of instruction in secondary schools. The questions were as follows:— (a) “To what extent does instruction through the medium of a foreign language (i) hamper the pupils in the acquisition of knowledge, crushing their independence and originality of thought and instilling in them the necessity of cram as the only means of learning, (ii) impose a burden on the teachers, and (iii) tend to the impoverishment of the vernaculars? (b) “Are the comparative paucity of suitable text-books in the vernacular, the deficiency, of the vernaculars in technical nomenclature and the multiplicity of the vernaculars insuperable objections to extending the use of the vernaculars as a medium of instruction?” (c) “Should English be introduced as a medium of instruction gradually or not? If so, at what period and in what degree should it be introduced?” (d) “To what extent is it advisable to examine students in certain subjects at the end of their school career in the vernaculars?” 25. The following resolutions were . . . . . . put to the meeting:— (5) “The vernacular should be the medium of instruction in all the classes of a high school.” Messrs. Fazl-i-Husain, Sitacharan Dube and Naik voted for the proposal. Messrs. Sesha Ayyar, Richey, Kanhayalal Guru and Devadhar accepted the proposal with the addition of the words ‘as far as possible in subjects other than English.’ (6) “English should be the principal medium of instruction in the two higher classes of a high school.” Messrs. de la Fosse, Sivakumara Sastriyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Hornell, Chakravarti, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Meston, Stone, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan, Devadhar, Covernton, and Sir Sundar Lai voted for the proposal. (a) Mr. Sesha Ayyar accepted the proposal with the substitution of ‘the highest class’ for ‘two higher classes.’ (b) Messrs. Sivakumara Sastriyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Hornell, Chakravarti, Meston, Stone, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan, Covernton and Sir Sundar Lal would accept the substitution of ‘three’ for ‘two’ classes. (c) Maulvi Ahsanullah, Messrs. Hornell, Chakravarti, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan and Covernton would accept the substitution of ‘four’ for ‘two’ classes. 26. The Conference was generally agreed that the introduction of English as the medium of instruction should be effected gradually.

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28. The following resolutions were put before the Conference:— 7. “Examinations at the end of the high school course should be in the vernacular in all subjects except English.” Messrs. Fazl-i-Husain and Sitacharan Dube for the proposal. 8. “Candidates should have the option of answering the examinations at the end of the high school course in English or the vernacular in all subjects except English.” Messrs. de la Fosse, Sesha Ayar, Richey, Fazl-i-Husain, Sitacharan Dube, Kanhayalal Guru, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Chatterji, Devadhar, Naik and Covernton voted for the proposal.”

APPENDIX XXI. UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA IN SPOKEN ENGLISH.

A.—Draft Regulations of the Calcutta University. I. An examination for a Diploma in Spoken English shall be held annually in Calcutta and shall commence at such time as the Syndicate shall determine, the approximate date to be notified in the Calendar. II. Every candidate for the Diploma must have passed one of the following examinations in this University:— Master of Arts. Master of Science. Bachelor of Arts. Bachelor of Science. Bachelor of Teaching. Licentiate in Teaching. III. Every candidate for the Diploma shall produce a certificate to show that he has received training in elocution for a period of not less than one year under a teacher, recognised for this purpose by the Board of Higher Studies in English. IV. Every candidate for admission to the examination shall send his application to the Registrar with a certificate in the form prescribed by the Board of Higher Studies in English, and a fee of Rs. 50, not less than three months before the date fixed for the commencement of the examination. V. A candidate who fails to pass or present himself for examination, shall not be entitled to claim a refund of the fee. A candidate may be admitted to one or more subsequent examinations on payment of a like fee of Rs. 50 on each occasion. VI. The examination shall be written and oral, and shall be conducted on the lines of a syllabus to be drawn up from time to time by the Board of Higher 128

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Studies in English and Board of Studies in English jointly. The examiners shall be appointed by the Syndicate on the joint recommendation of the Boards. VII. The written examination will consist of one paper and will be held with a view to test a candidate’s knowledge of the elements of phonetics with special reference to the pronunciation of English words. VIII. The oral examination will be held mainly with a view to test a candidate’s power of elocution and his ability to carry on an ordinary conversation in English. IX. As soon as possible after the examination, the Syndicate shall publish a list of successful candidates, arranged in order of merit in two classes. Candidates shall be bracketted together unless the examiners are of opinion that there is clearly a difference in their merits. The candidate who is placed first in the first class shall receive a gold medal and a prize of books to the value of Rs. 200, the candidate who is placed second in the first class shall receive a silver medal and a prize of books to the value of Rs. 100.

B.—Memorandum submitted by the Commission on these Regulations. 1. We have considered the communication of the Government of India, No. 752, dated the 2nd September, 1918, enclosing draft regulations submitted by the University of Calcutta for a university diploma in spoken English. 2. We cordially approve the purpose of the University to encourage the improvement of spoken English, and believe that the institution of the university diploma would materially assist that purpose. We trust, therefore, that the Government of India will sanction the regulations communicated to us. 3. But while we recommend that the scheme should be brought into operation without delay, we believe that more comprehensive measures might perhaps be taken for promoting the object which the University has in view. The general questions involved will be more fittingly dealt with elsewhere; but we submit below certain suggestions in regard to the scheme as it stands. 4. It appears to us that examinations might be conducted, and certificates or diplomas awarded, by the University in spoken English for two allied but distinct objects, and that the present scheme suffers by attempting to combine these two objects. 5. The first kind of diploma would certify the power to pronounce English words correctly, and to read and speak the language with the right cadence and expression. A power of this kind is valuable not only for the ordinary purposes of life, but especially valuable for the teachers of all subjects in schools and colleges in which English is used as the medium of instruction. But for such persons, unless they are about to become teachers of English, an expert knowledge of phonetics appears to be unnecessary, and we see no reason why it should form a subject of the examination. We also see no reason why the University should compel its graduates to follow any prescribed course before being admitted to an examination of this kind. Without entering generally into the theory of examinations we may say that we regard the prescription of a course of study as desirable in the great majority of cases, in which 129

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the examination test must necessarily be an incomplete test, covering only a portion of the field of study. But one or two competent and experienced examiners, in half an hour or less, could completely test the capacity of a candidate to pronounce English well and to read and speak with the proper cadence and expression, without requiring any information as to the way in which he had acquired that capacity. 6. The second kind of diploma would be a teacher’s diploma. The examination for it would not only cover the same ground as. the first examination but would test the power of the candidate to teach others how to speak English well. For such a purpose the present scheme appears to us to err not by excess but by Defect. A person might be perfectly capable of obtaining the diploma of spoken English proposed by the University and yet be incapable of teaching others, and especially of teaching a class, to speak English well For a teacher’s diploma in spoken English there should, in our judgment, be a course of study, and one which would not only include training in phonetics, as proposed in the present scheme, but training in teaching; and the examination itself should include, in addition to the tests proposed in the scheme, a practical test with a class. 7. We desire to comment on one further point in the scheme. It proposes to arrange the candidates in ‘order of merit.’ We fear that this might, in existing circumstances, give rise to some difficulties. It must be admitted that while phonetic authorities may recognise a ‘standard’ pronunciation of English, there are a number of local varieties of pronunciation which are regarded in England as equally admissible in public life: Scotchmen and Irishmen suffer from no disability because their pronunciation differs in certain respects from that of well educated Englishmen. It seems probable that Indians may learn their spoken English from capable Scotch and Irish teachers and catch up their distinguishing characteristics. It would not be right to let any candidate suffer on this account, but nevertheless examiners in deciding between the claims of candidates otherwise equal would probably tend to deduct marks for such characteristics. We suggest that special proficiency in this subject might be more conveniently recognised by returning the somewhat heavy fee specified to those students who were judged worthy of distinction, than in the manner proposed in the draft regulations. 8. We do not wish to discourage in any way this experiment of the University in a new and important field of education. But we cannot help thinking that the diploma proposed may be unduly onerous for the very numerous class of persons other than teachers of English for whom a university diploma in spoken English would be of use; and, on the other hand, that such a diploma may be interpreted as implying a power of teaching good spoken English which those on whom it was conferred will not necessarily possess. We hope, therefore, that the University may be able at a convenient opportunity to modify the scheme on some such lines as those indicated above. CALCUTTA, The 9th November 1919.

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Notes 1 The number of candidates for the intermediate examination is chosen in preference to the number of matriculates because Madras has abandoned the matriculation in favour of a school-leaving examinaton; and also because the intermediate figure shows the number of persons who have not merely passed the matriculation, but proceeded to a university course. 2 The number of students in Bengal was in 1917-18 Just under 26,000; the number of ‘fulltime’ students in the United Kingdom in the year before the War was 26,710 (see tables published in Nature, August 15th, 1918, page 474). The ‘full-time’ students included many who were not preparing for degrees. In Bengal all students are preparing for degrees. In the United Kingdom there were also a number of students taking one or two courses, but not giving their whole time to university work. There is no parallel to this class in Bengal. 3 Bengal District Administration Committee Report, 1914, pages 13-14. 4 See the figures given in the appendix to their report. 5 See the Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1918, para 16, where an instructive comparison is drawn between Bengal and Bombay. 6 See the remarkable figures quoted by the Indian Industrial Commission, in para. 15 of their report. 7 Census Report, 1911 8 Thus the Indian Industrial Commission (para. 16) notes that while “Bengali capitalists have taken little part, otherwise than as mere investors, in the starting, and none at all in the management, of jute mills,” a feature of industrial life in recent years “is the number of small organised industries recently taken up by Indians, such as tanning, pottery and pencil-making.” 9 Census Report, 1911 10 General Memoranda, page 172 11 General Memoranda, page 209 12 Progress of Education in Bengal 1912-13 to 1916-17 Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), paras. 593-595. 13 Tafsír is Quranic exegesis and Hadis, the science of Apostolic tradition. 14 Report of the Indian Education Commission, Chapter IX, para. 663, (Calcutta, 1883). 15 Nineteenth Century, August 1882, pages 193-215. 16 Report of the Indian Education Commission, Chapter IX, para. 563, page 489. 17 Ibid., para. 556, page 483. 18 The Indian Musalmans by Dr. W. W. Hunter, pages 181 and 182, (Second Edition, London, Trubner & Co., 1872.) 19 Para. 58, infra. 20 Chapter VIII para. 11. 21 Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of Bengal to consider questions connected with Muhammadan education, page 16 (Calcutta, 1915.) 22 Review of the Progress and Education in Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1907-08 to 191112, Volume I, para. 262. 23 Ibid, para. 267. 24 The outcome of the latter part of this proposal was not the appointment of a special officer for education in Eastern Bengal, but the appointment of an Assistant Director of Public Instruction for Muhammadan Education throughout the Bengal Presidency. 25 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions connected with Muhammadan Education, page 111 (Calcutta 1915). 26 The Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions connected with Muhammadan education, Chapter VI, page 24 (Calcutta 1915). 27 Chapter X, Section IV.

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28 Question 4. 29 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions connected with Muhammadan education, paras. 94-95 (Calcutta 1915). 30 General Memoranda, page 212. 31 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions connected with Muhammadan education, paras. 114-139. 32 Ibid, para 145. The wearing of a cap by Muslim-students was also urged by the Muslim deputation which waited on the Commission at Rangpur. 33 The memorial of the Musalmans of Chittagong, para. 10—General Memoranda, page 215 34 Memorial of the Musalmans of Rajshahi, para. 14—General Memoranda, page 218 35 Memorial of the Musalmans of Calcutta, page. 15 (d)—General Memoianda, page 213 36 Muhammadan Deputation, Dacca—Question 4. 37 Nawab Syed Nawbaly Chaudhury—Question 4. 38 The memorial of the Musalmans of Rajshahi, para. 2, 40 per cent—General Memoranda, page 217; and memorial of the Musalmans of Assam, para. 5, 30 to 50 per cent.—General Memoranda, page 207. 39 See Resolution No. 1227-Edn., dated the 3rd August 1916, of the Government of Bengal, General Department, Education, Calcutta, Gazette, the 9th August 1916. 40 An endowment fund left by Haji Muhammad Mohsin of Hooghly, part of which is devoted to the education of Musalmans, see the volume of appendices to this report. 41 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17, Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), para 598 42 The test of literacy for the purposes of the census is that the individual should be able to write a letter to a friend and read the answer to it. The ordinary literate is one who can do this in the vernacular; a literate in English is one who can do it in English. 43 Progress, of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17. Fifth Quinquennial Review by W W Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), para. 599, and General Tables III A and III B The slight discrepancies between the figures given in para, 599 and the General Tables is due to the fact that Musalmans in European schools are included in the tables, but omitted from the totals in the test. There were 864,195 Musalmans in colleges and schools not specifically designed for Europeans and 64 in European schools. Thus the total number of Muslim students in public and private institutions including European schools was 864,259. 44 General Memoranda, page 210. 45 See also para. 33( j) above, and Chapter XXXIV. 46 See also Chapter XVI 47 Para 36 above 48 The education of Muslim women and girls is also dealt with in general in Chapter XIV. 49 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17. Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), para. 506 50 Ibid., para, 510. 51 Progress of Education in Bengal. Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W Hornell, para. 513 52 Para, 13 above. 53 The Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions connected with Muhammadan education, para. 135 (Calcutta, 1915). 54 Ibid. 55 Question 23. 56 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Govornment to consider questions connected with Muhammadan education (Calcutta, 1916). Resolution 168, page 54. 57 Paras. 33( j) and 46 above. 58 Resolution of the Government of Bengal, General Department, Education, dated the 31st July 1888. 59 General Memoranda, page 171.

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60 Ibid., page 164. 61 Resolution no 450-T-G., dated the 31st July 1914, by the Government of Bengal, General (Education) Department 62 Ibid., para 10. 63 This is curiously reminiscent of what Sir Richard Burton wrote in 1853 of the students of the Azhar at Cairo in his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Mecca (by Col. Sir Richard F Burton edited by Lady Burton with an introduction by Stanley Lane-Poole: London. G. Bell and Sons, Ltd 1915, Vol I), pp. 103-109—“The following is the course of study in the Azhar The school-boy of four or five years standing has been taught by a liberal application of the maxim ‘the Green Rod is of the Trees of Paradise’ to chant the Koran without understanding it, the elementary rules of arithmetic, and, if he is destined to be a learned man, the art of writing. He then registers his name in Al-Azhar, and applies himself to the branches of study most cultivated in Al-Islam, namely Nahw (syntax), Will (the law), Hadis (the traditions of the Prophet) and Tatsir, or exposition of the Koran. The young Egyptian reads at the same time Sarf, or inflexion, and Nahw (Syntax). But as Arabic is his mother tongue, he is not required to study the former so deeply as are the Turks, the Persians and the Indians. If he desires, however, to he proficient he must carefully peruse five books in Sarf, and six in Nahw Master of grammar, our student now applies himself to its proper am and purpose, Divinity. Of the four schools those of Abu Hanifah and Al Shafe’i are most common in Cairo, etc. . . . In order to become a Fakih, or divine of distinguished fame, the follower of Abu Hanifah must peruse about ten volumes, some of large size, written in a diffuse style; the Shafe’i’s reading is not quite so extensive. Theology is much studied, because it leads directly to the gaming of daily bread, as priest or tutor; and other scientific pursuits are neglected for the opposite reason. The theologian in Egypt, as in other parts of Al-Islam, must have a superficial know ledge of the Prophet’s traditions. Of these there are eight well-known collections, but only the first three are generally read School boys are instructed, almost when in their infancy, to intone the Koran . . . And after learning to read the whole volume, some savants are ambitious enough to wish to understand it; under these circumstances they must dive into “Ilm al Tafsir, or the exegesis of the Koran. Our student is now a perfect Fakah or Mullá. But the poor fellow has no scholarship or fellowship—no easy tutorship—no fat living to look forward to. After wasting seven years, or twice seven years, over his studies, and reading till his brain is dizzy, his digestion gone and his eyes half blind, he must either starve upon college alms, or squat like my old Shaykh Mohammed, in a druggist’s shop, or become pedagogue and preacher in some country place, on the pay of £8 per annum. With such prospects it is wonderful how the Azhar can present any attractions, but the southern man is essentially an idler, and many become Olemá, like Capuchins, in order to do nothing. A favoured few rise to the degree of Mudrriss (professors) and thence emerge Kazis and Muftis. This is another inducement to matriculate, every undergraduate having an eye upon the Kaziship with as much chance of obtaining it as the country parocco has of becoming a cardinal. Others again devote themselves to laical pursuits, degenerate into Wakils (lawyers) or seek their fortunes as Kátibs—public or private accountants.” 64 Resolution no. 450-T.G., dated the 31st July 1914 by the Government of Bengal, General (Education) Department, paras. 2 and 3. 65 General Memoranda, pages 207-218 66 Ibid., pages 201-206 67 Question 22. 68 Chapters XVII and XL. 69 Chapters XVII and XL. 70 Question 4. 71 General Memoranda, page 209. 72 Question 22. 73 Question 22.

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74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Question 22. Question 22. Question 22. Question 22. Question 22. Question 22. Question 22. Question 22. Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, Chapter IX, para 553 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1012-13 to 1016-17, Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para 610. The term busti signifies a collection of huts Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17. Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para. 608 Ibid., para. 611. Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, Chapter IX, para. 591 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17, Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para. 614 Dacca University Committee’s Report, Chapter XIII, page 72, para. 6 (Calcutta, 1912) Chapter XXXI, para. 27. Chapter XXXI, paras. 31-47, also Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIX, paras. 24 and 26 Ibid, para. 12. Chapter XXXIII, para. 158. See the volume of appendices to this report. Mr. Hornell’s memorandum paras. 8 and 17-21 Mr. Hornell’s memorandum, para. 27 Ibid, para. 29 Mr. Hornell’s memorandum, para. 8 General Memoranda, page 108 Question 22. Mr. Hornell’s memorandum, paras. 39-45. Report of the Conference on the Education of the Domiciled Community in India, Simla, July 1912 (Calcutta, 1912), pages 18-21. Chapter XXXI, para. 25. On the 31st March 1917 there were only 506 Europeans and Anglo-Indians in all the professional and technical colleges and schools of the Bengal Presidency. Of these 147 were girls in commercial schools and 129 boys in engineering schools Chapter XXXI. Chapter XXXII. Chapter XXXVI, paras. 27-29. Chapter XXXIII, para. 184. For Calcutta, see Chapter XXXIX, para 12: for Dacca, Chapter XXXIII, para 150.

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CHAPTER III THE PROBLEM OF LITERACY ACCORDING to the Census of 1911 the percentage of literacy among Indian Christians was only 16.3, and in some provinces the percentage showed a decline compared with that of 1901. The situation thus disclosed is The Facts. very serious. Yet, lest an exaggerated emphasis should be laid on the figures, we desire to make the following statement regarding them. The standard required by the enumerators was a fairly high one—ability to read an ordinary letter and reply to it. Further, the percentage is of course on the basis of the entire Indian Christian community, including infants. If we deduct those under the age of seven and a half—about 21 per cent, according to the Census Report—the percentage of literacy would be raised to 20.6, still leaving 79.4 per cent. illiterate. Christians compare well with other religious communities. Taking the community as a whole,1 we find that they are surpassed only by the Parsees (71.1 per cent.), the Jains (27.5 per cent.), and the Buddhists (22.9 per cent.), and are far above the Sikhs (6.7 per cent.), the Hindus (5.5 per cent.), the Mohammedans (3.8 per cent.), and the animistic tribes (.6 per cent.). The Parsees as is well known, are a small and wealthy community. Among the Jains the percentage is brought up by the men—in the case of the women it is only 4 per cent.—whose position as traders makes literacy essential. The Buddhists of Burma have for long had an educational system connected with the monasteries, but even among them the standard of female literacy is low (5·8). In fact, the Christian community in the matter of the education of girls comes next to the Parsees, and is distinguished from all the others by having a percentage of literacy for women more than half that for men. The superiority of the Christian community, especially in the matter of female education, is commented on again and again in the Census Report.2

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With regard to the alleged decrease in the percentage of literacy, we find it impossible to make an exact statement, for in 1901 Indian Christians were not distinguished in some provinces from Christians of other nationalities. Taking the entire Christian community, we find a slight increase from 21·1 in 1901 (males 29·1, females 12·5) to 21·7 (males 29·3, females 13·5); this means that the literates of this community have increased 2·8 per cent., 1·6 per cent, for males and 8 per cent. for females. If we assume that the literacy of the European and Anglo-Indian community is stationary we may credit the Indian Community with the entire increase. Here, however, we turn from the encouraging to the discouraging side, for every other community save one shows a much larger increase.3 The reason, however, becomes apparent when the provincial returns are studied, for it is found that, in areas where large mass movements have recently taken place, the percentage has declined. In the United Provinces, for instance, the Christian population increased in the decade from ·22 per cent. of the population to ·38 per cent., while the percentage of literacy fell from 48·1 to 34·6 for males, and 31·8 to 23·2 for females.4 On the other hand, the literacy of the Christians has increased where the community has been established for a generation or more, or where it is still small. The decrease is thus largely accounted for by the fact that large numbers of illiterates were gathered in during the decade. For such people the missionaries do their best through oral instruction, so native to the genius of the country; and, while our aim must be nothing short of a literate Church, it should be remembered that some who cannot sign their names are yet possessed of considerable intelligence and power of judgment, and may show such spiritual maturity and strength of character as to be of real service to the Church. If, then, we could be assured that the children of converts were being taught, the situation would be much less alarming than appears at first sight. The disappointing thing is, that large numbers of them are not. The inforPercentage of mation regarding this matter with which we started has been Children at confirmed in the course of our tour. In each area we have made School. careful inquiries regarding the proportion of the children of Christian people attending school. In western countries the children of schoolgoing age are usually reckoned at about 17 per cent. of the entire population. In India, however, the percentage of children between the ages of five and fifteen is much higher (24·6 according to the Census of 1911), and it is higher still among the Christians (25·5). There is evidence that it is even higher among the humble classes from which most of the Christians spring. To expect poor village children to remain at school until they are fifteen is, of course, out of the question; but if they leave before the age of ten they are not likely to retain such literacy as they have acquired. In our view any percentage under fifteen is unsatisfactory. From the figures supplied to us in a number of different areas, we find that in many cases—usually in older Christian communities, or where the numbers are small—this figure is passed, and in a good many it is reached, but there are many in which the shortage is deplorable, some returns showing only about 3 per cent. A specially disappointing thing is that even in some of the older Churches less than half the available children are at school. The Alleged Decline.

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Of the causes of this unsatisfactory condition several are referred to in sundry parts of this Report. Here an attempt may be made to set them forth in order. (a) Shortage of Workers.—The tendency of mass movements has been to advance so rapidly that missions are unable to keep pace with them. Even if funds are available—which is not usually the case—teachers cannot be produced without years of work. Special courses are arranged and workers sent out to do their best. But many of them have no instruction in the art of teaching, and if, as often happens, they have to minister to as many as ten village churches, the holding of regular schools is impossible. In such cases children remain illiterate for lack of opportunity. Speaking generally, we may say that the degree of literacy is roughly in proportion to the adequacy of the staff. The following statistics for a mass movement district, kindly supplied by the missionary in charge, give some idea of the inadequacy of the staff: Causes of Illiteracy.

Number of Christians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . about 18,000 1,409 ” ” villages with Christians . . . . . . . . . . . ” ordained preachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ” ” ” primary schools (excluding ” ” boarding schools) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 ” Number of Christian pupils (excluding boarding pupils) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 ” Number of pupils in Sunday schools . . . . . . . . . 4,029 ” Number of pupils in Sunday schools who can read the Gospels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601 ”

(b) Indifference of Parents.—That people who are just emerging from the blindness and degradation of the life to which the outcastes have been condemned should have a keen sense of what their children really need is hardly to be expected. The disappointing thing is that the indifference to their highest welfare should be so persistent as it often is. We have sometimes found Christians even of the third generation not only illiterate, but requiring something approaching compulsion to secure the attendance of their children at school for an adequate time. Sometimes, but not always, there is every appearance of keenness at the beginning. Indeed, a desire to have their children rise in the world through education is undoubtedly a common reason for the demand for Christian instruction. But the desire is usually too weak to stimulate the parent to persevere in face of difficulties. The child is taken away after a year or two. The ostensible reason is that he must bring grist to the family mill; but if the parent were convinced that education was something worth having he would in many cases find means of overcoming the economic difficulty. Regarding this, however, there is a good deal of misunderstanding. It is often assumed that the education given in the village school is despised because it is not practical enough. In many cases, however, the parent’s objection is just the opposite. He has no desire to have his son taught agriculture, partly because he thinks he knows far more about that than the teacher, but still more because his 137

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ambition is that his boy should become a teacher or a clerk. If he finds that such a rise in the scale is improbable, his enthusiasm for education vanishes. Of the mental and spiritual value of education, even if it never leads beyond the outcaste mohulla, he is ignorant. (c) Economic Conditions.—That the parent has considerable reason for withdrawing his children from school before they have become literate must be frankly admitted. Again and again we have been told that the root of the difficulty is economic. As this is dealt with in other chapters, it need not be elaborated. (d ) Absence of Public Opinion.—The outcastes, including those who become Christian, naturally tend to follow those above them in the scale. If these lack public opinion for education, this makes it all the harder to create such an opinion among the outcastes. (e) Oppression.—A more serious hindrance is the active opposition of the caste Hindus and other employers to anything which makes for the elevation of their labourers. In this matter we were glad to find that the case was not wholly bad in all areas, and still more that, on the whole, an improvement was taking place. But, speaking generally, it is still the case that the caste man not only does nothing for the enlightenment of the outcaste, but puts positive obstacles in the way, knowing that if he is enlightened he can no longer be exploited. Outcastes who have the temerity to send their children to school—even if the school be in their quarter, so that there can be no complaint of defiling caste children by contact—find themselves subject to such violence and threatening that they yield and withdraw their children. If the outcastes want, not mere education, but Christian teaching, the persecution, for a time, is all the fiercer, for the caste people are afraid that if the outcastes become Christians they will no longer be available for menial service. ( f ) Faulty Educational Methods are responsible for a considerable failure to attain literacy on the part of those who actually begin their schooling. In the following chapters we shall state our views regarding the different kinds of school required for the education and elevation of the Christian community. Here we must touch on the initial difficulties of getting How to rouse Interest. a school at all. The problem with which we are here concerned is the development of the life of the Christian community scattered throughout the villages. How are workers to arouse such interest that schools with this object will be welcomed, and the children sent to them regularly enough and long enough to secure literacy? Remembering the level from which the people start, missionaries and their fellow-workers usually begin by showing the people that it is to their interest to have their children educated, not merely because a few may rise in the world, but because all who can read have certain advantages over others. The uneducated labourer is at the mercy of his employer. He cannot read the document he is asked to sign—by touching the pen of one who writes his name for him—and finds too late that he has signed away his property or his liberty. Being unable to count, he cannot refute his master’s statement that the debt which has brought him to serfdom has not been worked off. Through ignorance he is at the mercy of 138

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blackmailing constables and village officials. When he goes to a distant place as a sepoy or a coolie he has to pay some one to write a letter to his father. In other words, he has no real independence. The missionary worker tries to show him how different all this would be if his children could read, write, and count—how they might cease to be chattels and become men. He may also try to show him that education might in the course of time help him to do his ordinary work better, and perhaps supplement his livelihood through a subsidiary industry. And, while the great majority of his children will remain in their village, the mission should provide suitable outlets, to which the workers can point, for those who show fitness for higher education or industrial training. Such considerations apply to the outcastes as such, whether they have come under Christian instruction or not; and of course the schools intended specially for the Christians will aim as far as possible at benefiting the others also. For Christians arguments of a higher order can be pressed home. If they are to be delivered from the animism which peoples the world with evil spirits, they must advance in knowledge of the truth. They can be shown how greatly the opportunity of gaining this knowledge is increased if the worshipper can read the Bible and helpful literature for himself, and take an intelligent part in Christian worship. If, as is too often the case, the convert is too old to learn, there is all the more reason for appealing to him on behalf of his children. ‘You cannot make much of us,’ people often say, ‘but we want our children to be better than we have been.’ Once the school has been started, the teacher and those who supervise his work must do their utmost to make it so interesting that even the Maintaining the poorest will feel that it is worth while to make a big sacrifice Interest. to keep his children long enough at it.5 Those concerned must be prepared for disappointment, and not allow failure to put a stop to their endeavours. In a mission which has been successful beyond the average of its province in producing a literate

[[**MISSING PAGES**]] CHAPTER VII THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS MANY documents of great interest issued recently have dealt with the problem of female education in India. In England in 1915 a memorial on this subject was presented to His Majesty’s Secretary of State for India The Present Condition by an influential deputation. The memorial emphasized of Girls’ Education. points which have long caused anxiety—the insignificant number of girls under instruction, the disparity in this respect of the condition of the male and female portions of the population, and the consequent danger to the social well-being of the Indian community. This memorial was forwarded to the Government of India, which invited local Governments to obtain the opinions 139

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of competent persons, local bodies, existing committees, and other authorities. These replies, when received, furnished a mass of valuable evidence which has not yet been published in full, but which was condensed in an important resolution issued by the Government of India in October 1919.6 The Calcutta University Commission7 have also emphasized the difficulties arising from early marriage, purdah, and the distrust of western education. Not all the difficulties are found, or at least found in an equal degree, in all parts of India, in some of which, for instance, the institution of purdah is for the most part unknown. But the extent to which obstacles arising from these causes, from conservatism, from ideas of caste, from the general want of desire for woman’s education, have interfered with progress is evident from the fact that only 1·6 per cent. of the Hindu female population, and 1·03 per cent. of the Mohammedan, are under instruction; while among Europeans (with Anglo-Indians), Parsees, and Indian Christians, the percentages are 22·5, 14·8 and 8 respectively; while if we look at the matter territorially we find the greatest percentage of girls under instruction is only 1·5 in Bombay and Madras, while the lowest is ·3 in the United Provinces. Again, if we look at the grade of this instruction, we get further light upon the backwardness of the situation, for over 90 per cent of the girls under instruction are in the primary grade, and very largely in the two lowest classes. Coming to our own particular problem, there is no doubt that the percentage in the villages is much lower than in the towns. Now, grave as the situation is, that it would have been very much worse without the work of the Christian missionaries is not seriously disputed. And while it is the case that in recent years the number of girls under instruction has been considerably increased, there is very little evidence, even now when so much is heard of the desire of the Indian for education, that either the Hindu or Mohammedan community as a whole is really awake or in earnest with regard to the education of girls. This absence of public opinion in favour of girls’ education must be emphasized because of its importance in any consideration of the relation of a missionary educational system to a government educational system. If the missionary effort is to be strongest where the government effort is weakest, then it is probable that for many years to come girls’ education will be a greater factor in the missionary system than in the other. Any scheme of education for the Indian girl should be based on a wise understanding of the tradition of womanhood into which she is born, of the place she occupies in the life of her own community, of the charThe Village Girl. acteristics which her own people deem in her noblest and most admirable, and of the functions which she is or may be allowed to perform. The girl is a very busy member of the Indian village home. She draws the water from the well, pounds and winnows the rice or other cereal for food, gathers firewood, cleans the house, and in every interval of freedom from these duties carries on her hip the inevitable baby of whose care she is almost entirely 140

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ignorant. Besides being maid-of-all-work, she is, as she grows up, a great cause of anxiety or at least solicitude to her parents, who must arrange for her marriage (not always an easy matter) while she is still a child. These two causes, her home duties and her early marriage, make it very difficult to secure her regular attendance at the village day school. Her attendance at the boarding school is generally more easily secured. This is not surprising when we consider that sometimes the total cost, and almost always the greater part of the cost, not only of instruction but of maintenance, is defrayed by the missionaries, who also undertake responsibility for the girl’s personal safety, thus relieving the parents of a double anxiety. The village day school will generally be co-educational. The bright intelligence of many of these little girls in the village schools is most marked, and full of promise if the proper teacher can be secured. The general Village Primary curriculum has already been discussed in Chapter IV, and Schools. little differentiation seems to be necessary for girls in the proposed four or five years’ course. Specialization on her home duties so early seems undesirable, while she shows herself quite as fit as the boy to meet the requirements with regard to the three R’s. Here again it must be urged, as in the chapter already referred to, that the school day, more especially for the girl, should be short. The five-hour day now quite common should be reduced to four hours, if not even less. The girl returns daily to the home, where many duties await her, and, while these rightly constitute a valuable part of her education, they also tax her energies. The problem of the education of the girl in the village school, then, is not especially one of curriculum. The most urgent matters are its wider extension, and the securing of a better type of teacher. When the girl completes the four years of the village school, she should be encouraged to continue her education further. As the number of girls going on is small, and efficient women teachers cannot be secured Vocational Middle in sufficient numbers, and further, the social conditions of Schools. the village still make unprotected women’s work there difficult and even dangerous, there seems, at least in this transition period, to be no alternative to the central boarding school of the middle grade. It is encouraging to note how clearly the missionaries have seen the strategic importance of such schools, so that now a girls’ boarding school is an almost constant feature in their educational system, and very often one of the strongest branches of the work. It is generally in charge of a trained experienced teacher from the home country, who is assisted by an Indian staff, often of her own training. One longs for the assistance in this work of more educated Indian women of good social standing. It would be well if, in recruiting for the mission field, the scope and opportunity of the teacher in these rural boarding schools was more clearly put before the students of our teachers’ training colleges both in India and at home. The work being done in them is invaluable; whatever agencies financial exigencies may cripple, full support should be secured for these. The work in these rural schools 141

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seems much more practical and nearer the life of the people than that of some of the urban boarding schools. The curriculum of these vocational middle schools has been discussed in Chapter VI, but something may be added on industries specially suited for girls. One good household craft such as cooking, plain-sewing, embroidery, lace-making, spinning, weaving or basket-making is now quite general. To this may be added the making of jellies, jams, chutneys, curry-powder, and oil. It should be noted that gardening and field work are much more suitable than needlework for some of the rough and sometimes unhealthy village girls who are admitted to these schools. It is in many cases a better training for life, for many of them come from the day labourer class, and in their own homes would be sent out into the fields. As wives for village labourers, too, they will be required to grind, milk, fetch fodder for the animals, or do a day’s weeding. Suggestions for other industries should be got from such a survey by the Department of Industries as is proposed in Chapter VI. In the hostels very simple conditions are wisely maintained, the girls generally taking part in, if not entirely managing, the housekeeping, cleaning, and cooking, as well as their personal needlework. In some places the ‘cotHostels. tage system’ has been introduced, allowing the girls to live in small separate groups to their great advantage. The more recent boarding-school buildings are of this type, generally affording accommodation for twelve to fifteen, or even fewer, in the separate houses built around a quadrangle. We have also seen the long dormitory of the old type divided cubicle-fashion to allow of the same arrangement. In the allocation of the girls to the household, two plans are followed. Either the children of the same age are placed in each, with older girls as house-mother and assistant, or else the occupants of each are of various ages, approximating in this respect to the diversity and number of an ordinary family. In either case stores for the whole week are given to the house-mother, who uses her own discretion as to how they can best be ‘made do,’ and sees to the cooking and serving. The care of the persons and clothing of the household is also hers. In some places it has been found possible to allow the girls to do the marketing. All this is very important, as the charge is often brought against the boarding school that the girls live so cloistered a life that they are unfitted to face the world at the end of their school course. While there is obvious inability on the part of many of those girls (who are still in a very primitive state) themselves to contrive occupation for much of their own time, there seems to be a tendency on the part of those in charge so to fill every working hour with prescribed duties that it is hard to see how the pupil is to acquire the very valuable power of occupying herself profitably. Of the same nature is the disinclination of those in charge in many schools to throw responsibility— responsibility for younger children, stores, etc.—on to the girls without too obvious supervision, although in a few schools this very educative factor is well used. Such a community offers an excellent sphere for the intelligent introduction of a certain amount of self-government. It is of the greatest importance that the girls 142

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should be made self-reliant and independent, and that their powers of initiative should be strengthened by an appeal to them to make suggestions as how best to meet the emergencies which daily arise. Drawing, music, and dancing are generally not strong. We would like to have seen more of the use of Indian musical instruments for purposes of accompaniment— what we did see was excellent—and a wider encouragement Music and Art. of Indian dances and games. In this connection we would urge that a strong effort should be made by missionaries to appreciate what is best in Indian music and art. Of the evil that attaches to much of it, especially in relation to folk-lore and mythology, missionaries are keenly conscious; but, after careful consideration, we are seriously of opinion that there is much that with suitable adaptation may be used for lofty ends. In other lands also a process of selection and sublimation has been necessary before what was objectionable—whether through primitive crudeness or through degeneration—could be redeemed so as to become the expression of what is lovely and of good report, and we urge that further efforts in this be made in India. In the matter of art, if few of the older mythological Indian pictures are appropriate to the walls of our girls’ schools, surely no objection could be taken to the pictures of the newer Indian school of oriental art of which many examples are quite cheaply reproduced.8 Those interested in girls’ training have in certain districts a new problem to consider. In the past, teachers and missionaries have been glad if they could retain the girl in school until such time as her marriage was Education for the arranged, or, in the case of child marriage until she went to Town. her husband’s home. Now, however, there is in some large towns a growing demand for the services of girls of a certain amount of education, as well as for skilled and unskilled labour. To the constant demand for nurses and teachers is now added the demand in manufacturing towns for girls for the factories (as for example the demand for leather workers for Cawnpore). This demand is affecting even the girls of little or no education in rural areas. The problem has been carefully considered by missionary committees in Madras and elsewhere, but as yet with little definite action. The matter is pressing. The needlework, crochet, embroidery and lace work, which so far have been almost exclusively the industries of the girls’ schools, cannot remain the sole opportunities of economic development. Indeed, it is a question if these can be relied on as stable, so long as they depend on sales in foreign countries, and exchange is volatile, except where the output is large, as in the case where there is a well-established village industry. We earnestly hope that those in charge of girls’ schools in areas affected by the new demand for labour will carefully consider the educational, moral, and economic value of direct vocational training to meet these demands, and take steps to secure the best training for the girls. Such economic development, inevitable as it is, will most fundamentally affect the life of Indian girls, and it is of the greatest importance that workers should prepare beforehand for the social changes involved. The establishment, for example, of girls’ hostels in the towns under Christian auspices is called for. It will be 143

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largely for the Christian body to see that this incursion of girl-labour to the towns takes place under much better conditions than have pertained in the West, and that the protective agency of social welfare work is well-established in the factory before the girl has come to grief there. Two important considerations remain—the need of more adequate medical supervision, and the great value of these schools as a recruiting ground for teachers, but these matters are so important that they must be fully treated in other chapters of this Report.

CHAPTER XII THE NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LITERATURE OF the need of a great forward movement for the production and distribution of Christian literature in general it is unnecessary to speak in this Report. At conference after conference the need has been acknowledged, and much has been done in recent years to increase and unify the forces at work, and concentrate their energies on the attainment of the object.9 Here we are concerned with the subject only in so far as it is part of our special problem. If the village community is to become literate and remain literate, if it is to have at its disposal what will help it to live its true life—spiritually, intellectually, economically—if its leaders are to be provided with the books Need of Special and magazines that will equip them for their task and keep Literature. them efficient, it is obvious that a great amount of suitable literature must be provided. That literature for this purpose is deplorably scanty is generally admitted. In no language of India is the amount of literature suitable for the Christian community sufficient, and in most it is quite inadequate; but when we remember that what is suited for people of ordinary education is likely to be quite unsuited for those recently brought in through a mass movement, we find that, even in the languages best provided for generally, the greatness of this special need is only beginning to be realized. We have seen in other chapters that one great cause of illiteracy is stagnation in the lowest class, due largely to the lack of facilities for the rapid teaching of the alphabet. That better methods can be adopted is known to Primers. many of those in charge. In some provinces only prescribed text-books can be used in schools recognized by Government, but in others any books may be used which have been approved of by the Department of Education, on the recommendation of a text-book committee. This liberty gives a splendid opportunity to the Christian Literature Society and other agencies. It lies with them to enter the open door, and see that books on the best lines are produced. In one province the best vernacular primer we have seen is published by the C.L.S. We recommend that the Literature Committees of the Provincial Missionary Councils look into the matter in their respective areas. Even in provinces where no choice is given it remains to be seen whether the authorities, if a better primer can be produced, will not adopt it instead of those now in use.10 144

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When pupils pass beyond the initial stage what they need is books which will not only enlarge their vocabulary but quicken their intelligence, widen their outlook, and help to prepare them for life. We have, as shown Reading-books. in other chapters, found ourselves unable to approve of the common idea that primary education should be vocational. But while we do not think that agriculture or industry can be rightly taught in the primary grade—the very vocabulary needed belongs to a more advanced stage—we strongly urge that in matter and style the Readers should be as closely related as possible to the surroundings of the pupils. This does not mean that they will not contain lessons calculated to enlarge the pupils’ horizon, leading them to have some elementary knowledge of other lands and races, as well as of the great fundamental truths which will lead them to a right attitude to God and their [Illegible Text]. But in everything the environment of the pupils, and their present limitations, should be kept in view, and much of the teaching should be such as will help them to observe and understand the phenomena of the world around them, and to prepare them for doing the ordinary work of the village and the home with new intelligence and new zest. In so far as the existing textbooks are defective in this way it lies with the C.L.S. and other societies to remedy the defect. The question whether anything further is required for the mass movement is one deserving serious consideration. It has been suggested that the ordinary readingbooks are unsuitable for children of outcaste origin, because Special Readers. ‘they assume a knowledge which these children do not possess and proceed at a rate of which such children are incapable.’ We incline to think, however, that a case for the preparation of easier books has not been made out. Even if teaching children to read the Bible were the main object of education it must be remembered that, if the Bible as a whole is to be an open book, facility in reading books as difficult as an ordinary fourth-class Reader is essential. Further, since our aim is to make children fit for life all round, it does not seem desirable to deprive them of the wider outlook that comes through a well-planned reading-book, or to simplify the course at the cost of ability in after-life to read a simple book or newspaper. Nor are we convinced that the outcaste children are naturally less intelligent than others. As to the difficulties arising from irregular attendance and shortness of school life, we hold that the effort to overcome them should be made rather by better teaching and organization11 than by the lowering of the standard, more especially as the latter would make it more difficult for the brighter pupils to go on to higher schools. We hold, accordingly, that while the reading-books should have a rural colour, the standard should not be appreciably lowered. Whatever be the view taken regarding the question of the simplification of reading-books, when we pass to the requirements of those who have left school the need for the utmost possible simplicity is apparLiterature for the ent. We have seen in Chapter V that one great cause Maintenance of Literacy. of illiteracy is the fact that so many never acquire the habit of reading, and that this is largely due to the fact that nothing that they 145

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care to read is provided. Literature of sorts exists in many of the vernaculars, but it is either not available at a cheap enough rate, or is not adapted to the needs of people whose literacy is precarious. If they are to be induced to battle with the difficulties in their way something must be provided which is at once suitable and interesting. To some of the attempts to meet the need reference has already been made (Chapter V), and we urge that the example set in the Central Provinces be widely followed. How to make a paper interesting to those whose outlook is so limited is a problem. In several provinces war journals had a wide circulation, and any one who could read the latest news would get a crowd of eager listeners. ‘I have found,’ writes a missionary regarding one of these, ‘village school boys reading it out aloud to an interested group of grown-ups. And the father of the boy was more than proud of his son’s attainments.’12 The notable success of the illustrated war journal published for the benefit of the Indian troops in France confirms this statement. To try to provide something which will be equally interesting in ordinary times is a task of great urgency. It is desirable that to news of the wider field be added matters of local interest, which might perhaps be done by having local supplements to a general paper. Along with the news would come simple articles on social and religious matters. Since very few village people could take more than one paper—even if the price be a single pie—the one would be required to serve a variety of interests. The paper, in short, should be one whose circulation would assist the village teacher in the varied efforts he makes to promote the people’s welfare— intellectual, economic, moral, spiritual. The paper should, if at all possible, be illustrated, and illustrations, even if they add to the cost, will greatly increase its circulation and usefulness. Here we pass from the value of reading matter as a means of maintaining literacy to its value for life. Our efforts to produce a literate community will fail unless we raise up a considerable number of people who are no longer Literature for Life. dependent on a teacher or a literate neighbour for instruction and information, but can obtain it for themselves and hand it on to others. The need becomes even greater in the case of Christians who migrate— the coolie who goes to work in a distant place, or the girl whose marriage takes her to a village which has no teacher. For such it is of the utmost importance that they are not only taught to read, but also provided with books they can take with them, written in a simple style. First, and beyond all comparison foremost, is the Bible. Through the efforts of the Bible societies the whole Bible is available in all the leading vernaculars of India, and portions—especially the Gospels and the Psalms— The Bible. in many of the less widely spoken languages and dialects. The style to be adopted for Bible translation has often been keenly discussed. Without pronouncing any opinion on existing versions, we suggest that the time has come for additional versions of portions of Scripture which will do for the Indian vernaculars what Dr. Weymouth and others have done for English, and we are glad to note that in several vernaculars a beginning has been made. 146

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Next to the Bible comes the hymn-book. In other chapters (IV and VII) we have urged the larger use of Indian music. There is an urgent need for the production of something in Indian metres simpler than is usually found— Hymnbooks. something which will take such hold of the people that they will sing it in their homes and in the distant places to which some of them go. Various translations suggest the existence of Indian devotional literature which appears to be suitable for adaptation to Christian worship.13 To familiarize the people with suitable lyrics the gramophone is sometimes used with good results. Nor is it merely for purposes of worship that Indian verse should be used. In one place we were deeply interested in the effort to train illiterate women to tell the gospel stories in verse, composed in an exceedingly simple style. For the production of such literature great skill and care are needed, and constant intercourse with illiterate people. Of the need for other books it is unnecessary to speak in detail. The literature societies have in mind the needs of the Christian community, and are producing books which throw light on the Bible—commentaries, Other Books. dictionaries, histories, etc.—and books of general interest— stories, biographies, simple statements on such subjects as hygiene, sanitation, the care of children, and many other topics. Care should be taken that some of these are so easy in style as to suit those whose school-days were short, and we are glad to learn that this is being done in some areas. Among other desiderata are books which will help people in the conduct of family worship, and literature that will be of service in evangelistic effort. The needs of the young should not be forgotten. It will be impossible to carry out the programme recommended in this Report unless the village teacher is better supplied than at present with suitable books. In addition to books of an exegetical or devotional charBooks for Teachers. acter, and helps to the teaching of nature study and other subjects included in the primary course, he will need, if his work is to be wide in range, books which will guide his efforts to uplift the community. We are glad to note that the Mass Movement Committee of the United Provinces has in view the publication of books on such subjects as co-operative credit, poultry-rearing, tanning, basket-making, Weaving, and rope-making. Full use should be made of the publications of Government Publicity Bureaus. A book showing the kind of social service that is possible for village people is a desideratum. Text-books for the boarding-school course on its industrial side will probably be found necessary in some vernaculars. We suggest that this Report be carefully studied by literature societies, and that they take counsel with mass movement committees regarding the most urgent needs. Our attention has been called to the need of illustrations—for none greater than for the villager whose mental appetite needs a stimulant. Textbooks of all sorts should be illustrated, and if some of the illustrations can Illustrations. be coloured so much the better. For Scripture teaching the excellent coloured pictures of Hole and Copping are available at cheap rates. So are others which may be crude, but are not on that account less acceptable to the 147

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villagers. It would be well to make coloured pictures available at still cheaper rates, and pictures of general interest should be more widely produced. Second only in importance to production comes distribution. The task of inducing the people who have learned to read to purchase books and subscribe to the newspapers and magazines will fall largely to the teacher. But, Distribution. since the vast majority of the people are in dire poverty, the question of cost must be considered. That the people should pay as much as they can is highly desirable, and some will doubtless hold that, rather than pauperize them, we should wait till they can pay the full price. To others the urgency of getting something into their hands seems so great that they regard it as worth while to sell at less than cost price. The extent to which the sale of literature should be thus subsidized is a matter on which those who are in charge of the work must judge according to circumstances. Opportunities will sometimes be found of getting Bibles and other books into people’s hands by giving them as prizes. All this requires money. Hitherto some publishing societies have depended almost for their existence on the profits realized on school-books. Other publications involve risk, and often actual loss. The enormous rise in the Financial cost of production since 1917 leaves little likelihood of profit, even Demands. on school-books, if they are to be sold at rates which people can afford to pay. If special school-books are produced the cost will be greater and the proceeds of sale considerably less—unless the missions will make up the difference. Illustrations, too, must be subsidized. We accordingly suggest that, in the appeal it is now making to home boards, the Literature Committee of the National Missionary Council lay special stress on the needs arising from the mass movements, and we urge the home boards to do their utmost to meet the demand. They should also be ready to set apart for literary production people with special gifts and experience.

Notes 1 Including Europeans and Anglo-Indians. 2 With regard to different Christian communities, so far as can be gathered from the Census Report for 1911, where figures are given only for certain areas—the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, with the associated States—Syrian Christians come first, with percentages of 31 for males and 8·6 for females; Protestants have 21·2 for males and 12 for females; Roman Catholics have 23·3 for males and 7·3 for females. Thus, it is only in the matter of female education that Protestants come first. As a whole they come second, the percentages being: Syrians, 20; Protestants 16·6; Roman Catholics, 15·4 (Census Report, India, vol i, pt. ii, p. 69.) 3 Had the standard of literacy required in 1901 in most provinces been as high as that adopted for all in 1911, the increase would have been greater. 4 In the Punjab the proportionate increase in the Christian population is much greater, and there is a similar decline in the percentage of literacy; but it is difficult to get the exact figures, as in 1901 the North-west Frontier Province is included with the Punjab. There is good reason to believe that in the nine years that have passed since the Census the decline in literacy in mass movement areas is still more marked. 5 For subsidiary means of maintaining and increasing interest see Chapter IX.

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6 Resolution on Female Education, issued at Simla, October 1919. 7 Calcutta University Commission Report, 1917-19, vol. ii, chap. xiv. 8 These can be studied at the rooms of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Hogg Street, Calcutta, where also information with regard to reproductions can be bad. 9 See Christian Literature in India, and The Programme of Advance in Christian Literature in India and Ceylon (Christian Literature Society, Madras). 10 See further, Appendix: ‘Note on Vernacular and Script.’ 11 See Chapter IV. 12 F. M. Perrill, ‘Literature for Mass Movement Work,’ in the Harvest Field, April 1920. 13 E.g., Nicol Macnicol, Psalms of Maratha Saints. (Calcutta: Association Press; London: Oxford University Press.)

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CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS THE first mention of a ‘St. Stephen’s College’ in Delhi occurs in the Report of the Delhi Mission of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1864. This branch of the Society’s work had been opened in 1854, at the instance of the Rev. M. J. Jennings, Chaplain of Delhi; it had been completely swept away by the storm of the Mutiny, but had been promptly refounded in 1859.1 In the Report referred to, the following entry occurs under ‘Schools’: St. Stephen’s College. In 1863 some candidates passed the Entrance examination of the University of Calcutta; it was therefore thought well to have our College affiliated to enable the students to read for the B.A. degree. By 1868, however, the title had reverted to ‘St. Stephen’s School,’ and the entry for 1873–74 indicates the reason why. Alluding to the High School as preparing boys for the Matriculation of the Calcutta University the Report continues: Here our direct connection with the lads, now become young men, ceases; they then pass on to the Government College, where our especial thanks are due to the principal for aiding our students to obtain scholarships. Then follows a very significant comment: Here particularly would come in the work of another missionary from one of the universities, who would continue privately to help his old pupils in the really hard course of a letter addressed to the Cambridge Mission, which he also published in The Mission Field for February, 1878: I should like to say much, but the time perhaps is hardly yet come, about the great and urgent importance, as it seems to me, of their being a college as complete as possible in its proportions, religious, scientific, philosophic, at Delhi, and in connection with your Mission there, which should (by God’s help) rally round it the more highly educated natives, and Hindoos trained at the primary 150

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and middle Government schools; training them, indeed, for M.A. degrees both at Lahore and Calcutta, but with the loftier and purer aims which Christian teaching communicates to other studies, when that teaching is seen to be not merely a byend of an institution, but its quickening, informing and binding principle. . . . This is the very crisis at which it is required: Delhi is the very place: the Cambridge movement is in several respects, to say the least, the very instrument which seems to be needed. Curiously enough a Sirdar (native aristocrat) came upon me three weeks ago at a little durbar of native nobility or gentry, and said, ‘I hear that many missionaries are coming out to Delhi, and at this time the Government of India have just stopped their high class college at Delhi; why do not the Delhi missionaries undertake it?’ This was a very remarkable coincidence, I think. Of course he knew that Christianity would form the corner-stone and top-stone of the institute if it ever took shape and form. The external demand on the Mission to found a college, then, was definite enough. Internally the question was naturally approached with some hesitation. In May, 1879, the committee in Cambridge had invited Winter ‘to admit the Cambridge missionaries to a share in the work of St. Stephen’s High School,’ and in response Winter had agreed, on behalf of the S.P.G., that the Brotherhood should undertake the management not only of the High School but also of its branches. Again in October, 1879, the Cambridge Committee recorded in their minutes that, The St. Stephen’s High School was so powerful a means of reaching the higher classes as to form a most important part of the work of the Mission. It was also felt that the influence of the missionaries would be greatly increased if they held classes in some secular subjects and did not confine their teaching to direct religious instruction. Should a college be re-established at Delhi, the committee would view with favour all attempts by the missionaries to gain influence among the students at the college, as well by assisting them in their studies as by holding classes for direct religious instruction. Commenting on all this in a letter of February, 1880, to the Cambridge Committee, Bickersteth remarks that though this educational work among non-Christians, who of course formed the vast majority among the school pupils, was not mentioned among the original objects of the Mission, he believed it to be in accordance with the present wishes of the committee, and that, as the work had been undertaken, it was likely to form the principal effort of the Mission for many years. But he adds, ‘We have deferred for the present the question of the advisability of adding the higher college classes to the existing school.’ With Cambridge and Delhi thus committed not only to a concurrence of general outlook but also to an actual responsibility in the High School, it was really a foregone conclusion that this next step would sooner or later be forced on them by circumstances. In view, however, of the doubts current in some quarters even to this day regarding the legitimacy of missionary educational institutions for nonChristians, it must be emphasised that the necessity for the step was eventually admitted only after the most careful consideration both of the implications and of 151

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the risks involved. Bickersteth’s report to the S.P.G. for 1879 for instance, gives some of the pros and cons: The question of starting college classes still remains in abeyance. The Bishop has again strongly urged their establishment in a better which he has addressed to the S.P.G., but we have as yet heard of no qualified laymen willing to devote themselves to this special work, and without two such at least the scheme would be at present, at all events, impracticable. No doubt the fact that in a city of the size and fame of Delhi, there are no Government classes which teach up to the standard of degrees is greatly in favour of Missions undertaking the work, as pupils might be counted on from the Government as well as from the Mission schools. Mr. Kirkpatrick, the experienced master of the Government school, tells me he believes a class could be collected without difficulty. Regarded as a missionary agency, the danger of this as of all other schemes which are connected with Government examinations would seem to be that the religious element should be swamped and overwhelmed by the secular. Still there would be gained the opportunity of personal influence at the most critical period of the young Hindu’s life, when he first opens his eyes to the conflict of religions around him. Again in a letter of May, 1880, to his family, Lefroy writes: The Bishop has been strongly urging us to open a university college here to train men up to the degree standard. It is an immensely large and difficult subject. Once again, pray for us. If we do open, we must strain every nerve to make it the best in this part of India. There is no reason ultimately why it should not be the best in India. In July of the same year, he indicates a further complication: Difficult questions are pressing on us for solution. The last is the relation which we are to assume towards the old Delhi College which was shut up some four years ago by Government orders, chiefly for lack of funds, and is now being opened again by a sort of joint movement of chief Indians, chief Englishmen, privately, and Government. They would be glad enough to get a hold of one or two of us as lecturers, partly perhaps because they are not very flush of money, partly because the name of the thing would help them, at least at starting. It’s hard to see what to do. On the one hand we are distinctly pledged by our position to influence in any way we can the highest education of the Indian boys, and so if we don’t throw ourselves into this movement we seem to be pledged to open another college of our own for the boys of our own school. On the other hand neither of these courses is free from serious objection. In a native college our position as missionaries must be more or less anomalous, and might become untenable if (as is too often the case out here) the European at its head were a professed sceptic. On the other hand a College of our own would be a formidable undertaking, involving some expense, much trouble and responsibility, and possibly a decided severance of those chiefly engaged in it from other work because of the extreme difficulty of mastering the Urdu language if constantly teaching in English.

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By August, 1880, however, it had become clear that at least the first step must be taken, and the meeting of the Mission Council of that month resolved that, subject to the consent of the Cambridge Committee, and provision from England of the necessary funds, classes should be opened in connection with St. Stephen’s School in January, 1881, to carry on instruction up to the standard required for the B.A. degree, but that they should be limited to the scholars of St. Stephen’s and other Mission schools, the right being retained, however, to open the classes to students from other schools should it seem desirable to do so. The Cambridge Committee, sanctioning this resolution in October, added that they wished to ‘press upon the Council the consideration of the expediency of extending the college classes to students of non-Mission schools with as little delay as possible,’ and embodied their reasons in a memorandum which will be found at the end of this chapter. The Mission Council, however, considering the memorandum in December, directed Bickersteth to inform Dr. Westcott, the Chairman of the Cambridge Committee, that ‘the Council does not feel in a position for the present to undertake the wider work pressed upon it, specially owing to the diminished number of missionaries and the necessity of devoting considerable time to the study of Indian languages.’ Two other important reasons for taking only the more limited step are mentioned in Bickersteth’s annual report for 1881, the one a reminder that the original educational proposals of the Cambridge Mission extended only to establishing a hostel for Christian students attending the Government College; the other, that in view of the local efforts then current to revive that institution, the Brotherood ‘were anxious that if possible nothing should be done by them which might prejudice an independent and publicspirited movement.’ Such then were the events and discussions which led up to the actual birth of the new St. Stephen’s College on February 1st, 1881. It had fallen to Allnutt’s lot to take charge of the educational activities of the Brotherhood, and he thus describes, in a letter to his father dated February 2nd, 1881, his assumption of those responsibilities in the discharge of which he so justly earned the title later accorded to him of Founder of the College: Yesterday saw the opening of our College, about which you have read a good deal, I think, especially in my letters to Cambridge. We have five boys, or young men perhaps I should say, and might of course have many more but that we decline to open our ranks to outsiders for the present. Next year perhaps we may see our way to do so. Lefroy and myself will do the chief part of the English, indeed all, as Mathematics, which Carlyon undertakes, hardly ranks as an English subject. The chief subjects are Logic, Psychology (Abercrombie’s Intellectual Powers, a thoroughly good Christian treatise) and various selections from English literature. Logic and Literature fall to my share; History and Psychology to Lefroy’s. . . . Every day we commence with Scripture teaching. My subject is a continuation of a former one. Briefly, it is Man’s need of Revelation. . . . Since Bickersteth has returned from his wanderings he has handed over to me definitely the principalship of the School (and thereby of the College). It is indeed a responsible charge,

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but I think it is better that I should take it as I am fonder of dealing with boys than he is, and have always expected that education would occupy a large part of my time. Meanwhile, the local efforts to revive the Delhi College, with which the Brotherhood had been careful to give practical proof of their sympathy by their ‘self-denying ordinance,’ though unwilling to take the risks involved in actual cooperation, were not faring well. Bickersteth had reported to the Mission Council in July, 1880, that ‘unofficial overtures had been made to ascertain whether an offer of professorships in the Native College would be accepted’ (which, as Lefroy comments in a letter home, is ‘a big word for taking a class in some English subject and getting no pay’) and these had been followed up by an official enquiry from the Inspector, Mr. Cooke, regarding the intentions of the Mission. He had been informed of the proposal to open classes for Mission schoolboys only, and that no decision as to extending their operation had been taken. Next, in December, ‘the Secretary having reported to the Mission Council a verbal proposition made by Mr. Parker, presumably the Headmaster of the Government High School, to the effect that the Native and the Mission College should be started simultaneously and an amalgamated scheme of lectures be arranged, the Council agreed that the proposal was inconsistent with the special missionary aim of its educational efforts.’ Lefroy’s more informal account of things in a letter home dated, January 25th, 1881, reveals something more of the actual situation: We met the Lieut.-Governor (Sir Charles Aitchison) once or twice. . . . He definitely set his foot on a scheme for the establishment of a college here from native and Government funds. It was, you know, to prevent the opening of this that the Bishop of Lahore urged us so strongly to undertake the work of college classes. We, however, took an opposite view and although we did settle to open, we limited our College to students in our own or other mission schools, thus leaving the Native College to be fed by the Government School. On the other hand we would not close with any of the numerous offers which they made us to take professorships in their College. If they could do the thing genuinely out of their own resources, well and good, but we were determined to make our own start quite independently. Finding we were not amenable, one or two of the promoters of the scheme went off to Lahore to try to fix the matter somehow, and they did in a way we did not at all approve of by some slipshod arrangement that the Master of the Government School should be Principal of the College too. . . . But the LieutGovernor entirely refused his consent, in full durbar at Delhi, so we take the field alone on the 1st of February. Of course if the other scheme ultimately collapses we shall have eventually to admit all comers, but this we won’t do this year anyhow. When we do, the good old Bishop will have made his point in spite of us. The Bishop did make his point, within a very few months, and the influences which eventually induced the Cambridge Mission to open its College classes to the general public are of very great importance in appreciating the status of St. Stephen’s in the public system of higher education for North India. Allnutt’s 154

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report to the S.P.G. in 1882 sets out the development of events sufficiently clearly and concisely: In the course of the year it became quite evident that the scheme for resuscitating the old Delhi College, as an independent native effort, was certain to collapse, and that the higher education of the whole district would thus fall into our hands. About April, the Punjab Government made overtures to us on the subject, and we expressed our willingness to undertake the work, provided that a sufficient grant should be made and that we should be left wholly unfettered in the matter of religious education. The result of the negotiations was that our conditions were accepted, and early in the present year we received the promise of a liberal grant from Government. The College has now been thrown open to all students, whether private or from Government schools, as well as to those from Mission schools. In effect, the Mission had consented to undertake, on behalf of Government, the responsibility which the latter recognised towards the provision of college education for Delhi and the surrounding districts. Allnutt then proceeds to explain the academic implications: At present we retain our connection with the Calcutta University; but in the event of the Lahore University College being raised to the status of a University (a Bill for this purpose is to be introduced this year into the Legislative Council) we shall transfer our allegiance to it. In that case, so far as is at present known, we shall be the only college in the Punjab sending students up for these examinations, besides the Government College at Lahore. This fact is mentioned to show the great importance of the work which has been undertaken by us. Allnutt also stresses the significance of the situation from the Christian point of view: In view of the, in many ways disastrous, results that have followed from the spread of higher education in Bengal on a purely secular basis, the establishment of a College for the Punjab on the basis of religious and Christian teaching will, we think, be recognised as a matter claiming the interest and prayers of the friends of Christian education in India. At present we have not heard of any Christian students wishing to enter the College, but we hope to make special arrangements for such men when they come under our immediate supervision. The University of the Punjab2 duly received its charter in October, 1882, and for its first few years St. Stephen’s was the only college affiliated to it besides the Anglo-Vernacular and Oriental Colleges at Lahore. ‘So we are fairly in for it now,’ comments Lefroy in a letter home. It appears, however, from another letter of his of January, 1883, that local opinion was not altogether sympathetic: The L.-G. has been here. . . . He came to inspect our School and College. He expressed himself much pleased with what he saw, especially in the latter, and afterwards made a very nice allusion to us in a speech before the Delhi Municipality, though whether it was much relished by that august body or not may, I think, be 155

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doubted, considering how much opposition we are just now encountering in the town. The question of a Native College was indeed being raised again by many leading people. ‘I do not think,’ comments Allnutt in his official report, ‘it is at all likely that they will succeed in their endeavours; for though our College may not be popular, and many wish they had a purely secular college of their own, yet there is a vis inertiæ which operates very strongly, and probably more than counter-balances the positive force of their inclination, especially when the latter can only be realised by prolonged effort and self-denial. But meanwhile there is reason to fear that these efforts may tend to affect prejudicially the development of our College, as it will incline many to hold aloof who would otherwise have accepted things as they are, while students may be induced to go to Lahore rather than to the Mission College, thus making it appear that we have no chance of attracting students, and justifying the appeal for a Native College.’ These fears, however, were not realised, and till 1899, when the Hindu College appeared on the scene, St. Stephen’s shouldered alone the responsibility of providing, on behalf of both the Delhi public and the Government, the only facilities for college education between Agra and Lahore.

NOTE A THE DELHI COLLEGE IN 1792 certain leading Mohammadans of Delhi established an Arabic School in the sarai attached to the tomb of Ghaziad-din outside the Ajmir Gate. In 1824, Government associated themselves with the School and made it an enlarged ‘Institution’ with an English department, calling the whole ‘The Delhi Institution,’ of which the original Arabic College came to be classed as the Oriental department. In 1829, Nawab Fazl Ali Khan, Ihtima-ad-daula, Prime Minister of Oudh (who was a native of Delhi), put into the hands of Government Rs. 1,70,000 for the promotion of education at Delhi. This endowment yielded about Rs. 700 per mensem, and no doubt accelerated the creation of a more ambitious establishment than ‘The Delhi Institution’; for in 1846 the institution was transferred from its accommodation in the sarai and under the name of ‘The Delhi College’ was accommodated in the mansion (now used for the Government High School) built by Nawab Abdul Ahmad Khan (one of the ministers of Shah Jahan) which had at times after 1803 been used as the Residency, but which was no longer so used in 1846. The Delhi College had a career in this building up to 1857, supported by Government and the proceeds of the ‘Nawab Fund,’ the latter being devoted chiefly to the Oriental Branch (which itself had absorbed the original Arabic

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School of 1792). There were two branches, the Modern and the Oriental. After 1857–58, the College was re-founded, and the Nawab Fund came to be administered and expended by the educational department without distinction from the ordinary departmental grants. Meanwhile the sarai had become police barracks. The extinction of any trace of the Arabic School of 1829 was not pleasing to the leading Mohammadans of Delhi, who in 1870, revived the idea of a separate Arabic branch, and successfully moved Government to allot the proceeds of the Nawab Fund for its maintenance. In 1886, the Delhi College having meanwhile collapsed and having been replaced by St. Stephen’s College, the police were removed from the sarai and the Oriental Branch of the Delhi College, saved from the wreck, re-entered, under the name of the Anglo-Arabic School, its original house, first entered 94 years before. In 1924 the School, having opened Intermediate classes, was recognised as a constituent College of the University of Delhi, the recognition being extended to the degree classes in 1929. To the Anglo-Arabic College therefore must be conceded the claim of being, on a somewhat disconnected record, the oldest collegiate foundation in the present Imperial capital, while it shares with St. Stephen’s College that of being a direct successor to the Delhi College.

NOTE B MEMORANDUM OF THE CAMBRIDGE COMMITTEE OF THE DELHI MISSION MISSION SHOULD UNDERTAKE THE WORK OF PREPARING FOR THE HIGHER UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS.

IN REGARD TO THE PROPOSAL THAT THE

As Amended by the Committee on October 27th, 1880. The question whether the Cambridge Mission at Delhi should carry on a system of classes to prepare for the higher university examinations, to which not only students from mission schools but also others should be admitted, having been referred to the committee at Cambridge, they are of opinion that unless the circumstances have greatly altered since the date of Mr. Bickersteth’s letter (August 11), the work should be undertaken. The following considerations weighed with the committee in coming to this decision: 1. Such work is, in their opinion, entirely in accordance with the original design of the Mission. For although special prominence was given in its first papers to the higher education of native Christians and candidates for the ministry, educational efforts of a wider character were also hinted at; while ‘literary and other labours’ were spoken of through which it might be possible ‘to reach the more thoughtful heathen.’ Moreover, one reason for the selection of Delhi as the scene of the Mission was that ‘the students of the Government College have been found specially accessible to Christian influence.’ And apart from any express language

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in the description of the objects of the Mission, the proposed work is certainly not foreign to its general idea, as a Mission proceeding from an English university, from which no kind of labours calculated to introduce Christian influences into the education of natives would naturally be excluded. 2. When such an unhesitating and reiterated call to this special work is given by the Bishop of Lahore, whose words carry so much weight, owing both to his position in the Church and his long experience, to decline without clearly sufficient reasons would be to incur a heavy responsibility. 3. Independently of the Bishop’s appeal, the present crisis of educational matters in Delhi seems to offer peculiarly great opportunities which may never occur again. So far as it is possible to judge from a distance, the plan of taking students from mission schools, but not others, would be wanting in consideration to those interested in the Native College. It would be very difficult for them to carry on an independent College, if a considerable number of possible students were thus otherwise provided for. It would obviously show greater fairness for the Mission to begin with the larger scheme than to make the extension of the Mission classes contingent upon the failure of the Native College. Moreover if a native college were not established, parts of the work of higher education would remain unsupplied till the classes in connection with the Mission were thrown open to all. Unless the whole number of students brought in by the wider scheme were very large, much larger than there is reason to anticipate, the additional expenditure of labour and money would probably be comparatively small. 4. The committee attach weight to the account they have received of the favourable attitude of the Government Inspector. 5. While it would be an intelligible, if a narrow, policy to confine the efforts of the Cambridge Mission to the higher education of native Christians, there seems no sufficient reason for making a distinction in favour of heathens educated in mission schools, as compared with other heathens. Experience, there is reason to think, shows that the latter are often the more accessible, as young men, to Christian influence. The foregoing memorandum is sent on the assumption that the scheme for a native college has not come into operation. If it has, further consideration will be necessary.

CHAPTER IX AN INDIAN PRINCIPAL WHEN Hibbert-Ware went to England on furlough in the spring of 1906, it had been agreed ‘almost unanimously’ by the Brotherhood that Rudra should act as principal in his absence. His selection by Wright and continuance by Hibbert-Ware as Vice-Principal, his immensely successful superintendentship of the hostel, the increasing degree to which his counsel was relied on by his senior colleagues, and 158

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the experience he had gained by his recent visit to England, made it practically a foregone conclusion that he should be given the temporary charge. It was another matter, however, that he should be made the permanent head. A visitor to the Mission in 1907 (Rev. J. Carter, of Pusey House, Oxford), recorded in the Delhi Mission News that he would ‘say without any tinge of doubt or hesitation that the most valuable part of the work of the Cambridge Mission is centred in St. Stephen’s College.’ It would have been but human, therefore, if the Brotherhood had felt some disinclination to commit the control of this great enterprise of theirs to one who was not of their own number; though, as Day’s remark quoted in the preceding chapter shows, there was no hesitation about submitting themselves, individually, to Indian direction. On, that issue their outlook had been steadily developing since the day when Wright, constraining the unwilling Rudra to accept the Vice-Principalship by a final and irresistible appeal to his patriotism, had declared ‘You are to be Vice-Principal; and one day you will be Principal’: so that any element of racial consciousness, in the personal aspect, at the time of the appointment was contributed almost entirely by outsiders. To them indeed the step now taken by the Cambridge Mission was epoch-making, marking for the British Christian an objective which, once proved practicable (as it promptly was), he could never in future dare to disown, and for the Indian providing a demonstration of bona fides on the part of the ‘trustee’ nation that was an asset of incalculable value, far beyond merely missionary or educational circles, in the subsequent years of stress. To the Brotherhood, however, the only serious difficulty was one of constitutional procedure, and on June 3rd, 1907, the Chairman was able to announce to the Mission Council that ‘the Cambridge Committee had accepted in this case, pending final settlement of the question, the proposal of the Cambridge Brotherhood that they should appoint3 to the principalship of the College on occasions when it was not desired that a member of the Brotherhood should be appointed; and that in consequence Mr. Rudra’s acting appointment as Principal had now been confirmed by the Brotherhood.’ The previous day, directly he had received the assent of the Cambridge Committee, Allnutt had written as follows to Rudra: I wish to lose no time in announcing to you on behalf of the Brotherhood that you are confirmed in your appointment of Principal. If I could order a salute to be fired on the occasion to certify the pleasure it gives me to make the announcement, I would do so! It will be announced in the Council to-morrow. The pleasure is twofold—(1) personal, that a very dearly valued friend is so deservedly promoted to hold this high and responsible post permanently in our Mission; (2) derived from the sense that it is, if tardy, a step forward in the policy we all recognise as the one called for by the growth of the Indian Church and the duty that developes on us who have been permitted to aid in the early stages of its development, to seek every opportunity of effacing ourselves and giving more and more scope to our Indian brethren for the exercise of their powers and graces.4 I wish you every blessing in the work you have so devotedly and wholeheartedly taken up. I need 159

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hardly say I am and shall be always ready to aid you in every way that lies in my power, so far as my leisure and experience enable me to do so. Such direct evidence disposes finally of impressions that have occasionally gained currency, that the step of ‘appointing an Indian’ was rather forced on a more or less unwilling body of English missionaries. Some natural doubts there may have been in some minds, as there are at the time of any promotion; and to some of the older missionaries, both within and without the Cambridge Mission, such an unprecedented step was felt to involve too great a risk. But to the majority of the Brotherhood there was no doubt that it was right to take it, and they carried with them the full consent of the Home Committee. Without anticipating, therefore, any detailed estimate of Rudra’s long principalship, it may be well to quote, as that of one who was most immediately and personally concerned, Day’s summary of the way in which expectations were justified: At that time no Indian had ever been appointed Principal of an Indian Mission college, and there were considerable searchings of heart as to whether it would be wise to take this step now. But the European members of the staff were persuaded that Rudra was the right man, and they were determined that he should be appointed, and no other. So Rudra was appointed, and what a triumphant success his principalship was! All the qualities which in those days Indians were not supposed to possess—firmness, strength of purpose, organizing ability, the power of leadership, Rudra possessed in abundance. And added to these was a loftiness of character, a humility, a devotion to his Lord, a love for his fellow-men, which won the respect and affection of all who knew him. Allusion has already been made to the appeal which, on Allnutt’s suggestion, Rudra had written to Dr. Stanton, as Chairman of the Cambridge Committee, when at Wright’s death the staffing of the College had all but broken down. He had then expressed one of his most fundamental convictions regarding the College, namely the need for constant and loyal co-operation between Cambridge and India in the supply not merely of funds but of men, the best available. One of the chief handicaps of missionary educational institutions, then as now, was the fewness, and too frequent removal for one reason or another, of those whose religious vocation, added to their educational qualifications, made their personal influence of predominant importance. Even before he took over charge, therefore, Rudra had set himself to obtain a sufficient and continuous supply of missionary staff for the College, and, as will be seen, he had, (some twelve months before the outbreak of the war destroyed so many hopes) good grounds for believing that he had permanently secured this. For practically the whole of the intervening period, however, this part of the staffing was intensely precarious, and Rudra’s annual reports are full of urgent appeals that Cambridge should recognize its responsibilities and opportunities. A series of makeshifts provided for the teaching in the ‘English’ subjects. The College soon suffered a very heavy loss in Day: he broke down in October, 1906, and had to be invalided for eighteen months the following March. Purton’s partial help 160

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on the staff which ended in 1908, was replaced by that of another member of the Brotherhood, the Rev. B. P. W. French: but Western had to be withdrawn almost entirely from College teaching at the end of 1908 for work in the High School, of which he had to take over full charge in 1909, during the furlough of the Rev. N. C. Marsh, the member of the Brotherhood who was by then its Principal. The College therefore fell deeply in the debt of successive chaplains of Delhi, first the Rev. A. P. G. Maunsell, and then the Rev. A. L. H. Selwyn, without whose generous aid as Honorary Lecturers it would have been impossible to provide the necessary English teaching. The uncertainty of Andrews’ health, and of his ability to stand the strain, added to the anxiety of the Principal, who writes of 1908 ‘but for the arrival of Mr. C. H. C. Sharp, who came to us from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to study Indian religious problems and assist in teaching, we should have been left in an almost desperate condition.’ Sharp was a forerunner of that short service scheme, which was just then being taken up by the Student Christian Movement, and which by opening up a fresh source of recruitment for this form of missionary service eventually solved the staffing problem. Meanwhile Rudra could do no more than reiterate three or four times in a single report how seriously under-staffed the College was on its European side, while emphasising how loyally old students were rallying round him to help him tide over the crisis. At one time no less than five old students, two of them honorary, were engaged in the teaching. But more significant still, Delhi city itself was contributing assistance. One leading citizen, Shams-ul Ulema Maulana Nazir Ahmad Khan Sahib, Hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh, a scholar and author of repute and one of the founders of the Aligarh College, had gratuitously given his services (in 1908) as tutor in Arabic for a particularly brilliant candidate for the degree of Master of Oriental Learning. This was the Rev. Joel Waiz Lal of the Baptist Mission, the holder of no less than six University gold medals, and later well-known as one of the chief translators of the Urdu New Testament: Students of Islam will appreciate the implications of a leading Muslim doctor being ready to train a Christian clergyman in Arabic itself and to rejoice whole-heartedly in his success. ‘An equally happy feature,’ continues Rudra in his report for 1908, ‘has been the invaluable services of Rai Bahadur Babu Mal Sahib, a leading orthodox Hindu, who has been honorary Architect and Engineer of our new Mission buildings, which were finished this year.’ No wonder that he is constrained to exclaim, ‘A Christian College, which is thus helped by leading non-Christians, and has won such a signal place in the respect and esteem of the city of Delhi, is surely worth every help that can be given by Christians in England. Yet year after year Cambridge has sent us no recruit to work in our College!’ Allnutt, as head of the Mission, added his voice to cry shame on Cambridge if it should prove content to let the general short service scheme save what was so essentially a Cambridge enterprise, but as will be seen it was actually only a considerable contribution of men from the sister University that got the College through the next few critical years. Day had, unfortunately, proved a total loss. On his return to the Mission in October, 1908, he was posted at first to district work 161

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with Carlyon at Rohtak, as likely to be less strain than the varied and ceaseless activities of college; but the shortage of staff in the College claimed him after a few weeks, his old malaria got a fresh grip on him the following summer, and he was ordered home for good by the doctors before the year was out. No one, Rudra wrote, had won the sympathy and devotion of the students as he had: the deep personal friendship he had with all his colleagues had made the College work go forward under almost ideally happy conditions. He left an abiding mark on the athletic life and sportsmanship of the College, and his geniality is still vividly remembered by old pupils. Yet, as Hibbert-Ware testifies, he won this affection without ever letting go discipline, and as a steadying influence on young ardent minds in those very difficult days of earliest national consciousness, he had been an immeasurable asset to the College. Happily, he was able in time to throw off the effects of the malaria and since 1920 has been the Bishop of Ossory and Ferns in his own country of Ireland. To offset the loss of Day and the complete withdrawal of Western (on his joining the short lived ‘Brotherhood of the Imitation’ founded by S. E. Stokes), a new lay recruit to the Cambridge Brotherhood, N. G. Leather (Trinity), arrived in October, 1909, specially for College work. At the same time, Sharp, who had found himself able to prolong his stay till 1911, was joined by another short service layman from Oxford, A. C. Judd (Exeter), whose services, however, had almost immediately to be lent for a few months to the Edwards’ College of the C.M.S. at Peshawar, and thereafter, from the spring of 1910 to the summer of 1911, to be shared with the High School. In May, 1910, Bishop Lefroy, at some inconvenience, lent his private secretary, F. F. Monk, another young Oxford layman (Lincoln), for ten months’ teaching in the College; and Rudra was able to report for 1910 that it was the first time since he took charge of the College that he had not been seriously burdened by anxiety about sufficient staff. The relief, however, was all too short, and by the summer of 1911 it was only an opportune change in the University year, whereby the new classes were formed in October instead of, as hitherto, in May, that saved the College from having to close temporarily for lack of staff. Andrews and Leather both were ill for many months and absent till well on into the autumn term: Sharp had gone home, Monk too: and Judd, the sole survivor of the English staff and he only part-time because of school claims, was only kept going by the assistance of C. B. Young of the Baptist Mission, yet another Oxford (Lincoln) man. Monk was back with them on a permanent footing by October, but till Andrews and Leather were fit for duty again, the ‘partial disorganisation of work’ admitted in Rudra’s report only faintly indicates what was involved in carrying on full classes, to say nothing of the games and other essential activities, not only with such shortage of staff, but also in the turmoil of the public preparations for the King’s Durbar of December, 1911, which were then in full swing. By the next year, 1912, however, things really had begun to move. The proclamation of Delhi as the Imperial Capital at the Durbar had fired the imaginations and hopes of all who knew something of the possibilities of the College. The new constitution already being drafted for it under University requirements 162

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was shaped to even wider ambitions and ideals. And Rudra and Andrews got to England together for a brief but effective campaign at the home base. The constitutional effects are dealt with in the next chapter; the results on staffing may be noted as both immediate and progressive. For the moment, Sharp responded to the call and returned in October, 1912, for another ‘short term,’ and with him came out another Oxford man, also on ‘short service,’ F. A. Cockin, (University). A permanent recruit arrived in January, 1913, in the person of S. N. Mukarji (Queens’) secured by Rudra and Andrews, while still engaged in his Cambridge course, as one of the definitely ‘missionary’ staff,5 and Cambridge provided a second permanent recruit in the autumn, Rev. P. N. F. Young, who had resigned the chaplaincy of St. John’s College, Cambridge, in order to join the Brotherhood for College work. With him came two more short service men, C.O. F. Jenkin (King’s) from Cambridge and W. G. Lawrence (St. John’s) from Oxford. Thus the undertakings, to be explained more fully in the next chapter, for the maintenance on the staff of at least eight Honours Graduates of Cambridge or Oxford, had been more than fulfilled.6 The War was still unthought of and Rudra might well flatter himself that he had at last made sure of the English section of his team. Meanwhile he had simultaneously to work for security on the Indian side. It is, unfortunately, notorious in Mission history that employment in Mission institutions, whatever other advantages it gave, was seldom paid for at market rates; while non-Christians, however long their service, were liable to be displaced at short notice by any Christian candidate for the post. (A specific entry to this effect may be found in the Cambridge Mission Council Minutes of those days.) But Rudra had had a strong lead in the ‘demonstrations’ made by his old chief, Wright, both on the issue of fair dealing with employees, irrespective of their religion, and on the question of rates of pay. Within a month or two of assuming acting charge, he found himself compelled to follow up this lead with representations on behalf of several of his Indian colleagues, whose support he was likely to lose just at the outset of his responsibilities, unless the Mission could give them more satisfactory economic conditions. In putting up their case he pointed out that the College had ‘not been altogether successful in combating prevalent ideas of cheapness’ as regards the Indian portion of the staff, and that as a result it was ‘hardly in any sense of the term a body of serious students of the subjects which in Indian parlance its members are supposed to profess’—in fact that its main character was that of ‘a body of tolerable coaches.’ Pointing out that the comparatively impecunious condition of these teachers was mainly responsible for the small share they had taken in the recent efforts to enlarge the scope of student life in the College, and was preventing them from buying books and developing fresh intellectual interests of their own, he boldly declared that ‘to make the College a real centre of intellectual activity the character of the teaching staff must be changed from that of examination coaches to that of students and enthusiasts; and this cannot be done without offering the teachers such pay and prospects that they may be able to look upon 163

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the work they engage in as their life work.’ Alluding to the recent great expansion in residential accommodation he admits,’ I know that it is asking a great deal to attempt a double line of advance’ but nevertheless ‘it is imperative that the personal staff should be strengthened at the same time, otherwise our progress will be one-sided and ineffective.’ While coherence and co-ordination of developments were thus recognised as fundamental conditions of success, the emphasis was really being laid on an even more vital principle, namely that the status of a true colleague, and not a mere employee, should be accorded to every teacher in the College. The policy proposed was all the more readily responded to inasmuch as a considerable proportion of those affected were, as already mentioned, themselves old students of the College. Although, therefore, the actual rises in pay for which the Principal felt able to ask for sanction at the moment fell considerably short of what might justifiably have been proposed, they were accepted ungrudgingly as the best adjustment possible to the current financial resources of the College. The complementary step of bringing locally appointed Christian members of the staff under the general rates, was next proposed in the Mission Council by Rudra, Andrews and Western. This involved the sacrifice by those concerned of their privileged position, and there were those who held that it would result in no Christian Indians being ready to join the staff. Happily a better faith in the spirit of the Indian Church prevailed, and though the High School, for sufficient, but none the less regrettable, reasons, was expressly excluded from the reform, the principle of equality of status among all locally recruited members of the staff was formally accepted in March, 1909. There remained the discrepancy between these rates of pay and those of the ‘European’ staff (actually a misnomer after the appointment of S. N. Mukarji on the missionary cadre by the Home Committees). The latter were sensitive both of the personal embarrassments and of the inconsistency with the principle of fellowship in vocation caused by the differentiation; and themselves took the initiative more than once in exploring means for either its elimination or its better justification. As the fee-income increased in succeeding years with the admission of more students, and Government grants advanced proportionately, both this problem and the general question of rates of pay was brought up again and again by Rudra for reconsideration, on the unassailable basis that the discovery of a proper economic minimum salary is as much the duty of a Christian institution as any other of its functions. It would be tedious and unnecessary to trace the successive developments of the principle, so it is enough to record that before his retirement Rudra had the satisfaction of seeing the whole question of staff salaries placed on a basis as satisfactory as it was secure for all concerned, whether recruited in India or in England. The fluctuations in English personnel during these years have already been recorded. On the Indian side the instability was fortunately not so marked. Two important accessions occurred in May, 1906, M. Abdur Rahman as Professor of Arabic succeeding Jamil-ur-Rahman, resigned (he went into retirement and died in 1924): and N. K. Sen, as Professor of Philosophy, replacing in that subject Western, who was needed for the English teaching. Martyn retired that same 164

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summer in order to complete his medical course at Edinburgh and devote himself to Medical Mission work among his own people in Madras. For thirteen years a devoted worker in the Mission, his ‘kindliness of nature, simplicity of life, integrity of purpose and devotion to duty’ were suitably recognised in the farewell party and presentation organised by members of the College on his departure. He died in 1912. His resignation led to Khub Ram’s promotion as Senior Professor of Science in July, 1906, and the appointment in November of Baikanath Chandra Roy as Professor of Mathematics. On Roy’s resignation in 1908 the gap was filled for some months by one of the M.A. students, Munshi Ram, later a prominent member of the Punjab Provincial Civil Service, till K. B. Basu was appointed in March, 1909, he again being succeeded in May, 1910 by D. N. Bhattacharya, who in his quiet and unobtrusive way quickly identified himself with the life and spirit of the College, served it loyally till 1920, and died in 1926. On January 17th, 1907, Maulvi Shah Jahan, the last survivor, on the rolls, of the original staff, ‘a finished scholar of the old type, highly venerated and loved,’ passed away after a brief illness of three days. The Mission Council recorded their ‘deep sense of his long and faithful services,’ and Rudra reported that he had accepted a generous offer of temporary help in the Persian teaching from Khwaja Abdul Majid till the appointment of Ghulam Yazdani took effect in May. Both of these were old students of the College. The latter, now Director of Archæology in the Nizam’s Dominions, left in 1908, and ‘the Khwaja Sahib’ became Professor of Persian till his retirement in 1916. In 1910, Ghose, the oldest old student member of the staff, who had been on it since 1898, left on a visit to England, and on his return was transferred to parish work in the city; by 1913, however, he had been requisitioned again for part time teaching. Two other old students were appointed temporarily during the cold weather of 1912–13, S. C. Chatterji as Assistant in Philosophy, and Mahdi Hasan to replace Khwaja Abdul Majid, absent on sick-leave. Early in 1913 a very wellknown figure in College life passed off the active list when B. Sri Kishen Das, the College clerk, went on pension after twenty-six years of loyal service. He died in 1930. Later in the same year, P. C. Mukerji retired after serving the College for twenty-eight years in most varied and valuable ways, in addition to his functions as Professor of Science, for the last seven years or so of them in the capacity of Vice-Principal and Bursar. Also in 1913, Khub Ram went to England to take a degree at Leeds University. The double vacancy thus caused on the science staff was filled by Jenkin and D. K. Roy, a Bengali Christian with an Edinburgh Science degree; the latter being replaced a year later by J. N. Mitra, an M.Sc. of Calcutta. P. C. Mukerji’s functions as Bursar were taken over by Raghubar Dayal, while the Vice-Principalship, which under the terms of the new Constitution had henceforth to be held by a member of the Church of England, was undertaken by Andrews. In less than a year, however, Andrews found himself compelled to respond to the wider claims to which from the first he had shown himself so sensitive. 165

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At the request of Mr. Gokhale and other national leaders he took leave from the College in the autumn of 1913 to go to South Africa as a mediator in the struggle then going on between Gandhi and the Natal Government over the condition of the indentured Indian labourers there. He has told the story himself (What I Owe to Christ, ch. xii) and the future historian of social emancipation may be left to pay adequate tribute to what he has since helped to accomplish, not only in South Africa but in other parts of the Empire also, in remedying the evils of the indentured labour system. His colleagues’ feelings are sufficiently expressed in a few sentences from the College Magazine: One thing stands out pre-eminently in the history of the College during the last two months, our Vice-Principal’s triumphant mission to South Africa. All parties there have publicly acknowledged the value of his help and presence. Let us not fail of grateful acknowledgement to Him from whom all good things come. It was with more mixed feelings, however, that the College learnt, on his return to India in the spring of 1914, after a brief visit home, that he had decided to leave it forthwith and throw in his lot with his friend the poet Rabindranath Tagore at the latter’s educational Asram, Santiniketan, in Bengal. But the loss to the College, which was to be lessened by an annual return to Delhi for two months (quite impracticable as events proved) was offset by the gain to Indian nationhood in a man of his spiritual and intellectual calibre thus identifying himself wholly and unreservedly with India. So the tributes to what he had been to, and done for, the Cambridge Mission during the nine years he had been with it were coloured by the satisfaction of regarding him as a gift to India from the Church in Delhi. This is confirmed, if confirmation were needed, in the characteristically generous tribute which Allnutt paid to Andrews in the Delhi Mission News of July, 1914. He acknowledged in some detail the debt which the Brotherhood owed him both in its devotional life and in the practical administration of the Mission, and, while frankly admitting some sense of relief that the Brotherhood would no longer be embarrassed, as on occasion it had been, by his diversity from its general standpoint, declared: If men like Andrews seem precipitate and inclined to break too hastily with the old traditions, I am inclined to say that, rather than condemn them, while we pray they may not by any rashness or ill-balanced judgment injure the cause we all have at heart, we have come to the time when we need bold ventures and experiments in the Mission field. It may be that some day we shall have reason to be thankful for what such men have been able to achieve as pioneers in a new era of missionary enterprise. From the College standpoint, Rudra’s farewell appreciation will not appear excessive to those who know anything of what the friendship of the two men meant both to themselves and to the College which they served in such close partnership:

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It is right and proper that I should record that no single personality has had so great an influence in the development of the College as Charles Freer Andrews. His advent in our midst was a gift from above. His scholarship and genius for teaching left a permanent mark both on classwork and on the courses of the Punjab University, of which for many years he was a very active Fellow. In practical questions, of administration or of building, his ability and advice were invaluable. And his versatility was exhibited in almost every other aspect of College life. But it was chiefly in the warm personal friendships formed not only with all colleagues, Indian and English equally, but also with a wide circle of leading men alike in the city of Delhi and in the official world, that his most lasting effect on the College is observable, both in internal and outward relationships. Apart from the estimate that still waits to be assessed of the part he has played in the making of modern India, he stands out in the history of the College as undoubtedly the greatest link on the British side, as Rudra was on the Indian, in that close personal association of the two races which St. Stephen’s has so long cherished as one of its outstanding features. Two other missionary members of the staff left that same spring of 1914. Cockin’s spell of short service had come to an end, and though the many services he was able to render the College as an officer of the Student Christian Movement have lately been crowned by his undertaking the Chairmanship of the London Committee of the Mission, the hopes of his eventual return to Delhi were unfortunately never fulfilled. Sharp too went home once more with the intention of returning after ordination. But the War intervened to prevent both intentions and it was six years before the College recovered him. The Vice-Principalship vacated by Andrews was filled by Monk. One element in the staffing, already alluded to, requires particular notice owing to its significance in the promotion of Christian unity. On more than one occasion, it will have been observed, it was the assistance given by the Baptist Mission, in the person of C. B. Young, an Oxford graduate and scholar who had been on their staff in Delhi since 1908, which saved the teaching arrangements from complete collapse. The Baptist Missionary Society had been working in Delhi even before the S.P.G., since 1818 in fact, but relations between the two Missions had been far from happy in the early days. At the time of Lefroy’s consecration as Bishop of Lahore in 1899, however, Allnutt had noted with great satisfaction not only the expressions of regard and congratulations received from the Baptist Mission, but also the increasing instances of mutual esteem and co-operation between the two bodies. All too much, however, still survived of the old attitude of aloofness and mistrust, perhaps more in official than in personal relations; and it was therefore, relatively, a signal advance towards true Christian relationships that was secured by the gradual inclusion of Young on the College staff. In 1909, with his Baptist colleague, the Rev. Joel Waiz Lal (who had already rendered valuable help in the teaching, the previous year, directly he had finished his examination for the M.O.L.), he helped to save the College from closing early for lack of teachers:

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in the summer of 1910, he was rendering the same service (this time in company with Dr. Garfield Williams from the C.M.S. at Agra), and early in 1911, on Sharp’s departure, he took over from him the superintendence of a small overflow hostel in a hired building. At this point his society showed a very notable spirit of cooperation by requesting to be allowed in future to make itself responsible for the provision of the accommodation thus needed and thereby to make a definite contribution to the education work of the Anglican Mission. It should be noted, too, that the hostellers concerned were not Christians and there was therefore no hint of sectarianism in the proposal. The College warmly welcomed it and when the apprehensions of the higher authorities had been satisfactorily allayed, the Baptist Mission Hostel became a permanent and integral part of the institution. Simultaneously, with the entire concurrence of his society, Young’s occasional teaching in the College was put on a more and more regular footing till by 1914 he was a full-time member of the staff. Part of his salary was provided by the Baptist Mission for his functions as hostel superintendent of their hostel (its own building was erected a mile or so from the College in 1916), and the remainder was carefully charged to College local revenues and not to the special ‘European Staff Fund’ from which missionary salaries are met mainly by grants from Anglican sources, viz. the Cambridge Committee and the S.P.G. Some ten years later it became convenient for his entire salary to be paid by the College, still, however, from local funds, but the Baptist Mission was loth to abandon the privilege of sharing in the work of the College and continued to provide the hostel and his residence as its superintendent. Needless to say, throughout these successive developments scrupulous care was taken by the authorities concerned to safeguard any questions of ecclesiastical principle, so that the most sensitive conscience could find no ground for complaining of compromise; and it was largely as a result of this successful demonstration of what was already practicable in the direction of Christian unity that the S.P.G. and the Baptist Missionary Society found themselves able in more recent years to combine in a joint enterprise, the Delhi United Christian School. Another venture of faith in the direction of co-operation was made in these days which has had a lasting effect, perhaps not so much on the students directly, as on the esprit de corps of the staff and its consequent influence over them. It arose out of Sharp’s introduction into his daily religious class of a course on comparative religion. His students complained that they found themselves at a disadvantage in subsequent discussions owing to their lack of knowledge of their own creeds. Voluntary classes were therefore arranged for the imparting of such information under the control of selected and loyal Hindu and Muslim members of the staff, these classes being later recognised formally as the Hindu and Muslim Religious Associations. It must be regretfully confessed that their original and ostensible purpose has exercised strangely little appeal among even the most religious-minded Hindu and Muslim students, but these associations at least stand witness to the bona fides of the Mission College in insisting that its rigid adherence to daily Christian instruction is not mere ‘proselytising,’ but the assertion of a fundamental and universal principle of education, namely, that it must be rooted in religion, 168

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which other creeds should also have the freedom to exemplify if they desire to do so. Consequent on this partial admission of the non-Christian staff to a share in the most vital function of the College, a further step was taken in 1910. Addresses were already being given by the Christian members of the staff on one day in the week to the whole College in place of the teaching in classes: another day was now set aside on which one or two of the Hindu and Muslim professors, whose loyalty to the spirit of the College could be relied on, were invited in turn to address the whole College on some religious or moral topic, the only proviso being that nothing should be said in disparagement of or hostility to the Christian Faith. As a result Rudra could claim, when reporting on the innovation in 1911; ‘The non-Christian staff is no longer a merely paid agency for secular teaching, but responsible with us for the whole moral life and tone of the College. The supremely strong Christian position of equity and truth that we occupy enables us to do this. The whole moral weight and influence of the staff as a body is brought to bear on the pupils in one direction, and the Christian position is maintained intact.’ Though the regularity of these elements in the weekly timetable has been modified in recent years in the interests of greater continuity and system in religious class-teaching, the practice still remains of this deliberate association of the non-Christian members of the staff from time to time with the moral and spiritual purpose of the College.

[[**MISSING PAGES**]] CHAPTER XIV THE UNIVERSITY OF DELHI THE conception of a University of Delhi was probably first formed in the swift imaginations of St. Stephen’s College staff, when at the Durbar of 1911, they heard the Royal announcement of Delhi’s new status. That the Imperial Capital should ultimately have a university of its own seemed inevitable, and the position which St. Stephen’s would hold in it was one of unlimited possibilities. As has been seen, plans were immediately formed for removing the College to the new city, and equipping it to meet in any case its vastly increased opportunities, and the application for a site and grants was met by the Government in the generous way already recorded. Official designs took longer to formulate, owing to natural delays and preoccupation with more urgent questions; but by January, 1915, Allnutt, in writing of hopes that the site to be given to the College would be an ideal one for its purpose, was able to add: A large block of the new city is set apart for higher educational purposes, and eventually it is the intention of the Government of India to found a Delhi University. As its buildings will be on the ground adjacent to our own buildings, we shall be, as first in the field, in a very favourable position. The idea at first entertained was the establishment of a Government college for some 500 students on one side of a triangular block bisected by what is now 169

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Curzon Road, but which was actually named Great College Street in the first layout; a site for St. Stephen’s was allotted on the opposite side; and in some indeterminate future a university building was contemplated at the base of the triangle. It was on this general basis that plans were first drawn up, progressing in the case of St. Stephen’s as far as detailed drawings for a most impressive group of buildings. As the war dragged on, however, all such projects were definitely held up, and by the time that peace was declared the defects and disadvantages of that particular scheme had become sufficiently obvious to call for a complete reconsideration of the proposals. In the first place the original site and plans allowed insufficiently for the inclusion of other colleges or for natural expansion; it was also now realised that it would not be of any great educational advantage to place a large body of students in such close proximity to the distractions of the capital; but the chief deterrent was the enormous rise in the cost of material and building in the new city. These considerations caused the recommendations of a special official committee, which reported in 1919, to be practically still-born, by no means to the regret of the existing local colleges, who would have found in the new Government College, which was the central proposal, such competition as would have seriously limited their development and usefulness. Meantime two other influences of even greater weight were affecting the general question. In the first place the Punjab University, for good reasons of its own, was endeavouring to counteract the more obvious defects of the affiliating system on which it was founded by requiring all M.A. and Honours B.A. work to be concentrated in Lahore. The effect of such a policy on the Delhi colleges, more particularly on one with such a staff as St. Stephen’s, would have been intolerable. Simultaneously, the report of the Calcutta University Commission issued in 1919 had crystallised the general dissatisfaction with merely affiliating and examining universities and promoted a movement for a new type of unitary and teaching university, such as rapidly came into being in the United Provinces and elsewhere. From the first of the above considerations therefore there arose an urgent local demand for the realisation of a Delhi University: and on the strength of the latter an explicit proposal was made in September, 1919, by Mr. (later Sir Henry) Sharp, then Secretary for Education in the Government of India. Sir Henry from the beginning had very clear ideas as to what he wanted, namely a unitary university of the type of the recently constituted University of Dacca, one in which the University would take up all post-Intermediate work, while the Intermediate students and their tuition would be left in the hands of the existing colleges. The implications of this scheme, especially as it would affect the colleges, were not fully perceived at the time, and at a committee consisting of certain officials and representatives of the three Delhi colleges, held in December, Sir Henry’s proposal was welcomed and it was still confidently expected that the University buildings would be erected in New Delhi. The educational authorities of the Mission turned to a consideration of this programme and during 1920, a scheme was worked out for a post-Intermediate college of 120 students, with four hostels and a staff of eight lecturers. 170

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Then came a long pause and for about a year nothing was done. This was perhaps just as well, as it gave time for consideration. It even produced a proposal from Lahore to confer a limited autonomy on the Delhi colleges. This, however, produced a reply in May, 1921 that the proposal had elicited no enthusiasm. Meanwhile, though as late at June, 1921, Rudra was writing quite cheerfully that the Hindu College and St. Stephen’s would, under the new University, cease as such to exist, at the end of that month a warning note is struck. It had begun to be perceived that it would be disastrous if the University were to have the effect of breaking up the corporate life of the College so carefully cherished for years. Further, various suspicions were beginning to show their heads. On the one hand was the feeling, shared by the leaders of the Hindu College, that undue official influence was a danger that would dominate the University and stereotype education. On the other hand the Hindu College was beginning to fear that it would have insufficient weight in the counsels of the University. There was tension and distrust. To meet these two dangers Monk, as Acting Principal, proposed that an effort should be made to bring together the various college authorities with the purpose of formulating an agreed scheme as a basis of negotiation with Government. After several abortive attempts and some misunderstanding a meeting of the representatives of the three colleges was held at the end of June, and at this meeting the crucial demand was made that ‘at least two-thirds of the controlling body of the University should be representatives of the existing colleges’; and further that it should be this controlling body that should decide the times of the move to the new city and of the separation of Intermediate and Degree classes. The colleges were beginning to assert themselves. Indeed by the autumn of this year a great step towards their protection was taken when, in response to a memorandum drawn up by representatives of the colleges, the Government agreed to take them into its confidence before producing the draft of the University Bill. Nevertheless, by the end of November, when the Bill was in the drafting stage, it had become clear that if the colleges were to preserve their privileges, their corporate life and character, in the new University, a very definite and firm stand would have to be taken. Sir H. Sharp quite definitely wanted a unitary scheme; St. Stephen’s was equally clear that unless the colleges, as such, formed constituent units of the University, all that it had stood for in the past would be lost. Consequently, representatives of the colleges met Sir H. Sharp, and after considerable discussion he gave verbal assurance that the principles pressed for would be safe-guarded. This did not give a sufficient sense of security and a meeting of the Governing Body of the College was held which drew up resolutions stating the conditions under which, with the expected concurrence of the Mission authorities in England, the College was prepared to co-operate. These conditions summarily stated were that the College should form a constituent part of the University; that its identity should not be merged in that of the University but that it should preserve its individual and corporate character; and in particular that its religious teaching and character should be preserved. Further, that the academic policy of the University should be mainly controlled by its teaching staff, and that members of the College 171

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staff should be eligible for all University appointments. These resolutions were forwarded to Mr. Sharp, and appear to have had a considerable influence on the drafting. On 2nd January, 1922, a meeting of the University Committee was held with Sir Muhammad Shafi, the Member for Education, in the chair, at which the colleges were assured that every effort had been made to draft the Bill in conformity with their views. Nevertheless, they were on tenterhooks until the Bill was passed by both houses of the Legislature by the end of February, and it was seen that in all essentials the end had been achieved and that the cherished corporate life of the College would go on under new conditions which seemed full of hope for educational progress and improvement. The main reason which had thus caused the Government, rather surprisingly perhaps, to concede the demands of the local colleges, was the all too familiar one of financial stringency. The desirability of a University of Delhi had been accepted, but its establishment in the form favoured officially was outside the range of practical finance: there were no funds available either for central buildings or for a University teaching staff. The Government was therefore glad to acknowledge the colleges, at least for the time being, as teaching units, and to accept their offer to bring the University into being as they stood, on their existing sites: it being understood that Government accepted for its part the obligation to proceed with the provision of sites, grants, and maintenance of supplementary University teaching staff, as soon as the financial situation allowed. Unfortunately the Inchcape Retrenchment Committee, in the course of its investigations the next year, expressed such drastic views on the question whether a university was needed in Delhi at all, that the cogent educational arguments which had justified its creation were apparently driven out of the official mind and the understanding with the colleges forgotten. The subsequent march of events is rather for the future historian of the Delhi University to trace: in brief, in place of the sites and grants which the colleges had been led to expect in order to enable the University to make good, there followed a succession of annual allotments of inadequate maintenance funds and a constant complaint that the colleges and the city of Delhi were not doing what they had, in fact, never undertaken to do, their resources being strained to the utmost by the effort to keep the constituent colleges up to the mark. Protests and reminders proved of no avail till eventually, in 1927, the University declared its inability to balance its budget and so forced the Government to give it the attention of a special Enquiry Committee. The findings of this Committee were, at any rate in principle as distinct from immediate practical application, satisfactory to the College authorities regarding the issues that had been exercising them. In the first place the tendency that still lingered in the official mind towards an ultimate merging of the colleges in the University was finally repudiated. Not only was their position as teaching units clearly recognised, but their staffs were also conceded the right of full association in even the highest grades of instruction. The crucial importance of this last admission for ensuring a supply of first-class recruits for college teaching is obvious. Secondly, the finding of a university site among the disused buildings of the ‘Temporary Capital’ to the north of Old Delhi, 172

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instead of in the prohibitively expensive area of New Delhi (an alternative which had been mooted as early as 1923 to facilitate Government’s discharge of its obligations), was at last agreed to after years of inter-departmental procrastination, and Old Viceregal Lodge indicated as the eventual location. At last, therefore, the College knew definitely where its future home was ultimately to be. On the third issue before the Enquiry Committee, namely the inclusion of the Intermediate classes for an indefinite period in the University, the decision so to retain them, though perhaps unavoidable under the actual circumstances, ought nevertheless to be regarded, educationally, as a confession of failure. One of the strongest points made by the Calcutta University Commission had been the need to relegate the Intermediate classes to their proper place in the secondary stage of education, both in the interests of the virtual schoolboys who comprised them and of the University classes on whom their presence acted as a drag. In the Delhi University Act therefore it had been expressly provided that after a certain term of years the Intermediate classes should be dropped. Strongly endorsing this outlook, both Rudra and Monk had stressed, with all the emphasis they could command, the consequent obligation laid upon the Mission. In his farewell report to Cambridge for 1922 Rudra puts forward the two main reasons for this view: Firstly, a strong Intermediate College will strengthen the University section of St. Stephen’s College; and secondly, for sound missionary work and influencing the life and character of the students for good and laying those foundations securely, we need to get hold of the young between the ages of 14 and 18, the time when they will be at an Intermediate College. He even goes so far as to add: This is even of greater importance in some ways than our contribution to University life. Monk, whose work had lain practically throughout his service with the Intermediate classes, developed the implications in a comprehensive scheme for the re-organisation of the whole ‘lay-out’ of education in the Mission, which he took with him to England on his furlough in 1924, to lay before the Home Committees. Unfortunately, he miscalculated the conditional character of the approval given by the Mission Council and by the Governing Body. The separation of the Intermediate classes had always been put forward along with an assumed extension of the Degree course from two years to three. The College now decided that, given the degree students for three years as suggested, it was prepared to forgo its influence over them at the earlier stage; otherwise not. Public disinclination to incur another year’s fees in the attainment of the degree, it was held, made the three-year course an impracticable proposition to put before the University bodies; and it was also only too clear that the authorities of some colleges would not be able to contemplate lightly the prospect of losing the fee-income from their large Intermediate classes. The application of the original provision of the Act 173

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was therefore deferred and deferred, till the Enquiry Committee at last tacitly accepted the situation and the Intermediate boy retains his status as a student of the Delhi University. This is not the place to discuss the bearing of that fact on national education: but two comments might be made in passing. It is quite a possibility, now that a minimum age for matriculation has been dropped, that the ‘child-matriculate’ will soon supersede the ‘child-bride’ as one of India’s major social problems; on the other hand the anomaly has had to be accepted for some years now of ‘undergraduates’ in St. Stephen’s College, if in the Intermediate classes and resident in one of the hostels, being required to attend a compulsory daily period of ‘supervised prep’! To revert to the immediate effects on St. Stephen’s, personal and institutional, of the passing of the Delhi University Act. For the transitional period that had to intervene before the authorities of the University could be constituted, powers were vested in the Vice-Chancellor and Provisional Executive Council, on which latter the College was represented by Monk, Sen and P. N. F. Young, with Western also by virtue of his position as Chairman of the Governing Body. The ViceChancellor appointed to direct the fortunes of the infant University was Dr. Hari Singh Gour, D.C.L., LL.D., an old Downing man, a member of the Legislative Assembly, and a jurist of more than Indian repute. A very vigorous personality, it was unfortunate that he was not a resident of Delhi and only able to be present for a small portion of the year. However, the Act permitted the appointment of a Rector to carry out most of the functions of the Vice-Chancellor in the latter’s absence, and the Chancellor (the Viceroy) was happily advised to select for this office Western, who had succeeded to the headship of the Mission on Allnutt’s death. It would be impossible to calculate all that the University owes to his immense ability and indefatigable industry during the early formative months of its existence, both in the Executive and in the Academic Councils, over each of which he presided. To constitute an Academic Council it was necessary not merely to ‘recognise’ the staffs of the colleges as teachers, but also to provide for University, as distinct from College, teaching by the appointment of professors and readers. It was agreed that none of the existing staffs were academically of sufficient repute to take the rank of Professor, but that several might without impropriety become readers. Accordingly fifteen readers in all were appointed from the three colleges. This was a larger number than for some reasons was desirable, but on the other hand it was felt to be unwise for St. Stephen’s to appear unduly dominant. Out of the fifteen, eight fell to the Mission College, as follows: English, C. B. Young; Philosophy, N. K. Sen; Economics, K. C. Nag; History, P. N. F. Young; Mathematics, S. N. Mukarji; Sanskrit, Lachhmi-Dhar; Arabic, Abdur Rahman; Physics, Khub Ram. With these appointments, and with the co-option of Sharp, the College held a majority on the Academic Council, which put it for the moment in a strong position. This was increased in the course of the next year, 1923, by the appointment of P. N. F. Young as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and of Khub Ram as Dean of the Faculty of Science. As a matter of fact Khub Ram was relinquished 174

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to the University as one of its scanty whole-time staff, at the same time that all post-intermediate science teaching was, by general agreement, devolved by the colleges on to the University, to be centralised, for the sake of economy, in the university laboratories.7 But by a happy provision of the Act, all university teachers had to be attached to some college, so Khub Ram retained his membership on the St. Stephen’s staff. In his farewell report to Cambridge for 1922, Rudra had welcomed the formation of the University on the ground that the Delhi colleges had hitherto worked in comparative isolation, involving wasteful duplication of machinery and equipment and some unhealthy rivalry, but would now enter into a scheme of co-operation under unified control in which their own staff members would have a consultative share. Everything, he observed, pointed to the timeliness of the new policy for concentrating and pooling the resources of educational institutions in the new type of University: and ‘if the Delhi experiment is successful,’ he declares, ‘it will be an object lesson to the country for the betterment of higher education.’ But that success would depend in the first place on the strength of the constituent colleges, and in the second on the spirit of mutual confidence and friendship among them. Unfortunately the first condition, as it worked out in actual fact, militated seriously for a time against the second. The Mission College was, in a way, too strong, and though its authorities took every occasion to repudiate any suggestion of a desire to dominate the University, in which it would only confess to the pardonable ambition, justified alike by its history and its personnel, of being primus inter pares, yet the very strength of its contribution, more particularly in men, inevitably gave rise to heart-burnings and tension with other colleges, which for a time created a rather unhappy atmosphere. The situation was unfortunately not alleviated by the course which the Vice-Chancellor pursued, and when on the conclusion of his original term of two years he was re-appointed, Western found himself unable to continue the moderating influence which as Rector he had been able to contribute. The influence of the College was therefore in some degree reduced, a fact which it welcomed on the whole as a practical proof of its disinterestedness in University politics; while increasing personal contacts and practical expressions of goodwill steadily improved the general inter-college relations. In University business, however, a situation arose in connection with certain University appointments which eventually ended in something like a crisis. In March, 1925, Monk found himself compelled to propose, and the Governing Body after the most careful and prolonged deliberation approved, the abstention of the Principal and members of the staff from all participation, ex-officio or elective, in the executive and administrative functions of the University. The grounds for this drastic action were formulated as ‘the deep divergence between the standards of the University as at present administered, and those which the Governing Body and those who work under it feel themselves bound to maintain.’ The decisions of the Arbitration tribunals, which considered the cases that had thus brought previous criticisms to a head, effectively reinforced the protest. It also acquired additional moral weight from the fact that this abstention from the Executive Council 175

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left the field absolutely free to the opposing elements in that body, and disproved conclusively the charge of seeking for undue power which had been persistently imputed to the College. At the same time any accusation of blind and harmful non-co-operation was precluded by the Governing Body’s explicit direction that members of the staff should continue their academic services to the University in readerships or on the Academic Council. This ‘demonstration’ had the effect which was hoped for, and by the next January the Governing Body, reviewing the position, felt justified in directing a return to full participation in all University affairs, in view of the indications of a better spirit and of the probability of an early change in the actual régime. This took place a few months later, and since then St. Stephen’s College has been proud to contribute its full weight and service, in all departments and activities, as an integral part of the University of Delhi.

Notes 1 Fuller details will be found in the Society’s publication, The Story of the Delhi Mission. 2 It should be noted that the Indian universities of those days were purely examining bodies based on the model of the London University. The defects recognised later to be inherent in the system are discussed in chapter viii. 3 i.e. make appointments of non-Brotherhood men to [Illegible text] 4 That this was no mere compliment but the acknowledged ideal of the Cambridge Mission as a whole, is shown by the following passages from Allnutt’s official reports as head of the Mission: REPORT OF THE S.P.G. AND CAMBRIDGE MISSION FOR 1906–7 Head of the Mission’s letter dated 31st January, 1907, Page 16 ‘Hibbert-Ware’s departure on furlough was made memorable both by the very remarkable demonstration of regard and affection towards him on the part of the students and many others when he left, and still more perhaps by the decision we almost unanimously came to, to appoint Mr. Rudra as his locum tenens. Whatever may be held and ultimately decided as to the principle that, cæteris paribus, a member of the Cambridge Mission ought to be Principal of the College, not one of us feels anything but pride and satisfaction that when the opportunity did, for the first time in the history of the Cambridge Mission, occur of appointing an Indian Christian to the post, so thoroughly eligible a member of the College staff was, so to say, ready at hand for it, and that the testimony of all concerned is so emphatically that of ‘the right man in the right post.’ But besides its justification per se, the appointment has been an important step in our Mission towards the assertion of the principle which I hope will more and more animate our policy, that whenever an Indian Christian is found both worthy and capable of rising to the charge of the higher posts in the Mission, no racial consideration shall bar the way to his selection for them, even when, as in the present case, the promotion involves the subordination of our own men to him.’

S. S. ALLNUTT. REPORT OF THE S.P.G. AND CAMBRIDGE MISSION FOR 1907 Head of the Mission’s letter dated 30th January, 1908, Page 17 ‘In one way (Hibbert-Ware’s) loss has, as he himself rejoiced to feel, been a blessing in disguise, for it has enabled us to confirm Rudra, our Indian Principal in his acting

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appointment; and I think that no one now doubts that our action two years ago in putting an Indian Christian in charge of this, the most honourable office in the Mission, has not only justified itself, but was a most important step in advance; the precursor, as I trust, of many similar advances in years to come. It enables me to judge what an immense and, if it be thoughtfully diagnosed, healthy development in public opinion has taken place during the last ten years, that an appointment such as this which would, when I left the College, have been deplored as retrograde by Indians themselves, should have now been welcomed with acclamation by all. It is certainly a great cause for satisfaction to have been able to help forward by one conspicuous success the assertion of the principle that in appointments the best man for the post is the one to find and place in it, irrespective altogether of race and nationality.

S. S. ALLNUTT. 5 Allnutt’s comment on this appointment is a fine example of the old man’s spiritual alertness regarding the racial ideals of the Mission, which his letter to Rudra on his appointment will have already revealed. According ‘a tribute to the self-denying and devoted efforts of our Indian Principal, to whom this (general) accession to the strength of the College cadre is mainly due,’ he specially expresses his thankfulness for the accession of an Indian graduate of Cambridge to the staff. ‘The one set-back to the introduction of so large a staff of Europeans, from the point of view of the development of the Indian Church, is that it must tend to overshadow and, despite efforts to the contrary, to dominate the Indian element of college life. The chairs occupied by Europeans being those in some cases which Indian Christians are best able at present to fill, increase in the former seemed likely to reduce the openings for the latter, and it is on this account that the accession of Mr. Mukarji is specially to be welcomed.’ 6 The staff list for November, 1913, carried the names of Andrews, Sharp, Leather, Monk, Mukarji, P. N. F. Young, Cockin, Jenkin, and Lawrence with C. B. Young doing parttime teaching. Judd had gone home in 1912, and after trying College work in China, and looking up old friends in Delhi on his way home in 1914, was killed in Prance in 1918 while serving as a chaplain. The memory of his most lovable character and readiness to serve in any way, and at any time, is still preserved by old colleagues and pupils. 7 Some Rs. 5,000 worth of apparatus was also contributed by the College to help launch the University Physics Department.

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7 EXTRACTS FROM PROGRESS OF EDUCATION IN INDIA, 1937–1947: DECENNIAL REVIEW [SARGENT REPORT], VOL. I (CENTRAL BUREAU OF EDUCATION-MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, 1948), 155–160, 165–170, 231–240, 295–308

CHAPTER VIII THE EDUCATION OF THE HANDICAPPED Schools for the Blind IN Assam, there is no school for blind children. The blind children of this Province have, therefore, to go to the Blind School at Calcutta. Though scholarships of Rs. 15 per month are offered and 24 seats are reserved for children from Assam, very few of them avail of these facilities. In Bengal, there are two important institutions, both situated in Calcutta, viz., The Calcutta Blind School at Behala (24 Parganas) and the Lighthouse for the Blind, Calcutta. The institution for the vocational rehabilitation of blind children of age-groups 5 to 18 years, belonging mostly to families of ex-soldiers and hillmen at Kalimpong, run by Dr. Mary Scott, also deserves special mention. The Calcutta University had a department for training teachers for the blind, but it has now been closed. The Lighthouse for the Blind is a co-educational institution started specially to provide facilities for the education and training of the adult blind. The Calcutta Blind School at Behala provides instruction from Primary to High School stage and prepares students for the Matriculation examination. It is a residential school providing separate hostels for boys and girls. In 1945–46 it had an enrolment of 67 pupils of which 19 were girls. This school has a teachers’ training department. Vocational training in Carpentry, Weaving, Basket-making. Spinning and Knitting as well as in Music is provided in these schools. In Bihar, there are two schools for the blind, viz., the S. P. G. Mission School at Ranchi and the Patna Blind School. The former teaches up to the middle vernacular 178

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course in addition to vocational subjects like Weaving, Knitting and Cane-work, and the latter teaches up to Matriculation standard and subjects like Typewriting, Music, Cane-work, Rope-making, Gardening and Cooking, etc. This school admits only boys, while the one at Ranchi admits girls also. The enrolment in these schools on the 31st March, 1947, were 33 at Patna and 57 at Ranchi. Special scholarships are awarded to students by Government and local bodies. The S. P. G. Mission Blind School at Ranchi is managed by the Missionaries. The Patna School is run by a managing committee representing the public. Provision has been made in the post-war scheme for opening two more special schools for the blind in Bihar. In Bombay, there are four schools for the blind, viz., The Victoria Memorial School and the Dadar School at Bombay, the School and Home for the Blind at Poona and the School for the Blind at Ahmedabad. Mention may also be made in this connection of the Narsingrao Shivaji Dharmaji’s Industrial Home for the Blind and the Haji Allarakhia Sonavala Andhakshi Ashram, Andheri, Bombay, which are doing good work. The schools for the defective are generally maintained by private bodies or individuals and are aided by Government or by local bodies. A majority of the schools provide for board and lodging for their pupils. The blind receive instruction in the 3 R’s in regional languages through Braille. English is also taught to some of the pupils. Various useful crafts are taught to enable the pupils eventually to earn a living. Provision has also been made for vocal and instrumental music. In the Central Provinces, there is one school for the blind—the Blind Boys’ Institute at Nagpur. It is a residential school and pupils are mostly destitutes. The instruction here is free. The subjects taught are the 3 R’s, Elementary Geography, Music and Craft. The total number of students receiving education and training in the school was 38 during 1946. In Madras, there are five schools in all for the blind, one of them being a part of the Deaf and Dumb School at Teynampet. There are in addition two schools at Palamcottah, one at Poonamalle and one at Rentachintala. The school formerly at Teynampet in Madras was moved to Srivilliputtur in 1942 due to the war but has again been moved back to Madras during 1946–47. Excepting the Tinnevelly Diocesan Trust Association’s School for Blind Girls at Palamcottah, all the schools are mixed schools. They provide general education for their pupils at least up to Standard V and lay emphasis on teaching several small cottage industries and music. The Victory Memorial Blind School, Poonamalle, has also attached to it an industrial section In the North-West Frontier Province and Orissa, there is no school for the blind. No provision for their schooling outside the Province has been reported. In the Punjab, there are two schools for the blind, one at Lahore and the other at Amritsar, both exclusively for boys. The schooling extends over four to five years 179

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and includes general subjects like Arithmetic, Sanskrit and English in Braille and crafts like Spinning and Weaving, Cane and Moonje work and Band-playing. In Sind, there is one institution known as Ida Rieu School for the Blind, managed by the Ida Rieu Poor Welfare Association. In the United Provinces, there are six schools for the blind situated in Dehra Dun, Aligarh, Mainpuri, Lucknow, Banaras and Naini near Allahabad. The school at Dehra Dun is mainly for girls though boys up to the age of 7 are admitted. The subjects taught in these schools include the 3 R’s, music and various other crafts. In the Centrally Administered Areas, there is one residential school for the blind at Ajmer. Its enrolment was 13 during the year 1946–47. There is another school for the blind in Tuglakabad, Delhi, which is managed by a private body. Schools for the Deaf and Dumb In Assam, there is a school at Sylhet, providing instruction to boys and girls for a period of ten years in Lip-reading and Writing, Tailoring, Sewing, etc. Some children are also sent to the Deaf and Dumb School at Calcutta, and they get scholarships from the Provincial Government. In Bengal, there are one or two deaf and dumb schools in each Division. The most important of them is the Deaf and Dumb School at Calcutta, the others being in Dacca, Mymensingh, Chittagong, Suri, Berhampore, Burdwan, Rajshahi, Bogra, Barisal and Brahmanbaria. Except for the school at Calcutta, these are managed by private bodies and Municipalities. Their courses of study range from 8 to 10 years and comprise general subjects like Writing, Lip-reading, History and Arithmetic and Carpentry, Tailoring, Weaving and Printing. The Calcutta Deaf and Dumb School is important owing to its Teachers’ Training Department where teachers from different parts of the country come for training in the methods of teaching the deaf. Diplomas and certificates are awarded to successful candidates. In Bihar, there are two schools, one at Ranchi and the other at Patna. Government give grants-in-aid and special scholarships. Both the schools are co-educational and their courses extend from 8 to 10 years. The subjects of study are the 3 R’s, Tailoring, Drawing, Clay-modelling, Spinning, Bee-keeping, Typewriting, etc. In Bombay, the number of schools increased during the period under review from 5 to 8. They are in Bombay, Poona, Sholapur, Ratnagiri, Nasik and Ahmedabad. Lip-reading and Articulation form main features of instruction in these schools. Practical instruction in at least one of the common crafts is also given. In the Central Provinces there is only one school, viz., the Bhonsla Deaf and Dumb School situated at Nagpur. The school is in receipt of grants from Government and local bodies. 180

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In Madras, there are co-educational institutions, one each in Coimbatore, Karaikudi, Palamcottah, Teynampet and Mylapore. The one at Teynampet is a combined school for the blind and the deaf-mute. During the period under review, the school at Erode was closed. Articulation and Lip-reading are special methods used in schools for dumb children and Drawing, Painting, Needle-work and Embroidery are encouraged. In Orissa, there is one small school at Cuttack, the All Orissa Deaf and Dumb School, with an enrolment of 4 on 31st March, 1946. It is a co-educational institution. Its course of studies extends over five years and consists of 3 R’s and a few crafts. In the Punjab, there are no facilities for the deaf and dumb. The Government, however, give an annual subsidy to the Lady Noyce School for Deaf and Dumb at New Delhi, for taking in the afflicted children of this Province. In Sind, there are no schools, nor any facilities for the teaching of the deaf and dumb. In the United Provinces, there were schools at Allahabad, Lucknow and Cawnpore, but the last one was closed in 1943–44. The Cawnpore school was a combined school for the deaf-mutes and the blind. In the Centrally Administered Areas, there is one school at New Delhi, the Lady Noyce School for the Deaf and Dumb. Its course of training includes the 3 R’s and crafts like Carpentry, Needle-work, Weaving, Dyeing, Tailoring and Toy-making. It is co-educational, partly residential and it serves the Province of the Punjab and other areas. Schools for Those Afflicted with other Organic Diseases Besides the blind, the deaf and the dumb, children suffering from other physical handicaps such as diseases of the heart, lungs, skin, etc., also come within the purview of the educational system. No facilities for such children have, however, been reported. Bihar and Madras have schools for children whose parents are afflicted with the heritable disease of leprosy. The Bihar School at Purulia had an enrolment of 251 (including 125 girls) on 31st March, 1947. The Purulia Leper Asylum received a grant-in-aid of Rs. 720 per annum from the State Government. In Madras, there are five schools for leper children. Medical attention forms a chief feature of these schools. The total strength of these schools was 197 on the 31st March, 1947. Speech Defect No information is available regarding the existence of any special schools for this type of deficiency in children and youth. Elocution and right pronunciation are, however, given some attention in many schools in the course of their normal teaching. One of the benefits of oratorial contests, which are becoming more and more popular, is to improve elocution and the art of speech generally. 181

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School for the Mentally Handicapped During the decennium three schools for mentally handicapped children have been reported—two in Bengal and one in Bombay. Of the schools in Bengal, The Children’s Home at Kurseong which catered only for Anglo-Indian and European children was closed in 1944. The other school, the Bodhana Niketan, is at Jhargram in Midnapore District. The school in Bombay (Chembur) forms a part of the Children’s Home conducted by the Local Children’s Aid Society. The training in these institutions aims at correcting the special and the general mental deficiencies of the children and giving them as much general education as they are capable of. The institutions, however, are not run on scientific lines. Table XXXI gives the number of institutions for the handicapped during 1946– 47, together with their enrolment and expenditure. TABLE XXXI Education of the Handicapped, 1946–47

Province

NUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS

NUMBER OF SCHOLARS IN INSTITUTIONS

EXPENDITURE

Males

Females

Males

Females

Males

Females

Assam . . . . . . . . . . Bengal* . . . . . . . . . Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . Bombay . . . . . . . . . C. P. and Berar . . . Madras . . . . . . . . . . Orissa . . . . . . . . . . Punjab* . . . . . . . . . Sind* . . . . . . . . . . . United Provinces . . Ajmer-Merwara . . . Delhi . . . . . . . . . . .

1 15 4 11 3 12 1 2 1 5 1 1

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1 .. ..

22 252 123 360 50 592 6 83 7 118 13 68

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 55 .. ..

Rs. 3,060 1,80,752 23,843 65,248 11,648 92,713 1,420 34,370 4,094 29,251 1,935 12,838

Rs. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 8,711 .. ..

TOTAL . . . . . .

57

1

1,694

55

4,61,172

8,711

* Indicates estimated figures.

REFORMATORY SCHOOLS FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS Some children suffer from aberrations of conduct due to wrong education or native impulse which, if neglected, is likely to render them social misfits and social dangers. The Borstal or Reformatory schools aim at educating such children so that they may become healthy and useful members of society. 182

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TABLE XXXII Statistics of Reformatory Schools, 1946–47 Province

Number of Schools

Enrolment

Expenditure

Bengal . . . . . . . . Bihar . . . . . . . . . Bombay . . . . . . . C. P. and Berar . . Madras . . . . . . . . Punjab . . . . . . . .

3 1 1 1 5 2

222 177 155 204 2,540 117

Rs. 69,451 1,27,441 93,088 11,648 4,12,850 62,207

TOTAL . . . .

13

3,415

7,76,685

Table XXXII shows the facilities available in India for the education of young offenders. In Bengal, there were three schools, but the one at Alipore, which was for delinquents below 15 years of age, was closed in 1942–43 and the children sent to the Hazaribagh Reformatory School in Bihar, which was jointly maintained by the Provinces of Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Orissa. The two other schools at Bankura and Berhampore admit delinquents between 15 and 21. These Borstal schools are under control of the Inspector-General of Prisons. Instruction is given in general subjects and in useful handicrafts. There is no machinery for keeping in touch with the children after they leave the school and for checking relapses which may occur. The Aftercare Association of Bengal, however, receives into it those boys who have no guardians and wish to stay there after their course of training. In Bihar, the Hazaribagh Reformatory School is an outstanding institution. It is a joint institution for Bihar, Bengal, Assam and Orissa and is maintained out of Government grants supplemented by income derived from sale proceeds from the workshop and other miscellaneous sources. In 1946–47, there were 177 boys of whom 76 were from Bihar, 88 from Bengal, 12 from Orissa and 1 from Jaipur State. Besides handicrafts, tho boys are taught general subjects up to the upper primary standard. After pupils leave the school they are kept under observation for two years. In Bombay, there are two types of institutions, viz., the Certified schools and Borstal schools. The Certified1 schools are 3 in number and admit boys of 16 and under. Of the second type there is one school meant for boys above 16 at Dharwar. The Province also had in 1945–46 20 homes for delinquents. All the schools teach up to the primary standard and give training in some vocational subjects. In Punjab, there are several Borstal schools and the Government also maintain the Reformatory School at Delhi. 183

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In the United Provinces, there is only one school at Chunar. It was formerly controlled by the Education Department, but in 1942–43 it was transferred to the Prison Department. All-India Institutions There is no All-India or Central Institution for the problems of afflicted children for their schooling or for the training of their teachers. There are, however, some schools for children, notably two, which have attained an inter-provincial standing. The school for deaf-mutes at Calcutta serves not only Bengal but also the neighbouring Provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa. The Hazaribagh Reformatory School in Bihar also serves the same areas. The Central Advisory Board of Education took up the question of an All-India Braille Code for the blind in 1941 and appointed an Expert Committee for the purpose. The Braille Committee has since designed a Uniform Braille Code for the major Indian languages and its use has been recommended by the Government of India for all schools for the blind in India. The Uniform Indian Braille will satisfy a long-felt need for a common braille code for all Indian languages. The Government of India are taking active steps to set up an up-to-date Braille Printing Press for the production of suitable literature in Uniform Indian Braille. Apparatus and appliances for the education and training of the blind will be manufactured. It is also proposed to establish a Central Model Institute for the blind at a very early date.

CHAPTER IX ÆSTHETIC EDUCATION Arts and Crafts TABLE XXXIII shows the number of schools teaching Arts and Crafts other than Music, Dancing and Architecture, along with their enrolment and expenditure. TABLE XXXIII 1937–38 Province*

Number of Schools

Enrolment

Expenditure

Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bombay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Punjab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . United Provinces . . . . . . . .

5 3 5 1 2

524 685 332 161 332

Rs. 79,383 1,17,629 67,281 65,842 66,644

TOTAL . . . . . . . . .

16

2,034

3,96,779

184

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1941–42 Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bombay C. P. and Berar . . . . . . . . . Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Punjab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . United Provinces . . . . . . . .

6 1 3 1 5 1 2

407 24 726 44 388 172 280

86,620 605 1,24,743 3,502 72,001 64,336 65,303

TOTAL . . . . . . . . .

19

2,041

4,17,110

1946–47 Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bombay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. P. and Berar . . . . . . . . . Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Punjab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . United Provinces . . . . . . . .

4 1 3 1 4 1 2

376 27 784 66 261 125 163

1,00,293 5,467 1,93,587 4,322 96,919 1,36,475 57,887

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . .

16

1,802

5,94,950

* In other provinces/areas not mentioned in this table, there are no Arts and Crafts Schools. There are no Arts Schools exclusively for Females.

The following is a brief account of the institutions and courses in Fine Arts and Manual Arts and Crafts as they have developed or continued in various provinces during the decennium. In Assam, there is no institution under the Education Department exclusively’ for these subjects. Hand-work, Drawing, Painting and Needle-work, however, form part of the school routine. In Bengal, Art in a rudimentary form forms part of the curriculum for Primary Schools and is included as one of the optional subjects—Handwork. The training gives an impetus to children to acquire a taste for Fine Arts. In Secondary Schools, Drawing is a compulsory subject up to Class VIII and an alternative subject in Classes IX and X. Among the special institutions devoted to Arts and Crafts, an important place is taken by the Kalabhavana of the Visva Bharati at Santiniketan and by the Government School of Art at Calcutta. The Kalabhavana has attracted students from all over India and some from outside the country. The Government School of Art, Calcutta, provides training in both elementary and advanced vocational grades in Lithography, Clay Modelling, Wood Engraving, Commercial Art, Draftsmanship and Drawing.

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In Bihar, Drawing continued to be a compulsory subject in Primary and Middle Schools and an optional subject in the Matriculation Examination. Clay Modelling and Artistic Hand-work have been special features of education in schools. Only one special school of Arts and Crafts exists in the Province, viz., the Art School of Patna, which was recognised by Government in 1941–42. There is a proposal to take it over under the management of Government. In Bombay, there are three institutions specialising in Arts and Crafts, two managed by Government and one by a private body. Of these the most important is the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. It provides training in Painting, Modelling, Architecture and Commercial Art, Designing and Artistic Research, Sculpture, etc. In the Central Provinces and Berar, the Nagpur School of Art is the only recognised and Government-aided institution that provides instruction in Drawing and Painting up to the Diploma standard. It prepares candidates for the examinations held by the J. J. School of Art, Bombay. Drawing or Hand-work (manual training) is a compulsory subject in Middle Schools in the Province. At the High School stage, there are courses in Drawing, Painting, Art, Needle-work, Wood and Metal work. In Madras, a large number of institutions consisting of schools, colleges, training schools and colleges and special schools have manual training classes attached to them. Several arts and crafts subjects are taught in these classes. For advanced vocational courses, the following institutions may be named: (i) The School of Arts and Crafts, Egmore, Madras. (ii) Art Masters’ Class, Teachers’ College, Saidapet. (iii) Manual Training Class, Teachers’ College, Saidapet. (iv) Municipal Art School, Kumbakonam. The Manual Training Class at Saidapet was, however, suspended during 1946–47. In the North-West Frontier Province, there are no special Arts and Crafts schools, but Primary and Middle Schools in the districts provide elementary training in local crafts. Basket-making, Gold and Silver Embroidery, Hazara Embroidery, Toy and Doll-making, Mokiash work, Chab and Kundi work and Rug-making are some of the important crafts taught. Orissa offers a few scholarships to her students for study in other provinces, as she has no school for Arts and Crafts herself. For the Matriculation Examination, however, Drawing and Manual Training have been included as optional subjects. In Primary and Middle Schools, instruction is provided in handicrafts. Provision has also been made for Arts and Crafts in teachers’ training schools. Hand-work forms a compulsory subject for elementary school teachers. Needle-work and Clay Modelling are compulsory for women teachers of this grade. In Punjab, elementary training in some Arts and Crafts has been provided in Primary and Middle Schools for both boys and girls. Training in Arts and Crafts 186

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has also been insisted for training of teachers of all grades. The Re-organisation Committee of 1937–38 recommended this training as compulsory for elementary school teachers, and the recommendation was brought into force in 1939–40. At the Central Training College, Lahore, instruction in Pottery-making, Clay Modelling, Cardboard Modelling, Papier-mache work, Book-binding and Marbling has been provided in a separate class since 1942. In order to make University Education more realistic and attractive for girls, the latter have been allowed to offer Art as an elective subject at the Intermediate and B.A. Examinations. This is reported to have proved a great success. Of the special schools, the outstanding institution is the Mayo School of Art at Lahore. During 1939–40, a Designs Department was added to it. In Sind, Drawing is taught in Primary and Secondary Schools. Handwork has been assigned an important place in the revised curriculum (1942) for Primary Schools for boys and girls. In the United Provinces, Arts and Crafts of an elementary character are taught in the Basic and other Primary and Secondary Schools for boys and girls. Art and handicraft classes have been provided in the Government Basic Training College for Teachers at Allahabad. Facilities also exist for the teaching of Arts and Crafts outside the control of the Department of Education. There was a good deal of artistic activity in the Province. Private Art Schools came into existence at various places, the one at Allahabad attracting a large number of students. The Painting Class at the Allahabad University maintained all-round progress. In Ajmer-Merwara, Vernacular Primary and Secondary Schools provide instruction in Arts and Crafts as optional subjects, while High Schools encourage them in the form of students’ hobbies. Arts and Crafts form part of the compulsory course of studies in the Government Normal School for Women. The Sophia Girls’ Intermediate College at Ajraer provides instruction in Needle-work, Drawing and Painting. For men teachers under training, the Government Normal School and the Training College, both at Ajmer, provide instruction in Clay Modelling, Painting, etc., of which in two subjects teachers are compulsorily required to take training. In Delhi, no special schools exist for Arts and Crafts. But in the Delhi Polytechnic and the Modern Higher Secondary School, provision is made for teaching certain items of Arts and Crafts as part of the general curriculum, leading up to Higher Secondary School or Matriculation Examination. Music In Assam, one notable event was the appointment of a Committee in 1941 to consider the needs of Music Education in girls’ schools. As a result of its recommendations, arrangements for teaching Music were made in four girls’ schools in Shillong and 9 music teachers were appointed. In 1942, these classes had to be closed on account of poor attendance due to the war. For college students, similar provision outside college hours exists in the Murarichand College, Sylhet, where there is a Music section organised on a voluntary basis. 187

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For specialised study of Music, the Govardhana Sangit Vidyalaya, Sylhet, provides a four-year course leading to the award of a Diploma. The Province also provides an annual scholarship for advanced students at the Marris College of Hindustani Music in Lucknow. In Bengal, Music is taught as a regular subject in many girls’ schools and is a subject for Matriculation. Of the special schools of Music, the most prominent are the Calcutta School of Music, the Sangit Vidyalala and the Sangit Sangha, all in Calcutta, and the Sangit Bhavana of the Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. Sangit Bhavana attracts students from all over India and abroad. The Music School at Moynadal in the district of Birbhum was meant specially for imparting training in Kirtan. In Bihar, Music is taught either as an extra-curricular subject or as an optional subject for Matriculation Examination in selected High Schools particularly in Giris’ High Schools. In all Middle Schools for Girls, Music is taught as a regular subject. European Secondary Schools for Girls prepare pupils for the Music examination of the Trinity College of Music, London. The Patna University has decided to open a College of Music at Patna for which the Provincial Government have sanctioned a grant of Rs. 10,000 for a period of three years and a non-recurring grant of Rs. 3,000. Though not progressing satisfactorily, mention may be made of the two music schools at Purulia, viz., Pashupati Gangadhar Sangit Vidyalaya and Saraswati Sangit Vidyalaya. In Bombay, the number of special music schools in 1945–46 was 10 with an enrolment of 338. Instruction in Music is also imparted in certain Primary and Secondary Schools. In Central Provinces and Berar, there is provision for courses in Music at the High School stage. Besides, there are a number of popular Music classes run by private bodies in some of the big towns like Nagpur, Jubbulpore, etc. These classes generally follow the Bhatkhande curriculum of Music and some of them prepare students for examination in Music of the Lucknow University. In Madras, the only recognised special institution for Music is the Teachers’ College of Music, Madras, which was recognised in 1937–38. This College presented 4 men and 9 women candidates in April 1946 for the examination for Teachers’ Certificate in Indian Music and all of them were declared successful. The Madras University has instituted a Bachelor’s Degree in Music. In the North-West Frontier Province, Western Music is taught in the Convent Day School, Peshawar. Indian Music is taught in a few of the Hindu and Sikh schools. In Orissa, Music is provided in a few high schools and training institutions for boys and in all high schools and training schools for girls. It is an optional subject for the Matriculation and Teachers’ Certificate Examinations. 188

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Of the special schools, mention may be made of the Utkal Sangit Samaj at Cuttack, which provides facilities for the teaching of vocal as well as instrumental Music. It receives a grant from the Provincial Government. In Punjab, Music is provided in a large number of girls’ schools as an extracurricular subject and is reported to be very popular. It is also an optional subject for women for the Intermediate and B.A. Degree Examination of the Punjab University. In Sind, almost all the district towns have music schools which are private institutions. Some of them are proprietary while others are managed by social, charitable and semi-charitable bodies. In the United Provinces, Music maintained its popularity during the period under review. Apart from its being taught in a larger number of high schools and inter-colleges as an optional subject, it was also taught in the Allahabad University which had organised Diploma courses in Music. It has also been introduced as one of the subjects for the B.Sc. special course for women. The chief institutions for teaching of higher classical Music are the Marris College of Hindustani Music at Lucknow and the Prayag Sangit Samiti at Allahabad. The Marris College of Hindustani Music is an all-India institution where students from all over the country and even from outside come. It teaches the Bhatkhande system of Music. It has two courses—one leading to Intermediate in Music, lasting three years and five months, the other to Bachelor of Music, lasting two years after the Intermediate. The financial condition of the institution is still unsatisfactory. The Sangit Samiti at Allahabad has increased in strength steadily since its foundation in 1926, and developed into an affiliating and examining institution, with the authority to grant diplomas in Music. During 1943–44, dancing classes were added. The Uday Shankar Culture Centre at Almora, which was designed primarily as an institution for the Art of Dance, has also provided facilities for learning Indian Music. In Ajmer-Merwara, Indian schools for girls and the European and Anglo-Indian schools for boys and girls provide for teaching of Music. It is an optional subject for the High School Examination of the Rajputana area. Provision for Music exists also in the Savitri College and the Government Normal School for Women Teachers. During 1934–44, a private Music College was started in Ajmer. In Delhi, about 12 girls’ schools have arrangements for Music which is an optional subject both for the High School and S. L. C. and Higher Secondary Education, Delhi Province. Dancing Action-songs and elementary forms of Dancing are taught in most of Primary Schools in all provinces. 189

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In Assam, Bengal, Orissa, Ajmer and Delhi, in Secondary Schools for Girls, Dancing is taught in conjunction with music. In some provinces like Bengal and Bihar, Dancing on the Bratachari lines has been introduced in some schools. Only a few provinces provide facilities for specialised study of Dancing. Bengal has an outstanding centre for the cultivation of this art in the Sangita Bhavan at the Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. A notable institution in Indian Dancing is Kala Kshetra at Adyar, Madras. Mention may also be made of the Kerala Kala Mandalam situated in the Cochin State which is devoted to the Kathakali, another Indian style of Dance. In the United Provinces, the Uday Shankar Culture Centre at Almora flourished, though for a brief period, as an institute of Indian Dance. Founded in 1938–39, on contributions from England and America, amounting to the sum of £20,000, it provided a course of five years’ training in various branches of Dance and Music. The Provincial Government also sanctioned a grant in 1941–42, but at the end of 1943, the institute had to close down on account of financial difficulties. During its brief period of existence it gathered together eminent exponents of various schools of Indian Dance and Music.

POST-WAR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I THE REPORT OF THE CENTRAL ADVISORY BOARD OF EDUCATION A.

Main Features of Recommendations and Endorsement by the Department of Education

THE Report of the Central Advisory Board of Education was submitted to the Reconstruction Committee of His Excellency the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1944, together with a Memorandum by what was then the Education, Health and Lands Department of the Government of India. The Report consisted of an Introduction and a Conclusion and twelve chapters dealing with the main branches of activity in a modern and democratic system of public instruction, viz., Basic (Primary and Middle) Education, Pre-Primary Education, High School Education, University Education, Technical, Commercial and Art Education, Adult Education, The Training of Teachers, The Health of the School Child, The Education of the Handicapped, Recreative and Social Activities, Employment Bureaux and Administration. In view of their importance the recommendations at the end of each chapter are set out below:— Chapter I—Basic (Primary and Middle) Education (a) A system of universal, compulsory and free education for all boys and girls between the ages of six and fourteen should be introduced as speedily as 190

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possible though in view of the practical difficulty of recruiting the requisite supply of trained teachers it may not be possible to complete it in less than forty years. (b) The character of the instruction to be provided should follow the general lines laid down in the reports of the Central Advisory Board’s two Committees on Basic Education. (c) The Senior Basic (Middle) School, being the finishing school for the great majority of future citizens, is of fundamental importance and should be generously staffed and equipped. (d) All education depends on the teacher. The present status and remuneration of teachers, and especially those in Primary Schools, are deplorable. The standards in regard to the training, recruitment and conditions of service of teachers prescribed in the Report of the Committee approved by the Central Advisory Board in 1943 represent the minimum compatible with the success of a national system: these should be adopted and enforced everywhere. (e) A vast increase in the number of trained women teachers will be required. (f ) The total estimated annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter when in full operation is Rs. 200 crores approximately. Chapter II—Pre-Primary Education (a) An adequate provision of pre-primary instruction in the form of Nursery Schools or classes is an essential adjunct to any national system of education. The provision in this respect at present is negligible. (b) In urban areas, where sufficient children are available within a reasonable radius, separate Nursery Schools or departments may be provided: elsewhere Nursery classes should be attached to Junior Basic (Primary) Schools. (c) Nursery Schools and classes should invariably be staffed with women teachers who have received special training for this work. (d) Pre-Primary Education should in all cases be free. While it may not be feasible to make attendance compulsory, no efforts should be spared to persuade parents to send their children to school voluntarily, particularly in areas where housing conditions are unsatisfactory and/or mothers are accustomed to go out to work. (e) The main object of education at this stage is to give young children social experience rather than formal instruction. ( f ) On the basis of a normal age range of three to six years, provision has been made for 1,000,000 places in Nursery Schools and classes. (g) The total estimated net cost of the proposals set out in this chapter when in full operation is Rs. 3,18,40,000. Chapter III—High School Education (a) The High School course should cover six years and the normal age of admission should be about eleven. 191

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(b) Entry to High Schools should be on a selective basis; only those pupils should be admitted who show promise of taking full advantage of the education provided. Additional places may be provided for those not selected provided that no cost falls on public funds. (c) In accordance with the general principle set out in (b) above, places in High Schools should be provided for at least one child in every five of the appropriate age group. (d) In order to secure the right children, the methods of selection to be employed will require the most careful consideration. Special arrangements will have to be made for the transfer from Senior Basic (Middle) Schools to High Schools of suitable children and particularly of those who show signs of late development. (e) High Schools should be of two main types: (a) Academic (b) Technical. The objective of both should be to provide a good all-round education combined with some preparation in the later stages for the careers which pupils will enter on leaving school. ( f ) The curriculum in all cases should be as varied as circumstances permit and should not be unduly restricted by the requirements of Universities or examining bodies. (g) In order that no poor child of ability may be excluded, liberal assistance in the form of free places, scholarships and stipends should be available throughout the course. (h) In order to secure teachers of the right type, the salaries paid in all recognised schools, whether maintained by the State or by private bodies, should not be less than those prescribed by the Central Advisory Board of Education. (i) The estimated minimum net annual cost of the High School system outlined in this chapter when in full operation is Rs. 50 crores. Chapter IV—University Education (a) Indian Universities, as they exist to-day, despite many admirable features, do not fully satisfy the requirements of a national system of education. (b) In order to raise standards all round, the conditions for admission must be revised with the object of ensuring that all students are capable of taking full advantage of a University course. The proposed reorganisation of the High School system will facilitate this. Adequate financial assistance must be provided for poor students. (c) The present Intermediate course should be abolished. Ultimately the whole of this course should be covered in the High School but as an immediate step the first year of the course should be transferred to High Schools and the second to Universities. (d) The minimum length of a University degree course should be three years. (e) The tutorial system should be widely extended and closer personal contacts established between teachers and students. 192

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( f ) The importance of establishing a high standard in post-graduate studies and particularly in pure and applied research should be emphasised. (g) Steps should be taken to improve the conditions of service, including remuneration, of University and College teachers where those now in operation are not attracting men and women of the requisite calibre. (h) An Indian University Grants Committee should be constituted for the purposes and with the terms of reference set out in this chapter. (i) To provide for the increased number of able and well-prepared students which a national system of High Schools may be expected to produce, approximately 240,000 places, or double the existing number, should be available in Universities. ( j) The estimated total net annual cost of the scheme for University education set out in this chapter when in full operation is Rs. 672 lakhs. Chapter V—Technical, Commercial and Art Education (a) In view of the prospective needs of post-war industry and commerce for skilled technicians, and in order to cater for the aptitudes of those who will derive greater benefit from a practical course, the establishment of an efficient system of Technical Education at all stages, on the lines set out in the Report of the Technical Education Committee, is a matter of great urgency. (b) Due regard should be paid to the recommendations of the Abbott-Wood Report in respect of the scope and content of Technical Instruction. (c) The estimated gross annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter will be approximately Rs. 10 crores and the net cost Rs. 8 crores. Chapter VI—Adult Education (a) Comprehensive arrangements on the general lines set out in the Adult Education Committee’s Report should form an integral part of any national system of education. These are particularly important in India to-day in view of the very high percentage of illiterates. (b) Literacy is a means not an end in itself. Although the main emphasis in the beginning may be placed on the liquidation of illiteracy, adult education in the full sense must be provided for those already literate. The amount of this should progressively increase as illiteracy disappears. (c) It is estimated that even with the introduction of a universal system of Basic Education there will be over 9 crores of illiterates (age group 10 to 40) to be dealt with. Plans should be made to solve this problem by a campaign spread over twenty years. Before this campaign opens, five years should be devoted to the necessary preparations, including the recruitment and training of the staff of teachers required. (d) In this as in all branches of education the quality of the teacher is of supreme importance. The difficulty of obtaining a sufficient number of teachers of the right type, particularly women, must on no account be underestimated. 193

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(e) The responsibility for adult education must rest with the State but every effort should be made to enlist the aid of suitable voluntary organisations wherever available. ( f ) The estimated total annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter is Rs. 3 crores. At the height of the literacy campaign this may be exceeded.by Rs. 25 to 30 lakhs, but the average annual cost for the twenty years will be little less than Rs. 3 crores. Chapter VII—The Training of Teachers (a) The proposals for the recruitment and training of teachers as set out in the Report approved by the Central Advisory Board in January 1943 should be generally adopted. (b) The existing training institutions are barely sufficient to meet wastage among existing teachers and to train those hitherto untrained. (c) New Training Schools and Colleges (including University Education Departments) must be provided to supply the additional teachers whom a national system will require. These will amount to over 2,000,000 non-graduates for schools of all types and 180,000 graduates for High Schools. (d) Arrangements should be made to pick out suitable boys and girls towards the end of the High School course. This is particularly important in Girls’ High Schools in view of the vast increase in the number of women teachers required. (e) The courses provided should be essentially practical and should be specially related to the needs of the schools in which the trainees will subsequently serve. ( f ) No fees should be charged either in Training Schools or Training Colleges: liberal assistance should be available for the maintenance of poor students. (g) Refresher courses are of the utmost importance and should be provided for all types of teachers but particularly for those in remote rural areas. Facilities should be provided for research and selected teachers should be encouraged to study educational methods in foreign countries. (h) It is impossible to calculate the precise annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter. The total net cost of training the additional teachers required for a national system will amount, including maintenance where necessary, to Rs. 1,59,94,98,250 over a period of thirty-five years or an average of Rs. 4,56,99,950 a year. Chapter VIII—The Health of the School Child (a) Provision for ensuring the physical welfare of all pupils and students should be made on the lines set out in the Report of the Joint Committee. (b) The cost of the School Medical Service including provision of meals and special schools, etc., has, on the analogy of other countries, been estimated at 10

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per cent, of the total expenditure on the schools. Provision has been made for this in the estimates of the cost of the national system at the appropriate stages. Chapter IX—The Education of the Handicapped (a) Provision for the mentally or physically handicapped should form an essential part of a national system of education and should be administered by the Education Department. (b) Hitherto in India Governments have hardly interested themselves at all in this branch of education: what has been done has been due almost entirely to voluntary effort. (c) Wherever possible, handicapped children should not be segregated from normal children. Only when the nature and extent of their defect make it necessary, should they be sent to special schools or institutions. Partialty handicapped children should receive special treatment at ordinary schools. (d) The blind and deaf need special educational arrangements, including specially trained teachers. It may be desirable to establish central institutions for training the teachers required. (e) Particular care should be taken to train the handicapped, whereever possible, for remunerative employment and to find such employment for them. Aftercare work is essential. ( f ) In the absence of any reliable data it is impossible to estimate what would be the cost of making adequate provision for the handicapped in India; 10 per cent, of the total expenditure on Basic and High Schools has been set aside for special services, which include such provision, and it is hoped that this will suffice. Chapter X—Recreative and Social Activities (a) The provision of recreative and social activities on an adequate scale is an essential feature of any modern educational system. (b) Apart from the needs of boys and girls in schools and colleges special attention should be paid to those in the 14 to 20 age group who are no longer attending school. To serve these a Youth Movement on an all-India basis should be set up. (c) A Youth Movement should aim at co-ordinating and supplementing rather than superseding the work of organisations already dealing with aspects of this problem. (d) The main need of a Youth Movement will be for leaders, both men and women, who will have to be specially trained. The possibility of finding suitable recruits among demobilised Officers and N.C.O’s should be explored. (e) The provision of social and recreative facilities for adults should form an important part of any Social Service Scheme. Reference is invited for the Report of the Board’s Committee on Social Service and Public Administration (1941).

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( f ) It is impossible to estimate the ultimate cost of the provision contemplated in this chapter. Rs. 1 crore may be included in the estimate. Chapter XI—Employment Bureaux (a) Employment Bureaux form an essential part of educational administration: they are especially necessary in India in view of the restricted openings at the moment for progressive employment. (b) Employment Bureaux, if they are to fulfil successfully the functions set out in this chapter, must be staffed by trained experts with practical experience of teaching and of industrial conditions. (c) While contact should be maintained with Unemployment Exchanges, Labour Tribunals, etc., established by other departments, Employment Bureaux which deal with the output of educational institutions, should be under the control of the Education Department. (d) It is estimated that the gross annual cost of running Employment Bureaux (apart from those separately established by institutions of University rank) will amount to Rs. 64,00,000. This should be regarded ultimately as a normal part of administrative expenditure. Chapter XII—Administration (a) The Provinces should remain the main units for educational administration except in regard to University and Higher Technical Education, the activities of which should be co-ordinated on an all-India basis. (b) In the event of the Indian States taking part in educational development on an all-India scale it may be necessary in order to form economic educational units to group the smaller ones or attach them to larger States or contiguous Provinces. (c) A national system of education will require much closer cooperation, financial and otherwise, between the Central and Provincial Governments. (d) Provincial Governments should be left to make such changes in their administrative arrangements as the carrying out of educational developments on the scale contemplated may require. Experience, however, suggests that they would be well advised to resume all educational powers from local bodies, except where these are functioning efficiently. (e) In order to enlist local interest in education, School Managing Bodies, School Boards and District Education Committees may be constituted, if and when sufficient people of the right type are available to serve on them. An Education Advisory Board for the whole Province may be desirable. ( f ) A strong Education Department will be required at the Centre and in this connection the scope and functions of the Central Advisory Board should be enlarged. (g) Steps should be taken in accordance with the recommendations of the Board’s Committee on the Recruitment of Education Officers (1943) to check the 196

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present deterioration in the status and calibre of the educational administrative service and to enable it to secure the services of the type of officer who will be capable of carrying a scheme of the kind contemplated into successful operation. (h) Arrangements should be made for the exchange of officers between the Centre and the Provinces and between one Province and another. The desirability of establishing a senior educational administrative service on an all-India basis should receive consideration. (i) The Director of Public Instruction should be directly responsible for the general administration of education, other than University and Higher Technical Education, throughout the Province. He should also be Secretary for Education, should it be thought necessary, to keep in existence a separate post of this kind. ( j) Provision has been made under each separate branch of education for the cost of administration which may be estimated at 5 percent, of the gross annual expenditure. At the same time as the Report a companion volume was issued containing in a slightly abridged form the reports of the Board’s Committees on which the main Report was based. The attention of those who are more interested in the educational methods than in organic structure is specially invited to this companion volume, which can hardly be summarised here. The Departmental Memorandum, which will be found in full in Appendix I, is also a document of sufficient interest and importance and deserves a fairly full summary here, if only because it attempts to deal with the major issues raised by earlier critics, including those contained in the minutes of dissent to the Report itself. Perhaps the most important of all the issues raised was that which concerned the future relations between the Central and Provincial Governments. It was apprehended in some quarters that if the financial implications of the Plan involved substantial grants-in-aid from Central Revenues—as they in fact did and do— it might lead to some infringement of Provincial autonomy. The Departmental Memo, pointed out in this connection that as a matter of principle no Central Government could be expected to subsidise Provincial activities on a large scale without requiring to satisfy itself that the money was spent for the purpose for and in accordance with the conditions on which it was given but at the same time since there would seem to be a large measure of agreement between the Centre and the Provinces, both as to the objects to be secured and as to the best ways of securing them, there was no reason why such liaison as might be essential should involve any onerous interference by one with the other. Indeed, the Department of Education looked forward to the establishment in the common interest of a cordial spirit of co-operation between the parties concerned, a hope which the experience of other countries where the cost of a public system of education is defrayed partly from Central and partly from Local funds has shown to be not unrealisable. Indeed, although such development as has so far taken place in the Provinces has received substantial assistance from the Centre both in the way of money and advice, there has been no instance as yet of any Province complaining of interference. 197

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The Memorandum also endorsed the views of the Central Advisory Board of Education in regard to the sphere of work of the Central Government vis-a-vis Provincial Governments in the field of education, viz., that its administration at any rate up to the end of the High School stage, must remain a Provincial responsibility. In the higher ranges of education, however, it was generally felt that the more advanced forms of Technical, Commercial and Art Education in view of their special character, their costliness and their intimate relation to the requirements of industry and commerce rather than to those of any definite geographic area could hardly be organised efficiently on a Provincial basis. The steps which have already been taken at the instance of the All-India Council for Technical Education (a product of the Report) to promote the development of higher technical institutions on this broader basis are described in Chapter V of Part III of the Survey. Fears had also been expressed that the application of the selective principle for higher education as advocated in the Report might result in unfairness to members of backward communities. The Memorandum recognised that pending the complete establishment of a national system of education which catered impartially for all, special measures would be necessary to safeguard the interests of backward communities during the transitional period but pointed out that there was nothing in the Report which precluded the Provincial authorities from taking such measures as they thought necessary in this connection. There could, however, be little doubt as to the validity of the selective principle itself, since boys and girls are born with different abilities and aptitudes and apart from any question of social justice, the public interest requires that those with the requisite capacity, in whatever class or community they may be found, should be given the chance of further education in order that they may be equipped to serve the community to the best of their ability. The Memorandum then dealt at some length with the admittedly difficult and controversial recommendation of the Report that the introduction of a compulsory system of basic education, since it obviously could not be brought into operation all over the country at one and the same time, should proceed from area to area instead of from age to age. It had been argued that this might create serious social conflicts, since the people in certain areas might have to wait a long time for the educational facilities which those in other areas enjoyed. The Memorandum, while admitting the force of this argument, pointed out that any scheme for educational development would fail to achieve its purpose if it merely provided education for all up to a certain point, e.g., the end of the primary or junior basic stage without providing at the same time the necessary facilities for further education for those who have the capacity to benefit by it. There was an urgent need for increasing the supply of persons with expert knowledge and equipped to fill positions of responsibility in all spheres of the national life and the time required to satisfy it would be indefinitely extended if the number of High Schools from which the additional required leaders, experts—not to mention teachers—could alone be recruited was not very largely increased as quickly as possible. That

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was also the further consideration that public opinion which might acquiesce, as elsewhere, in an inadequate provision of education, if this were the same for all, would be stimulated to demand the most rapid extension possible by the very fact that certain areas were given facilities in advance of others. Although clearly recognising that it is for the Provincial and State Governments to work out for themselves the best way of carrying out the policy outlined in the Report, the Memorandum sets out certain considerations which should determine the minimum size of any selected area. The determining factor is that the area should be large enough to justify the provision of an adequate variety of facilities at the High School stage. There are advantages in areas being partly urban and partly rural, though there is no reason why an area which is exclusively urban or exclusively rural should not be made an effective unit for organisation. The advantage of a “mixed” area is that it emphasises the importance of variety more clearly than an area of uniform character. Such an area would obviously need in addition to High Schools of the normal academic type, High Schools with a technical or commercial bias for urban districts and others with an agricultural bias for rural districts. From the point of view of minimum size, it is suggested that the area should be at least large enough to provide sufficient children of the requisite ability to fill 12 High Schools and, in order to ensure the minimum variety of curriculum in the individual schools, each school should contain at least two parallel classes in each year of the course. On the basis of 30 pupils per class and a six years’ course, each High School would thus contain not less than 360 pupils and an area with 12 schools would have not less than 4,320 pupils at the High School stage. Assuming for the sake of simplicity that the distribution of the school population at the lower stages is normal, this would mean that there would be 18,000 pupils in the Junior Basic stage and 8,640 in the Senior stage. A school population of 28,800 between 6 and 14 years of age (i.e., 18,000 + 8,640 + half of 4,320 falling within the age group) would mean a total population of about 1,46,000. There is of course no reason why areas should be of uniform size or restricted to the basis set out above which should indeed be regarded as the absolute minimum for economic organisation rather than the optimum size. There may be excellent arguments in favour of making them much bigger in many places and it would almost always be desirable to treat large towns and their suburbs as single administrative units. On the other hand, particularly in the earlier stages when the rate of expansion must be conditioned by the number of teachers available, it would be easier with smaller units to meet the special claims of backward communities and by spreading these units over the whole area to obviate the criticism that one geographical section of Province or State was being favoured at the expense of the rest. While it would be convenient, that pre-Primary Education should also be organised on a similar basis, the area principle would not serve the purpose of Higher Technical Education or University Education. Moreover, a separate approach on much broader lines would also be required for such branches of education as

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Adult Education, the Training of Teachers, Employment Bureaux and the provision of Recreative and Social Activities for people of all ages. In conclusion, the Memorandum endorses the opinion of the Central Advisory Board of Education that it would imperil the ultimate success of the scheme if in order to secure a large number of teachers in a short period the standards prescribed for qualifications and training were in any way lowered and it expresses the hope that every opportunity would be given to suitable recruits from the exservice personnel to join the teaching profession.

B. Approval of the Report by the Central Government. On 19th October, 1945, the Viceroy’s Executive Council after considering the Report, the Memorandum from the Department of Education and other relevant documents arrived at the following decisions:— 1. The Council accepted generally, subject to the limitation of finance, the principles and objects of the Central Advisory Board of Education on post-war educational development of India, but resolved— (a) that until the recommendation of the Central Advisory Board of Education that educational opportunities should be available for all has been fully implemented, steps should be taken to secure the provision of adequate facilities for Muslims and other minority communities and to accelerate the progress of the scheduled castes and backward communities; (b) that with this object in view the Education Department be required to examine all schemes submitted by Provincial Governments and Local Administrations with a view to seeing that both in the selection of areas for development and in the provision of facilities for education generally, the needs of Muslim and other minority communities, the scheduled castes and backward communities are adequately satisfied; and (c) that Central Government grants-in-aid for Provincial educational development should only be sanctioned where the Education Department is satisfied that the requirement set out above has been fulfilled. 2. The Council further directed that the Education Department in consultation with the Finance Department should send a letter to Provincial Governments setting out the general principles accepted by Council. While conveying the decision of the Government of India accepting the Report of the Central Advisory Board of Education to the Provinces, in January 1946, the Department of Education reiterated the importance at all stages of educational development, of preferring quality to quantity and of resisting the temptation under political or other pressure to lower standards and to spread such funds as 200

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might be available thinly over the whole sphere of education rather than to concentrate on high standards in a more limited field.

CHAPTER VII ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHÆOLOGY, ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY THE Department, now Ministry, of Education has also to deal with the Anthropological Survey of India, Archaeology, the National Archives and the Imperial Library. Each of these sections have their own five-year plans, which are briefly described below:— A.

The Anthropological Survey of India

The Anthropological Survey of India came into existence as a separate organisation from 1st December, 1945. Prior to that, it had functioned since 1937 as a section of the Zoological Survey of India. The study of Man, in all its varied aspects, is of special importance in an age like the present when the physical sciences are advancing at a pace out of all proportion to the progress made by social and economic studies, and in a country like India which in the dawn of independence is faced with the task of welding her population into a unified whole. In Russia, for example, the work of anthropologists has been recognised as of the first value in helping to unite the U.S.S.R.’s great conglomeration of tribes and races of diverse language, origin and customs into a single nation. Furthermore, the importance of having a wellorganised Anthropological Survey in a land which has an aboriginal population of twenty-five millions, who need special care and protection against the disintegrating forces of modern civilisation, cannot be overstated. Already, through lack of proper attention, deterioration and depopulation have taken place in several of the aboriginal tribes like the Todas, the Andamanese, the Nicobarese, etc. In India an enormous field of research, both theoretical and practical, lies before the Anthropologist. Despite a number of outstanding monographs on individual tribes and concise “glossaries” of tribes and castes, the social organisation, the religion and the customs of vast numbers of the Indian people are still scantily recorded and imperfectly understood. The great fascinating fields of criminology, tribal art, primitive linguistics, the application of modern methods of psychological investigation to aboriginal people, the economics of the countryside not only offer a tempting subject of research to the scientist, but urgently require investigation if the inhabitants (and specially the more primitive inhabitants) of the country are to be administered with sympathy and understanding. The Five-Year Plan of the Anthropological Survey has, therefore, been drawn on broad and comprehensive lines keeping in view the development in science in 201

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the advanced countries of Europe and America, which can be grouped under the heads of Physical, Biological and Cultural. I. Physical Anthropology. Under this head the following lines of investigation are proposed:— (a) Somatology, Craniometry and Osteometry (i) Paleontological Work. The occurrence of such early forms as Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus suggest the possibility that further exploration may and probably will discover prehuman remains similar to those found in China, South Africa and Java. (ii) Pre-historical Survey. In this work close collaboration has already been established between the archaeological and anthropological surveys. Many human remains discovered by archaeologists have already been handed over to the Anthropological Survey for study, and there are opportunities, as for example the excavation of such cave-sites as are suspected of having been inhabited, for joint research by the two departments. (iii) A Survey of Present-day Conditions. The acquisition of Somatometric and Osteometric data regarding the whole population is of great importance. This study will include the examination of the skeletons of the existing population by means of X-rays. (b) Radiological Work The examination of the skeletons of individuals of known age and the radiological examination of living people in order to determine the age at which the bones of the skeleton attain their final mature form or other differences in their maturation, proportional lengths, general configuration, and adaptation to such habitual postures as squatting. Such work is not only of anthropological interest but also of legal value, as it will provide data for the determination of the age of any individual. (c) Somatological Work This includes the study of such characters as the pigmentation of the skin, colour of the eye, type of hair, and other bodily characteristics. It provides evidence of the existence of different physical types, and research into such features as finger-prints, hand-prints, types of nails, etc., are not only of legal value but will provide data that will have bearing on the question of heredity. (d) Physiological Work Investigations will be conducted to discover whether any difference can be detected in different tribes and especially in the more primitive groups in such physiological factors as acuity of vision, range of colour vision, range of hearing, etc.

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(e) Psychological Work Investigations will be carried out on the psychology of the various tribes and races, particularly the more primitive, to discover their natural aptitudes, special abilities and disabilities and the lines along which adjustment to modern conditions can be directed without upsetting their general equilibrium. II. Biological Investigations. Under this head the following lines of research are proposed:— (a) The examination of blood groups and the determination of the various proportions of each in the different tribes and races. (b) A study of the effects of nutrition and particularly of malnutrition, or of an unbalanced diet, on growth, the vital capacity, age of onset of puberty, resistance to disease, etc. (c) A study of human genetics, and the effects of inter-marriage, endogamy, etc., a study which has a direct bearing on the inheritance of criminal trait, lunacy and other morbid conditions. (d) The study of Twins, which will provide evidence with regard to human heredity not obtainable except by direct experiments. III. Cultural Studies The need for this has already been emphasised. It will include the investigation of social organisation, economics, religion, tribal and local self-government, linguistics, folk-lore, technology and art, crime and tribal law and the effects of the impact of modern upon more primitive life. This line of research is of special applied significance as leading to a right administration, especially of tribal peoples. The paucity of ethnographical objects in the museums of India as compared to the Indian collections abroad has long been a matter of concern. Unless steps are taken without delay to complete the collections in the Indian museum and elsewhere a whole world of primitive arts and crafts of this country will pass away without record. The preservation of the existing specimens is also a task of considerable magnitude. Towards the fulfilment of this programme a good beginning has already been made. Work already done may be summarised under three heads: (a) organisation of an efficient nucleus staff with proper equipment, library and laboratories, (b) initiation of scientific studies, and (c) provision of post-graduate training in all branches of anthropology. As regards (a) the following posts have been created—Director, Anthropological Survey, and Anthropological Adviser to the Government of India.

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Deputy Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Superintending Anthropologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Biochemist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Statistician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Subordinate Technical and Ministerial Posts . . . . Training Scheme: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthropologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assistant Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sub-technical and Ministerial Staff . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 4 1 1 50 1 2 4

For the second year, as part of the Five-Year Plan, the following posts have been sanctioned:— Anthropologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Assistant Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Sub-technical and Ministerial Staff . . . . . . . 20

Some of the appointments have already been made and others are being made through the Federal Public Service Commission. Four Research Associates have also been appointed to work in the fields of Physical Anthropology, Primitive Linguistics, Psychology and Folklore and others will be appointed later. The greater part of the year 1946–47 was spent in building up the equipment, library and laboratories of the Department. An X-ray plant with accessories and radiographic material has been purchased. The Applied Psychological Laboratory has been equipped with apparatus for mental tests, accessories and equipment being made locally. Arrangements have also been made for purchasing from America more delicate and complicated instruments for testing primitive people. The number of books in the library has been doubled and complete sets of important anthropological journals, such as Hereditas from Norway and The American Anthropologist from Washington, as well as any other books and journals not otherwise available in India, have been obtained from abroad. The scientific studies undertaken since December 1945 are as follows:— (i) The detailed study and restoration of the skeletal materials from Harappa. These fragile remains, in spite of the regular application of preservatives and all possible care, have suffered greatly by being shifted from Calcutta to Dehra Dun during the war and then again to Banaras and by the subsequent damage caused by the great Varuna flood of September 1943. The greater part of the repairing and restoration has now been completed; so has the larger portion of the diaptographic tracing of skulls which were ruined by flood water. Much progress has also been 204

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made in the osteometric study of the bones including parallelograph drawings and tracings and measurements of angles of retroversion and torsion. Two short reports, one on the animal remains from Orikamedu and the other giving a preliminary account of Harappa skeletons excavated this year, have been sent to the Director-General of Archaeology. (ii) Another important work completed was the preparation of a comprehensive report on the cultural and racial affinities of the primitive tribes of India and the problems affecting their administration in the light of the experience of tribal peoples in different parts of the world. Maps illustrating the distribution of these tribes and their proportionate strength were also prepared. This work entailed examination of a large mass of material on non-Indian tribes which was only with difficulty obtained. (iii) Field work was commenced at the earliest possible moment, even before touring equipment was available. The Deputy Director went with a party into the hills of Orissa, where he made a special study of the religion of the Lanjhia Saoras, while members of the party investigated the economics and physical characters of the people from December 1946 to February 1947. In May 1947, the Director led a large expedition to the Jaunsar Bawar area, and valuable work was done both on the physical side and in investigating the psychology and sociology of the inhabitants whose social customs present problems of peculiar difficulty and complexity to the administration. Mr. Asutosh Bhattacharaya, a Research Associate, toured in the villages of Bengal and has made a useful report on the distribution of the Dharma cult in that Province. (iv) Another scientific investigation started during the year was the application of mental tests to school-going children in Banaras for the assessment and gradation of their mental abilities in order to provide norms for comparison with the results of similar tests on children of primitive races. (v) Arrangements for the publication of the first Bulletin and Memoirs of the Anthropological Survey are now in an advanced stage and will include studies of the Kols of Central India, the Santals, the Saoras and the anthropometry of Indus Kohistan. An important aspect of the Survey’s literary work is the preparation of popular handbooks in the national languages of the scientific works produced by members of the Survey. One of these is now ready for the press and others are in preparation. Six post-graduate students were selected for advanced training in anthropology during 1946–47 and four others will be trained in 1947–48. Two students went on the Orissa expedition early in the year and two others accompanied the Director to Jaunsar Bawar. While at headquarters they have been given regular instruction and opportunities for laboratory training on a scale at present unobtainable elsewhere. The training course for these students is of two years’ duration and a stipend of Rs. 150 a month is allowed to them. In view of the rapid advance in the development of method and technique in other countries, it is proposed to offer a few visiting Fellowships 205

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to foreign scholars, both Asiatic and Western, to facilitate their researches in India and it is hoped that thereby not only will the cause of science be advanced but the latest experience of world scholarship will be made available to the Survey. B. 1.

The Archælogical Survey of India

Reorganisation of the Survey

With the setting up of Education as a separate department in 1945, the responsibility for the maintenance and administration of the Archæological Survey was allotted to the Department of Education. The Archæological Survey of India was established in 1862, but was reconstituted and reinforced by Lord Curzon in 1902. It developed along three main lines:— (a) The conservation of historic and pre-historic buildings and sites; (b) the excavation of ancient sites with a view to widening and deepening our knowledge of the history of the Indian peoples; and (c) the collection of the almost infinite epigraphical evidence upon which much of the history of India must be founded. To-day about 3,000 of the most important buildings and sites of India are controlled in varying degree by the Department. These include monuments such as the great group of temples at Bhubaneswar, the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri and other world-famous buildings. It may fairly be said that an appreciable part of the surviving contributions of India to the material culture of the world comes within the purview of the Survey. The Department’s responsibility to India—and, for that matter, outside India—is proportionately great. Due to a number of factors, the Survey had reached a static stage by 1938 and in order to revitalise it and to enable it to play its part to better effect, an enquiry was made into the working of the Survey which brought to light a number of defects. A three-year plan of development was accordingly worked out by the present Director-General of Archæology and was accepted by Government for initiation from 1945–46. As a result of these steps, considerable improvements have been made in the reorganisation of the staff and the training of the circles and branches in conformity with modern standards. The basic reconstruction of the Survey is now nearing completion. A detailed account of the reorganisation and recent development of the Survey has been given in three memoranda issued by the Director-General in December 1947, March 1948, and April 1948. These are documents of the greatest interest to all those interested in India’s vast, archæological treasures. Brief summaries of them are given below:—

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Department of Archoælogy, 1944 to 1947 Organisation The Department of Archæology was reorganised in many directions during the last four years. The conservation of ancient monuments, which, in most Provinces, had been done by the Provincial Public Works Departments, often with deplorable results, was taken over for departmental execution. To cope with the extra work, the strength of the cadre of gazetted officers was increased, so that all circles could have a Superintendent and an Assistant Superintendent; a conservation staff of uniform strength was also sanctioned for all circles, which again were reconstituted on an administratively convenient basis. The Epigraphical Branch was strengthened by the addition of an Assistant Superintendent for Muslim Epigraphy, and the Chemical Branch by that of an Assistant Chemist. Another important addition was a pre-historian, to deal with the rich pre-historic material of India, especially of the South. The activities of the Department are mainly judged outside by its publications, and it was therefore essential that a new orientation should be given to its publications. A cheap and handy six-monthly Bulletin, named Ancient India, was initiated and a new series of cheap and attractive guide-books to monuments both in English and Indian languages was started. To look after the increased publication activities a Superintendent for Publications was appointed. The constitution of the Excavations Branch to replace the Exploration Branch abolished in 1931 has been an event of great importance; it is the nucleus of a bigger scheme of extensive exploration both pre-historic and historical. The specialised skill required of an excavator and his staff could not be expected in the previous system of mustering an ad hoc staff for excavation, lacking in continuity and specialised training. Exploration Already the Excavations Branch, working under the Director-General on a few chosen sites, has achieved notable results. The sites have been equally divided between the north and the south, so that the Dark Ages may be attacked from both ends. The first site tackled by the Excavations Branch was Taxila; the work showed that the occupation of the earliest city of Taxila extended back towards, but scarcely beyond the annexation of North-West India by the Persian empire in the sixth century B.C. Renewed excavation at Harappa, the famous Indus Valley site in 1946, proved the existence of formidable fortifications, which not only altered radically the earlier interpretation of the Indus civilisation but seems to have enabled us to bring that civilisation into direct relationship with the Aryan invasions reflected in the Rigveda.

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In the South, a fixed datum-line has been fixed by the 1945 excavation at Arikamedu near Pondicherry, where, for the first time in the history of South-Indian archæology, pottery and glassware imported from the Roman world in the first century A.D. was found in association with a vast amount of local pottery, which was thus now definitely dated. It was now easy to extend this new knowledge inlands, and Brahmagiri in the northern outskirts of Mysore State, where a distinctive type of Arikamedu pottery had been known to exist, was the next choice. Here, in 1947, a simultaneous exploration on the town-site and the adjacent megalithic cemetery was carried out. The former revealed three successive cultures. The earliest was a primitive culture by the use of polished stone axes, microliths, rough hand-made pottery and occasionally small objects of copper and bronze; a reasonable computation enables us to fix. 1000 to 200 B.C. as its date. The second may be called the “megalithic culture” as its ceramic, polished, wheel-turned and parti-coloured in black and brown, was also typical, of the neighbouring megalithic cist-burials. This culture may be dated between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D., when it was supplanted by a culture associated from the outset with pottery which had been dated at Arikamedu to the first century A.D. and which, at Chandravalli, also in Mysore State, is coeval with the coins of the later Satavahanas (first century A.D.). The dominant need of Indian archaeology at present is the systematisation of the proto-historic and early historical cultures of India and the evolution of a culture-sequence. The excavations mentioned above are a preliminary step towards the fulfilment of the dominant need of Indian archæology at present—the systématisation of the proto-historic and early historical cultures of India and the evolution of a culture-sequence. 2.

Proposed National Museum of Art, Archæology and Anthropology

The Government of India propose to establish a National Museum of Art, Archæology and Anthropology for co-ordinating and developing cultural studies in India and regarding India. As yet there is no institution in India where the public and the students can obtain anything approaching a general conception of the development of Indian civilisation during the thousands of years in which man has inhabited this sub-continent. The idea originated with the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in November 1944 and received the whole-hearted support of the Anthropological Society of Bombay. A scheme was prepared by the Director-General of Archæology and was considered by the Central Advisory Board of Archæology at their meeting held in January 1945. It was suggested that the main functions of the Museum should be— 1. To maintain a representative collection illustrating the arts, crafts and cultures of India from the earliest human occupation down to recent times. 208

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2. To provide the necessary materials and facilities for appropriate research. 3. To set an international standard of presentation and general museum technique and so to provide India with the much-needed “scale of values” in these matters. 4. To provide authoritative guidance to the Indian general public and to foreign enquirers in matters relating to the cultural heritage of India. 5. To provide authoritative guidance and technical assistance to provincial and local museums in India. 6. To advise Government in the distribution of grants to the museum service of India. 7. To issue publications for the information both of the general public and of scholars. 8. To maintain and circulate loan collections amongst the educational and other appropriate institutions of India, particularly in those towns and districts lacking a museum service of their own. 9. Generally, to represent India both to Indians and to the outside world in matters relating to the material contributions of India to the sum-total of human civilisation. The Government of India accepted these proposals in principle but appointed a small Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Maurice Gwyer, Vice-Chancellor, Delhi University, to frame the details for the establishment of such a Museum. The Report of this Committee has since been received and is under examination. The scheme in broad outline provides for a Directorate and five departments, namely, Art, Pre-historic Archæology and Historic Archæology (Buddhist, Jaina, Brahmanical, Muslim), Numismatics and Epigraphy and Anthropology (Cultural and Physical). The whole scheme is again under scrutiny and it is to be hoped that Government will initiate it in 1947–1948.

C.

The National Archves

1. A Research Centre Originally the Imperial Record Department used to be treated not as a public records office where research facilities were available to all bona-fide scholars but merely as a department of the Central Government catering mainly for the Central administration and its officers. Since 1910 the Rt. Hon’ble the Secretary of State for India had been urging upon the Government of India the need of throwing open their records to research scholars and the Indian Historical Records Commission, appointed in 1919, also lent its support to the steadily growing demand. But the suggestions from the India Office could not be fully implemented on account of opposition from the Provinces and in the years following the first great war, when the Commission was in a state of suspended animation, the facilities previously 209

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granted were in many respects strictly circumscribed. In 1939, however, the Government of India decided to bring their policy in line with that of other progressive countries and threw open all their records up to 1880 with such precautionary restrictions as the safety of the archives themselves demanded. The result was that the Imperial Record Department, or the National Archives of India as it is now called, became one of the greatest research centres in the country. Since 1939 no less than 350 research students have made use of the unpublished manuscript records of the Government of India. In 1938 only 14 research scholars came to the Department and in 1939 their number rose to 30. During the war years the number steadily went on rising despite the difficulties of transport and accommodation. In 1946 it reached the peak (57). In 1947, however, there was an appreciable decrease due probably to the unsettled condition in the country. The research scholars came from all parts of the country from Quetta to Mysore. Nor were other countries absolutely unrepresented; one scholar came from Burma, another from Ceylon and a third from Indo-China. Nor were the services of the Department limited to scholars of established reputation like Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Sir Rustom Masani, Sir Don Baron Jayatilaka, Sir Torick Ameer Ali and Colonel Thikimore but University students and even Junior Technical Assistants of the Department, who stood in need of expert guidance, took advantage of the new rules. Nearly 100,000 pages of excerpts have been scrutinised and released for their use. It is a matter of great satisfaction that so far there has been no case of abuse of the privileges offered by the 1939 rules. 2.

Preservation

During this period preservation work has received fresh stimulus. The years of retrenchment following the peace of 1918 badly affected this Department and the preservation staff was considerably reduced. Fragile documents demanding immediate repair could not therefore be attended to in all cases and arrears in repair work quickly accumulated. But although the Department suffered from war-time scarcity of repairing materials, it has a good record of work to its credit. During the period 1939 to 1947, 1,655,771 sheets of documents were rehabilitated, 1,825 volumes were bound, 14,934 volumes or bundles were fumigated as a protection against insects and mildew and 60,260 leather bound volumes were treated with a leather preservative dressing. In addition to this more than 200 old maps and charts were reconditioned and mounted and quite a number of valuable manuscripts belonging to learned institutions, Government agencies and individual scholars were rehabilitated as a courtesy service. Taking the figures for the year 1939 as the basis of normal outturn, the rehabilitation of documents increased by 500 per cent, and the treatment of leather bound volumes by 1,400 per cent, during the year of their maximum production. The Research Laboratory was started in 1940 with a modest grant of Rs. 500 with one Technical Assistant and one Mechanic on the staff. The work done in 210

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this laboratory has received wide recognition. A rotary laminator and a type of insecticide paper have been developed by this laboratory and the latter has since been patented. There has been considerable progress in the preservation of documents by mechanical and scientific processes. The laminating machine and the vacuum fumigation plant and their accessories are now awaiting shipment and a part has already been shipped from the U.S.A. Amongst the laboratory apparatus and accessory machines, for which orders have been placed, may be mentioned the following:— 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Electric Boiler. Photomicrographic Equipment. Paper Testing Machines. H.P. Meter for investigating the acidity of paper. Humidifiers. Rotary and Automatic Ironers. Experimental Fumigation Tank. Microfilming Cameras and Accessory Photographic Outfits. Microfilm Storage Cabinets. Air-Cleaning Tables.

One of the investigations in which the laboratory has been engaged is about the indigenous methods of preservation. 3.

Publication

In 1942 the Indian Historical Records Commission prepared a five-year publication programme which was later approved by the Government of India. The programme falls under four main heads:— 1.

Twenty-one volumes of Fort William-East India House Correspondence to be published in extenso. The publication is to be financed by the Government of India and the editing is to be entrusted to eminent scholars from the Universities and learned institutions. General Editor: Director of Archives, Government of India. The typescripts of all the volumes have been prepared and distributed among selected Editors. Editing of five volumes has been completed.

2.

Following five volumes to be edited by the Director of Archives and to be published at Government expense:— Three volumes of Shore Papers (typescript ready). One volume of Browne Correspondence (gaps have yet to be filled by transcripts from the India Office). 211

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Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri (now ready for the Press). 3.

Records in Oriental languages to be published through private agencies (under the general editorship of the Director of Archives). One volume of Bengali records (1779–1820) edited by the Director of Archives already published by the Calcutta University. One volume of Sanskrit records (1778–1857) edited by the Director of Archives (in the press). One volume of Marathi records (1779–1803) to be published by the Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala, Poona. Two volumes of Hindi records (1793–1820) to be published by the Allahabad University and Kotah Durbar. One volume of Tamil records (1824–1864) to be published by the Annamalai University. One volume of Kannada records (1791–1865).

4.

Selections from English records to be published through outside bodies. (i) Selections from Orme manuscripts on Coromandel affairs to be published by the Annamalai University. (ii) Elphinstone Correspondence—Nagpur Period (1839–1842) to be published by the Nagpur University. (iii) Punjab Akhbars (1839–1841) to be published by the Sikh History Society, Amritsar. (iv) Punjab and Frontier News Letters (1839–1842). (v) Ochterlony Papers on Delhi and Central India (1818–1825)—A scholar is engaged in preparing a list of documents.

Besides these the Department is also responsible for the preparation and publication of:— 1. 2. 3. 4.

Calendar of Persian Correspondence—7 volumes already out, 2 volumes in the press, 1 volume nearing completion. List of Heads of the Administration—revised every five years. Notes, etc., on Preservation of Old Records. Handbook of Records (now under revision).

Two undertakings under this head deserve special mention:— 1.

A Comprehensive Index to Records on Scientific Lines. The shortest series in our custody, Revenue records from 1837–1859 has already been indexed on these lines and the Department is now indexing the late Political Department records.

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2.

4.

The Indian Archives—a quarterly journal, of which two issues have been out and reviewed favourably in England and U.S.A. The journal aims at popularising new developments in Archives science both in this country and abroad.

Training

Few trained Archivists are now available in this country and if we have to provide for even the minimum number of Archives offices in the Provinces and the States a large number of them will be needed. In anticipation of this demand a diploma course was opened in the National Archives of India in 1942. So far 17 students have been awarded diplomas either for the entire course or for some special branches and 10 are under training now. 5.

Reconstitution of the Indian Historical Records Commission

In 1919 the Commission was appointed by the Government of India. It consisted of a small number of official and non-official experts. It was soon perceived that unless a larger number of scholars was associated with it, the Commission would not be in a position to accomplish its task properly. Consequently, a number of corresponding members was appointed for a period of three years each. After several years of experiment it ‘was realised that the Commissioner’s recommendations would not carry due weight unless it was representative of all the interests concerned. In 1940 therefore the Commission was reconstituted. The Provincial Governments, the Indian States, the Universities and learned institutions of India are now entitled to nominate their representatives to the Indian Historical Records Commission. The reconstituted Indian Historical Records Commission have already got a fair record to their credit. They have prepared a comprehensive Post-War Scheme of Archives reconstruction which has been accepted by the Government of India in principle. The main aim of this scheme is to extend further the research facilities available in this country and to convert the National Archives of India into a great research centre. It proposes to acquire from abroad authenticated copies of such manuscript records and works on India as are not available here to carry on a countrywide survey with a view to bringing to light hitherto unnoticed records and historical manuscripts and to provide for their preservation. It has also formulated detailed proposals for mechanising the preservation section and the Government have already purchased a Microfilm Unit. A number of ad hoc Regional Committees have been appointed and the Government have provided some funds for their survey work. A provision has also been made for purchase of old records and rare manuscripts and some manuscripts have already been acquired.

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6.

Work Connected with Records Administration

The following figures will give some idea of the work done under the records administration programme of the Department during the decade under review: Accessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5,100 bundles 4,369 volumes Requisitions received . . . . . . . . . . . . 216,190 Restorations done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158,958

Plans for Development The Government of India have accepted the proposals of the Director of Archives to implement the recommendations made by the Research and Publication Committee of the Indian Historical Records Commission concerning the post-war reorganisation of the Archives Offices and Historical Research in India. The scheme, which extends over five years, is designed to make available to bona-fide students working in India the original sources of Indian history without putting them to the trouble and expense of going to foreign countries. To achieve this object the scheme contemplates a large-scale expansion of the activities of the National Archives on the following lines:— 1. Acquisition of records from official custody, e.g., from the India Office, the Public Record Office, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, the Royal Asiatic Society of England and other European countries and the United States of America; and also unearthing records in private custody in India. 2. Publication of records so as to make records available in print as far as possible and expedite the calendaring and indexing programme for the convenience of research scholars. 3. Preservation of records by Air-conditioning, Vacuum Fumigation, Lamination, etc. The scheme involves the procurement from abroad of costly equipment and machinery, provision of additional accommodation as well as staff. The machinery to be installed includes Air-clearing Unit, Fumigatorium, Film Preservation and Micro-photographic Equipment and a Laminating Machine. Courses have already been started at the National Archives for training a certain number of students in Archives keeping. The scheme is to come into operation from 1947–1948. D.

The National (formerly Imperial) Library, Calcutta

The National Library, Calcutta, was established in 1901 with the object of affording greater facilities for research to students in this country. The then 214

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existing library in the Civil Secretariat buildings formed the nucleus of the new institution. The Library was formally opened by Lord Curzon in January 1903. It is under the control of the Government of India, but its internal management is vested in a Council which in 1947 consisted of nominees of the Governor-General in Council, the Government of Bengal and Calcutta University with the Educational Adviser to the Government of India as ex-officio Chairman. The future constitution of the Council is under consideration. The original intention was to establish a library at the metropolis of the Government of India similar in character to that attached to the British museum. The object of the Library is thus described in the despatch of August the 8th, 1900, to the Secretary of State:— “We intend that it should be a library of reference, a working place for students and a repository of material for the future historians of India, in which, so far as possible, every book written about India at any time can be seen and read.” But with the transfer of the capital of India to Delhi, the character and functions of the National Library have gradually changed and since 1924 the Library has tended more and more to assume the character of an ordinary provincial library. This continues to be, in the main, the present position. For example, during the year 1945–1946, which is the last year for which a report is available, 92 percent, of the books lent out were lent in Calcutta, the second largest percentage of books borrowed being 1.9 for the Province of Bengal. The question of transferring the Library from Calcutta to Delhi is still under the consideration of the Ministry of Education, but in the meanwhile the Government of India have decided to establish a Central Reference Library with a Copyright Section. It is proposed to appoint in 1947–1948 a small Expert Committee to work out the various details in the first instance. The importance of such a Library, where all the literature produced would be available for purposes of reference, is of course beyond dispute.

Note 1 Included under “other schools” in the Statistical returns.

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PAPER ON EDUCATION—I. The education that we give our children inevitably expresses our own conception of that synthesis of which our lives form a part. Thus, the American school will consider itself incomplete, until it has found out how to initiate the youth into mechanical processes. The Australian school will probably strive to lay the foundations of agriculture. The schools of a scientific age will recognise the importance of science, and those of a classical revival, that of dead languages. It follows that two different ages will, never repeat each other exactly, in the matter of education, for the simple reason that in different historical epochs, nations select different branches of training, as of central necessity to their children, really because they are paramount factors for the moment, in the national life. In Bengal, for instance, under the Sanskrit Renascence of the Guptas, a knowledge of the Sanskrit language and literature became the distinctive mark of a gentleman. A thousand years later, a man in the same position had to be versed in. Persian also. To-day, English is the test. Thus a similar mental and social dignity is atained by changing means, at different epochs. Fortunately for the civilisation of India, the Hindu has always clearly perceived the mind behind the method, as the thing with which education has fundamentally to deal. It is this which, in spite of so many catastrophes, has, in the past, saved the Indian genius from destruction. And it is this which constitutes its best security for the future. Just so long as the Brahminic system of directly training the minds of the young to concentration persists, will the Indian people remain potentially equal to the conquest of any difficulty that the changing ages may bring them. But once let this training be neglected or lost, and in spite of purity of race, the vigour of the Indian mind would probably fall to a level with that of modern peoples in general, waxing and waning with the degree and freedom of self-expression that the passing period might permit them. At present—owing largely to the peculiar psychological discipline, received by girls as well as boys, 216

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along with their devotional training—the most salient characteristic of the Hindu intellect is its reserve of strength, its conservation of power. As we read the history of the country, we are amazed at the unforeseenness with which geniuses occur, and the brilliance of their isolated achievements. The Indian Bhaskaracharya in the twelfth century, envisages the fact of gravitation with as unflinching a conviction—though social conditions do not lead him to so clear an enunciation— as the Western Newton, in the seventeenth. A race of women, cloistered and secluded, blossom forth suddenly into a Chand Bibi. Within the last twenty years, in spite of universal clerkship, we have given to the world men who have enriched humanity in Religion, in Science, and in Art. The invention of smokeless powder, and improvements made in surgery, are extended applications of knowledge, merely. India has shown herself potent to add to knowledge itself. These things are some indication of the sleeping power of the Indian mind. They are the chance blossoms that show the living-ness of the whole tree. They tell us that what Indian people have done in the past, that Indian people can do in the future. And if it be so, then we owe this undying vitality to the fact that, whatever may have been the characteristic expression most prized, at any given moment, our forefathers never neglected the culture and development of the mind itself. The training of the attention—rather than the learning of any special subject, or the development of any particular faculty—has always been, as the Swami Vivekananda claimed for it, the chosen goal of Hindu education. Great men have been only as incidents, in the tale of this national effort, to achieve control and self-direction of the mind itself. It is not here, then, in the object and nature of the inner psychological process, that Western educators have anything to teach India. Instead of this, the superiority of the West lies in her realisation of the value of great united efforts in any given direction,—even that of self-education—and in the particular synthesis which, as she may think, it is necessary for the educational process to reflect. Thus, India may, all things considered, be capable of producing a greater number of geniuses, per thousand of her population, than Germany or America: but Germany and America have known how to bring the national mind to bear on their respective problems! That is to say, they have organised the common, popular mind, and to this organised mind they have presented the riddle that is to be guessed. Let us think of the mental weight and area, the material quantity and power, so to speak, of the thought thus brought in contact with the question they want answered. What is that question? Very probably it is strictly relative in its character. We may perhaps assume, without injustice, that it is the prosperity and well-being of their respective country and people, only. This is no impersonal, no absolute goal, such as that Renunciation and Mukti which India proposes to her children. Quite true. And yet, to the mind and soul of the individual German or American the prosperity of his country will appear as an impersonal end. Even the Hindu has to begin climbing towards renunciation in the abstract, by first practising self-suppression, for the sake of others, in the concrete. Even to the Hindu, the thought of the family is apt to be the first, as it were, of “those altar-stairs that 217

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slope through darkness up to God.” Those dependent on him, he will say if we ask him, are a trust put into his hands, as a means whereby to work out his own karma, and reach true discrimination. And why should the German and the American not feel the same thing about their own countries? Why should this not be to them the last great step in “the altar-stairs” of life? Supposing that it is so, the individual of each nation must be able to pursue the studies necessary to the earning of a livelihood, with the idea before him of a noble devotion to the cause of his people as a whole. Not cherishing this idea, he would still have had to prepare himself for a life of earning—even the Hindu has to do that! with the difference that he could not then have put into his training or his service all the ardour of motive, or all the lofty imagination of which he is capable. There is nothing so belittling to the human soul, as the acquisition of knowledge, for the sake of worldly reward. There is nothing so degrading to a nation, as coming to look upon, the life of the mind as a means to bread-winning. Unless we strive for truth because we love it, and must at any cost attain, unless we live the life of thought out of our own rejoicing in it, the great things of heart and intellect will close their doors to us. There is a very definite limit to the distance a man can go, under the impulsion of a worldly motive. But if, on the other hand, his very love for those dear to him, is on a plane so lofty and so true that it presents itself to him as a reason for being and reaching the utmost possible; if he knows that the more he can realise, the better will it be, if not for his own immediate family, yet for that wider kindred that he calls his country, then his public spirit is of a quality to give him wings. It adds freedom, not bondage. It becomes an achievement, not a limitation. In this matter, India may have something to learn from the West. Why should we limit the social motive to a man’s own family, or to his own community? Why not alter the focus, till we all stand, aiming each at the good of all-the-others, and willing, if need be, to sacrifice himself, his family, and even his particular’ social group, for the good of the whole? The will of the hero is ever an impulse to selfsacrifice. It is for the good of the People—not for my own good that I should strive to become one with the highest, the noblest, and the most truth-loving that I can conceive. It may even work out to my own personal destruction. It may lead to my swimming across the flood, to carry on the work of the telegraph-station, or leaping into the pit of death, for the rescue of a comrade. Either might be fatal. Shall I leave my family to struggle with poverty, unprovided? Away with the little vision! Shall we not eagerly die, both I and they, to show to the world what the Indian idea of duty may be? May not a single household be glad to starve, in order that a nation’s face may shine? The hero’s choice is made in a flash. To him, the larger vision is closer than the near. Within an instant, he strikes for eternity, strikes and is done. In concentrating the individual mind on the national problem, the West makes a hero out of many a common man. This also is a form of realisation. We have to think, then, of the concentration of the Indian mind on the Indian problem. In order to do this, we are not asked to abandon that older system of training the mind itself, and rendering it familiar with absolute and universal 218

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considerations, on which, as already, said, so much that is distinctive in Indian power and culture has depended in the past, and must depend in the future. But whereas, at present, the great bulk of our popular mind is pre-occupied with schemes of instruction, for the purpose of earning individual livelihoods, we now desire to consider the best means for bringing about a conscious unification of that mind, in order that we may be better able to compass thereby the common weal, the good of the whole. This substitution of the common good for the particular good—with the result that a higher level of individual good is rendered possible—is a. process whose practicability is evidenced in Europe herself. It is not on special personalities and rarely-equipped faculties that the course of European history depends to-day, so much as the weight and power of common mind that has been unified and released, to work on certain given tasks. It is so released, and prepared for such release, by the form and quality of popular education. It is for us, then, who are Indian, to see what are the essentials of that education, with a view to appropriating its benefits to India and the Indian people.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—II. In a perfect education, we can easily distinguish three different elements not always chronologically distinct. First, if we would obtain from a human mind the highest possible return, we must recognise in its education the stage of preparing it to learn, of training it to receive impressions, of developing it intensively, as it were, independently of the particular branch of knowledge through which this is done. Of the very existence of this phase of the educational process, many are unaware. Secondly, in all historic epochs, but preeminently in this modern age, there is a certain characteristic fund of ideas and concepts which is common to society as a whole, and must be imparted to every individual, who is to pass, in his mature life, as efficient. This is the element that is supposed in the common acceptance to be the whole of education. It bulks the largest. It costs the most labour. It is the process that it is most obviously impossible to eliminate. And yet it is really only one of three elements. And strange to say, it is the very one which is least essential to the manifestation of what we call genius. Never was there a period in the world’s history, when this aspect of education was so large or imperative as to-day. ‘Geography, history, algebra and arithmetic, all that mkes up the worry and fret of childish life,’ as some one said, ‘are in reality the key to a glorious city. They are the franchise of the modern consciousness. Carrying them, a man has a basis of communication with the whole wide world of educated minds.’ But thirdly, these two elements taken together, in their highest degree (and it is quite possible to be taken as ‘educated’, on a very modest allowance of the second, only!) will only prepare the mind for real education. They are nothing more than preliminary conditions. They are by no means the essential itself. Having them, the mind has become a fit instrument. But of what? What shall be its message? What is to constitute the burden of its education? What is it that so much preparation has prepared it for? The third element in a perfect human development 219

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sweeps away the other two. It takes note of them only by implication, as it were, in the higher or lower fitness of the mind itself. The man meets his guru, and devotes himself to a perfect passivity. Or he surrenders to some absorbing idea, which becomes the passion of his life. Or he takes up a pursuit, and lives henceforth for it, and it alone. The phase of the one has succeeded to the phase of the many. Regarded as a mind, the man has become a full human organism. He now stands a chance of contributing to the riches of humanity as a whole. It is characteristic of India that it is the third and highest of these three elements that she has observed and analysed, allowing the other two to occur by accident. It is equally characteristic of the West that it is numbers one and two that she has observed and analysed, allowing number three to occur by accident! Yet all three have their science, and certainly the last is not without it. Egoistic response to stimulus, constant mental activity, much restlessness and intellectual change of appetite, loud self-assertion, argumentativeness, and desire to manifest power, are apt to be the characteristics of a healthy second stage. But when the guru comes, or the idea that is to dominate the life is apprehended, there may be a keen initial struggle, but after it there is a period of profound apparent quiet. To see the thing as it appears to the mind of the master, is the one necessity. To serve him, acting as his hands and feet, as it were, in order that one’s mind and heart may be made one with his; to serve him silently, broodingly, with the constant attempt to assimilate his thought, this is the method. Throughout this period, there is no room for rebellion. Eventually the guru emancipates: he does not bind. It would be a poor service to him, if we felt compelled in his name to arrest the growth of an idea. Eventually we have to realise that the service to which he has called us is not his own, but that of Truth itself, and that this may take any form. But in the first place it is essential that we begin where he left off. In the first place, emptied of self, we have to labour to give expression to that idea which has struck root in us through him. We must understand that the whole significance of our own lives depends, first and last, on their relation to his life. The guru may have remained hidden, and the disciple may stand in the blaze of the world. But every word, every gesture, will point the way to that secret sanctuary, whence comes his strength. For the greatest energy is imparted by the sense of working for the glory of another. No man could be so nobly ambitious for himself as his wife could be, for him. The very fact that it was for himself would undermine his sense of loftiness and inspiration. No disciple can win the same joy from spiritual independence, as from the enthusiasm of guru-bhakti. No son can feel so eager to make his own name famous, as he will be to magnify that of his father. These are amongst the deepest secrets of the human heart, and they form the area that India has chosen to explore. It is in this way that greatness is made. It is difficult, however, in modern times,—and speaking in a sense more or less worldly,—difficult to recognise greatness, unless it speaks in the language of the second educational element. There is a certain fund of information which is more or less essential to the development and manifestation of modern personality. It is interesting to enquire, what are the essentials of this fund of information? But 220

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before we can enter into this, it may be advisable to consider the matter more as a whole. We can see that unselfishness is the real distinction of fine persons, of what Ramakrishna Paramhamsa might have called Vidyâvân-lok. In this sense, a peasant-woman may be greater than a reigning queen. Even in intellect, the farmer’s wife may be the greater, for she may have keenness of judgment, discrimination, mother-wit, and a hundred powers in which the woman of rank and power is by no means her superior. Are the tales of the world’s worship not of shepherds and dairy women, of carpenters and camel-drivers? But we can see that a mind whose field of activity is limited to some remote or obscure pursuit, has not the same chance of making its power felt, as one that is able to deal with those counters that the world as a whole recognises. Some Bhutia lad may be potentially a great poet, but he is likely to live and die mute and inglorious. The Homers and Shaksperes of history are partakers in the world-culture of their time. And intellectual formulæ may be made a great help to moral development. We know that we ought to restrain our individual anger and impatience. But it is undoubtedly easier to do so, when we know something about the size and distance of the fixed stars, and can take refuge in the thought of the vastness of the cosmos. The growth of character can be much aided by intellectual activity, besides, requiring it in its maturity as a means of self-expression. We do not want to identify the mere drill of learning to read and write, and the memorising of a few facts conveyed by that vehicle, with the idea of culture. We are well aware that even literary culture might easily be greater in some illiterate Indian villager, familiar with kathaks and mangol-gâyens in the most accomplished passer of examinations. But we do not wish, on the other hand, to forget that it is a duty to develop our intellectual powers. No Hindu, who wishes to fulfil his obligations to the janadesh-dharma ( ), can afford to neglect any opportunity of learning that he can possibly make for himself. This is the daily sacrifice to the Rishis, and it is as binding on women as on men. By emphasising the third educational element, are made the poets and scholars of the world. The idea before which we are passive, that we may absorb it, the idea that fills our lives henceforth, the idea to which all our education has only been preparatory, this is the idea that is spirituality itself. Our self-subordination here is renunciation. Our enthusiasm here is an apostolate. It matters nothing about the form of expression. Our whole character is bathed in the river of this intellectual passion to emerge new, radiant, self-restrained, and self-directed. The only sin is to expect a return to ourselves, in riches, or honour, or fame. But the man who has really entered into the great life of ideas is not long held back, or seriously embittered by this childishness, for the energy of his pursuit dominates him, and excludes even himself from his thought. Palissy the potter was such an idealist. So was Stephenson, who invented the railway engine. Newton, boiling his watch instead of an egg, was a third. A nation stands or falls, in the long run, by the number of such souls that she is capable of producing, out of the rank and file of ordinary education. What about India, in this respect, to-day? Let the army of her poor scholars answer! Let the capacity of her people for universal ideas 221

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answer! Let the trumpet-call of Advaita, on the lips of Vivekananda answer! Science, art, history, the crafts, business, the development of men on planes external and internal, all these are but so many different expressions of That One. Through any of them may come the flood of light, the shaping and moulding of character, the infinite self-forgetting that means the goal itself. To have a chance of this, the idea must be stated. The ideal must be consciously held. Common education must be reverenced as a sacrament, making the opportunity for this exaltation and consecration. And if we once grasp these things, we shall see that we have no choice, that the education of all, the People as well as the classes, woman as well as man,—is not to be a desire with us, but lies upon us as a command. Humanity is mind, not body—soul, not flesh. Its heritage is in the life of thought and feeling. To close against any the gates of the higher life is a sin far greater than that of murder, for it means responsibility for spiritual death, for inner bondage, and the result is ruin unspeakable. There is but one imperative duty before us to-day. It is to help on Education by our very lives if need be—Education in the great sense as well as the little, in the little as well as in the big.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—III. Our conception of education must have a soul. It must form a unity. . It must take note of the child as a whole, as heart as well as mind, will as well as mind and heart. Unless we train the feelings and the choice, our man is not educated. He is only decked out in certain intellectual tricks that he has learnt to perform. By these tricks he can earn his bread. He cannot appeal to the heart, or give life. He is not a man at all; he is a clever ape. Learning, in order to appear clever, or learning, in order to earn a livelihood,—not in order to become a man, to develop one’s own manhood and manliness,—means running into this danger, Therefore, in every piece of information that is imparted to a child, we must convey an appeal to the heart. At every step in the ascent of knowledge, the child’s own will must act. We must never carry the little one upwards and onwards; he must himself struggle to. climb. Our care must be to put just so much difficulty in his way as would stimulate his will, just so little as to avoid discouragement. When, within and behind the knowledge gained, there stands a man, there stands a mind, then the task of instruction can be changed into one of self-education. The taught is now safe, he will teach himself. Every boy sent abroad is sent, on the understanding that he is in this sense developed. He is thrown into the moral ocean to battle for himself with the waves of difficulty and of temptation. We assume that he is a swimmer. But what have we done to ensure it? There is one way, and one way only. It is, throughout the early years of education, to remember that there is nothing so important as the training of the feelings. To feel nobly, and to choose loftily and honestly, is a thousandfold more important to the development of faculty than any other single aspect of the educational process. The lad in whom this power is really present and really dominant, will’ always do the best thing possible under any given circumstances. The boy in 222

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whom it is not present is liable to confusion of the will, and confusion may mean only error, or it may mean demoralisation. Very few parents and teachers amongst us at present have thought much of the pre-eminent necessity and importance of this training of the heart. What is it then that we trust to, for our children, in a fashion so blind? We trust, more or less unconsciously, to the general action of home, family, religion, and country, on the conscience and the emotions. It is the immense moral genius of the Indian people as a whole that has really formed so many fine men out of the students of the past two or three generations. And it is the crucial importance of the element in the environment that makes the foreign educator so undesirable. Our own countryman, however unversed in educational theory, is likely to be in harmony with our highest emotional life. His chance words will touch the keys of spiritual motive, where the best-intentioned foreigner with all his efforts, is liable to fail. The man who could not deliberately awaken the great formative influences, may do so by accident, if he and we are sufficiently of one world. The chance is very small that a stranger will even dream of the need for doing so. It is almost true that the worst of ourselves is a better schoolmaster for us, than the best of another people. Having once recognised the law, however, we are no longer at the mercy of circumstances. The home can see to it that the school builds up the child. Even an ignorant mother, by teaching her boy to love, and to act on his love, can be the finest of educators. It is this that makes, so many of our great men of to-day, attribute so much to their mothers. The old education of the girl, by the brata, is full of this appeal to the heart, as the only sound basis of education. But modern education, in its first inception, ignored this factor altogether, and thus produced faculty out of relation to its environment. Henceforth, the Indian people will not repeat this error. Henceforth they will understand—indeed they have understood for several years past—that even schooling has to justify itself to the conscience of the schooled, by the great law of sacrifice, and that this law here is, the development of the child for the good, not of himself, but of jana-desha-dharma ( ) or, as the western would phrase it, the development of the individual for the benefit of the environment. ‘Why are you going to school?’ says the mother to her little one, at the moment of parting. And the child answers, in some form or other, growing clearer and more eager with growing age and knowledge. ‘That I may learn to be a man, AND HELP!’ There is no fear of weakness and selfishness for one whose whole training has been formed round this nucleus. This, the desire to serve, the longing to better conditions, to advance our fellows, to lift the whole, is the real religion of the present day. Everything else is doctrine, opinion, theory. Here is the fire of faith and action. Each day should begin with some conscious act of reference to it. A moment of silence, a hymn, a prayer, a salutation, any of these is ritual sufficient. It is not to the thing worshipped, but to ourselves, that our worship is important! Any symbol will do, or none. It is for this that our fathers have bidden us worship the water of the seven sacred rivers, or the earth of holy places, the footsteps of the guru, or the name of 223

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the Mother. All these are but suggestions to the mind, of the jana-desha-dharma ( ) to which we dedicate ourselves, whose service is the motive-spring of all our struggles. “No man liveth to himself alone.” In proportion as we realise this, can be the greatness of our living. In proportion as it is our motive, will be the reality of our education.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—IV. Education in India to-day, has to be not only national, but NATION-MAKING. We have seen what a national education is—a training which has a strong colour of its own, and begins by relating the child to his home and country, through all that is familiar, but ends by making him free of all that is true, cosmopolitan, and universal. This is the necessary condition of all healthy education, in all countries, whatever their political position or stage of development. These general statements are as true of England and France, as of India, as true in happiness as in adversity. The need for special attention to nation-making, however, is a question of the moment, a matter of those temporary vicissitudes through which a country may be passing, in a given period. It is always easy, by common consent of responsible persons, or by the sound communal instincts of a healthy people, to select out and emphasise, for a definite purpose, any elements in a general education that may be thought desirable. All our institutions have arisen in some such way. The need of purity was first brought forward, in our customs at some time when loss of civilisation was a pressing danger. The regulation of marriage was a device deliberately intended to prevent mixture of race. In a period that had to face this as a possibility. Similarly, a people who need above all things the development of a national sense, can make special provision for developing the necessary elements of thought and character throughout the education of their children. National feeling is, above all, feeling for others. It is rooted in public spirit, in a strong civic sense. But these are only grandiloquent names for what may be described as organised unselfishness. The best preparation for nation-making that a child can receive is to see his elders always eager to consider the general good, rather than their own. A family that willingly sacrifices its own interests to those of the village, or the street, or the town; a household that condones no act of dishonesty on the part of public servants, out of consideration for its own comfort or safety; a father who will fling himself at any obstacle, in the cause of honour and justice for the people, these are the best and strongest education for nation-making that a child can have. The wild-boar, small as he is, throws himself upon the horse and his rider, never doubting his own capacity to destroy both. This is the courage of the man who attacks public evils. This is the object-lesson by which a child can best be trained. Hunger for the good of others, as an end in itself, the infinite pity that wakes in the heart of an Avatar, at sight of the suffering of humanity, these are the seed and root of nation-making. We are a nation, when every man is an organ of the whole, when every part of the whole is precious to us; when the family weighs nothing, in comparison with the People. 224

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China in Asia, and France in Europe, are the two countries that have best known how to make the public spirit into religion. This is the fact that made Joan of Arc a possibility. A peasant-girl in a remote village could brood over the sorrows of her country, till she was possessed by the feeling that “there was much pity in Heaven for the fair realm of France”. An idea like this was like the compassion of a Buddha, and nowhere but in France could it have been applied to the country. We must surround our children with the thought of their nation and their country. The centre of gravity must lie, for them, outside the family. We must demand from them sacrifices for India, bhakti for India, learning for India. The ideal for its own sake. India for the sake of India. This must be as the breath of life to them. We must teach them about India, in school and at home. Some lessons must fill out the conception, others must build up the sense of contrast. Burning love, love without a limit. Love that seeks only the good of the beloved, and has no thought, of self, this is the passion that we must demand of them. We must teach them to think heroically. They must be brought up to believe in their own people. Few stories are so moving as that of two English youths who were killed by an angry mob in the Punjab, dying with the words on their lips, “We are not the last of the English!” Similarly we must learn to draw every breath in the proud conviction, “We are not the last of the Indians!” This faith our children must inherit from us, along with all other forms of stern and heroic thought. It is a mistake to think heroes are born. Nothing of the sort. They are made, not born; made by the pressure of heroic thought. All human beings long at bottom for self-sacrifice. No other thirst is so deep as this. We desire destruction, not prosperity, and the good of others. Let us recognise this. Let us make room for it. Let us emphasise it, and direct it towards one single bhakti. Let love for country and countrymen, for People and Soil, be the mould into which our lives flow hot. If we reach this, every thought we think, every word of knowledge gained, will aid in making clearer and clearer the great picture. With faith in the Mother, and bhakti for India, the true interpretation of facts will come to us unsought. We shall see the country as united, where we were told that she was fragmentary. Thinking her united, she will actually be so. The universe is the creation of mind, not matter. And can any one force in the world resist a single thought, held with intensity by three hundred millions of people? Here we have the true course of a nation-making education.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—V. The reconstitution of a nation has to begin with its ideals. This, because in a nation three primary elements have to be considered, first the country, or region, second, the people, and third, the national mind. Of the three, the last is dominant, and all-directing. By working through it, we may modify or even re-create either or both of the other two while their influence upon it is comparatively feeble and in-direct. Mind can re-make any thing, however inert or rebellious, but a rebellious mind, what can reach? It follows that in national reconstruction there is 225

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no other factor so important as education. How is this to be made national and nationalising? What is a national education? And conversely, what is un-national? And further what kind of education offers the best preparation for the attempt to solve the national problems? What type of education would be not only national, but also nation-making? Education has to deal with various factors, the imparting of special processes, the assimilating of certain kinds and quantities of know-ledge, the development of the man himself. Of all these it is the last which is incomparably the most important, and in the man, it is again his ideals which form the critical element. It is useless to attempt to teach a man anything which he does not desire to learn. It is absurd to try to force on him an advantage which he resists. Education is like mining. It begins with the ideal, it builds first at the top. New ideals have to be approached through the old. The unfamiliar has to be reached through the familiar. It may indeed be questioned whether there is such a thing as a new ideal. There is an ideal and there is a form through which it is expressed, but when we reach the ideal itself, we have reached the eternal. Here, all humanity is at one. Here, there is neither new nor old, neither own nor foreign. The limiting forms are some old, some new, but the ideal itself knows nothing of time. Yet the expression “new ideals” has a certain meaning. European poetry, for instance, glorifies and exalts the betrothed maiden. Indian poetry equally idealises the faithful wife. Both are only customary forms through which is reached the supreme conception, that of holiness in woman. Obviously, however, it would be futile to try to lead the imagination of an Indian child to this ideal, through, the characteristically European conception, and equally, foolish to try to lead the European child through the prevailing Indian form. Yet, when education has done its perfect work, in the emancipation of the imagination towards great and gracious womanhood, it is clear that there will be an instant apprehension of this ideal, even in new forms. The poetry of Tennyson and Browning will at once be understood as its highest and best, by the trained and developed heart and yet it would have been a crime to try to bring up the Indian child on it. Equal would be the folly of trying to educate the European child on Sita and Savitri instead of Beatrice and Joan of Arc, although the same child when grown up, may well test the depth of its own culture by its instant sympathy with the Eastern heroines. A national education is, first and foremost, an education in the national idealism. We must remember, however, that the aim of education is emancipation of sympathy and intellect. This is not often reached by foreign methods. But in the exceptional cases of a few individuals it may seem to occur; and better emancipation through the foreign, than bondage through our own! By this fact of the attainment of the universal, must the education ultimately stand justified, or condemned. To emancipate the greatest number of people most easily and effectively, it is necessary to choose familiar ideals and forms, and in every case, it is necessary to make progression absolutely continuous, so that there be no sharp incongruity amongst the elements of early experience. Such incongruity begets confusion of thought, and this confusion is educational chaos. A national education then, must be made 226

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up of familiar elements. The ideals presented must always be first clothed in a form evolved by our own past. Our imagination must be first based on our own heroic literature. Our hope must be woven out of our history. From the known to the unknown, from the easy to the difficult, must be the motto of every teacher, the rule of every lesson. The familiar is not the goal; knowledge is the goal: trained faculty is the aim. An education that stopped short at the familiar would be a bondage instead of, an emancipation; a mockery not a reality. The familiar is merely the first step. But as the first step, it is essential. Geographical ideas must be built up first through the ideas of India. But they must not stop there. A knowledge of geography would be singularly rustic, if it did not include a clear concept of the world, as a whole. And even this is not sufficient. There must, in a complete education, be a release of the geographical faculty, an initiation into geographical enquiry, an inception of geographical research. Similarly of history. The sense of historic sequence must be trained through India. To that, every thing else historical must stand related., But the history of India must be only a stepping-stone to constantly-widening circles of knowledge. The history of Mongolian, Semitic, European and African peoples; their civilisations and their movements, must all be followed up. And the crown of this training will be found in the power to interpret anew the old facts, to perceive fresh significance, and unthought of sequences, and to gather from the story of the past the dynamic forces of the future. So much for the historical education. It must never be forgotten that nationality in culture is the means, not the end. There is a level of achievement where all the educated persons of the world can meet, understand and enjoy each others associations. This level is freedom. Intellectually speaking, it is mukti But it can be reached only by him whose knowledge is firm-rooted in love for mother and mother-land, in tender memories of childhood and the early struggle after knowledge, and in an unshakable assurance that the face of God shines brightest and His name sounds sweetest, in the village of his birth.

THE PLACE OF FOREIGN CULTURE IN A TRUE EDUCATION. There is a great difference between a child’s relation to his own family and to that of the great man of the village, in which he may be kindly received. Let us suppose the child’s own father and mother and family, to be blotted out, and nothing substituted for them save the more formal terms of a guest in the richman’s house. What a blank the emotional life of the child has become! His feelings have no natural root. The sense of the world has no centre within himself where he can rest, and feel that he has found the home of the soul. The external is not in organic continuity with an internal, in his life, Nothing can ever again equal, for any of us, the sense of being enfolded in the old old associations of our babyhood, in the arms where we lay, in the hour of our first awakening to the world, our childhood’s home. 227

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Every outer ought to be a direct branching out from some inner. The mind that is fed from the beginning on foreign knowledge and ideas, not rooted and built upon the sense of intimacy, is like the waif brought up in the stranger’s home. The waif may behave well and reward his benefactor, but this is apt to be the fruit of an intellectual notion of duty, not because, loving him, he could not help it. Can foreign learning then ever be so deeply grafted upon the stem of a man’s own development that it forms a real and vital part of his intellectual personality? We might as well ask. Is there no place for the king or the zamindar in the mind of a child who has, his own father and mother? Again, there is the question of our relation to what is foreign, when our own culture is perfect. There is such a thing as the emancipation of the heart. For instance, we cannot imagine a cultivated person, of whatever nationality, not feeling the beauty of the Tâj. Nor can we imagine a cultivated Hindu—whether he knows English or not, failing to enjoy some beautiful old wood-carved Madonna of Europe. The appeal of the highest poetry is universal. One of the supreme blossoms of culture is taste. We notice here that the man coming to admire the Tâj is not a learner but is already mature. The Indian standing before the Madonna is not going to imitate her. He is there only to enjoy. This distinction is vital. In a true education the place of foreign culture is never at the beginning. All true development must proceed from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the near to the far. In all learning we should try to give knowledge, only in answer to enquiry. This is the ideal. If we could attain it perfectly, every child would grow up to be a genius. But how can there be curiosity about truth that is not within our world? If we could realise how complex a process is the growth of knowledge in a child, how the question that school must answer, awakens in him at some unforeseen moment, at play, on the road, at home, in the family, then we should also understand that every branch of thought in which the full activity of the mind is to be looked for, must be knit up with the daily life. The American child can learn truthfulness from George Washington: the Hindu had far better learn it from Yudhisthira, The Hindu man may be thrilled by Shakespeare’s Brutus. But he can appreciate him only in proportion as his own childhood has been fed on heroic political ideals that he could understand in his own home, and in the Mahabharata. There is no such thing in education as a pure idea. Pure ideas are attained by paramahamsas. The ideas of the child are inextricably entangled with the things he sees about him, with social institutions, and with his own acts. Hence a foreign medium of education must first be translated by him into the weird and wonderful forms, characteristic or his ignorance, and only after this, if it be so lucky, has it the chance to emerge as knowledge at all. The difference here between knowledge and the results of knowledge, is vital. Knowledge is one. In pure. knowledge, and therefore in science, there can be neither native nor foreign. Emotion on the other hand, is entirely a matter of locality. All form is purely local. Every man’s heart has its own country. Therefore art, 228

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which is form infused with emotion, must always be strongly characteristic of the place, the people and the mental tradition, whence it has sprung. While the beautiful is one, and art the unveiler of the beautiful that art must nevertheless always be distinguishable as of this area or that. Knowledge is a duty, art is an enjoyment. For this reason we should give infinite searching of heart to the question of the place that foreign art may hold in a true education. And by art let it here be understood that we refer, above all, to poetry, with its exotic forms of feeling; drama; sculpture that is guided by canons that are not ours; music that we do not understand; and architecture that is modern, and apt to be cheap and gaudy. This not deeply and intimately understanding is of the essence of the whole question. We are insincere when we strive for a thing, not because we already love it, but because we believe that it ought to be admired. And this kind of insincerity may creep into any action or opinion, even into so simple a thing as the choosing of a jewel, to make one’s own character and personality seem vulgar and shoddy. ‘Imitation’, says Ruskin, ‘is like prayer; done for love it is beautiful, for show, horrible.’ But have we no right to seek to extend our modes of feeling and forms of expression? This question may be answered by a reference to architecture. Fergusson points out in his great work that when the architecture of a people is great and living, they are all the better for accepting and assimilating minor elements of foreign origin. It matters very little, he tells us, whether the jewelled mosaics of the Indo-Saracenic style were or were not Italian in their origin, since India made of them something so singular in its beauty and so peculiarly her own. It is clear however that she could not have done this from the standpoint of an architecture that was itself a vague experiment. Because she knew thoroughly well what she liked, in her own building, therefore she knew what would be a beautiful ornament upon it. The dazed builder of to-day, working in forms with which he is unfamiliar, is by no means so fortunate, when he adorns them with crazy pottery or with monstrosities in the shape of artificial rockeries and many-coloured foliage! Certainly we have a right to increase the area of our emotional experience. But, if we are sincere in this, it will be done only a little at a time, and as a result of toil and pain. Not by chattering about love, even though we do it in rhyme, can we become lovers! It is the delicacies, the renunciations, and the austerities of the great sentiments through which we extend the area of our experience, and not the gross caricatures of an easy pleasure-seeking. And there is none of us who seeks to have the sword in his own heart. In all directions we find that only when deeply rooted in the familiar, may we safely take up the unfamiliar. In proportion as we rightly analyse the known, rightly distinguishing, even in what is familiar, between the ideal ex-pressed and the form assumed, in that proportion will it open for us the book of the whole world. But in any case the man who does not love his own, the man who is not clear as to what is his own, will never be received by any people as anything more than half a man. 229

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How much this comes home to one when one sees the futile efforts made by Indian parents to send their boys out into foreign countries to master the details of scientific industry! The seedling that has no root is transplanted to the wilderness for its growth! How clear it is that the one thing of all others that was necessary was a rooting and grounding in its own environment! In. other words, before the lad left India, he ought first to have acquired the methods of science. Then, in the light of these methods he should have learnt all that India could have taught him, of the particular industry he was going out to master, in its simple and primitive Swadeshi form. Having weighed the primitive industry against his own modern schooling, having become aware of the gap between the two, having read all that he can find; having even experimented in so far as is possible, then let the lad be sent out, when his own mind is quivering with enquiry. Only when curiosity is already awakened, have we, the energy to proceed from the known to the unknown. I heard of a student who went to a foreign country in the hope of learning from some farm how to make the printers ink. Naturally enough, factory after factory refused him, and he had to return to India, having wasted his own efforts and his father’s money, without the knowledge he went out to seek. This instance was particularly flagrant, because by India and China long ago was invented the very idea of durable inks, and because the knowledge of these is still so far from lost, that any manufacture of Swadeshi ink begun in a back lane to-day, can drive out of competition at once an equal quantity of the foreign writing-fluid of commerce. It follows that an Indian lad seeking to invent some form of printers’ ink, with a moderate amount of intelligence and technological information, has a far better start than, fifty or sixty years ago, had the people from whom he now proposes to beg or steal. The whole trouble and loss arose in this case from a misconception of the place of foreign knowledge in a true scheme of education. It has no right to be, save as capstone and finial to a genuine, honest faculty and experience of indigenous growth. Of course while this is said, and the ideal laid down so glibly for the individual, one. remembers, with a pang, the ordeal that India as a whole has had to face. One remembers the unprecedented influx of foreign knowledge and foreign criticism, from the early decades of the nineteenth century onwards—an influx that has lost her many a mind and many a character that should have been amongst the noblest of her sons—an influx that only an extraordinary national integrity and self-determination could have enabled her to survive so long. While we remember this with fulness of comprehension and compassion, however, it is only the more binding upon us to walk warily in the matter of individual development; for only by the bone and muscle of the individual, can we do aught to set right the wrong that has been done the whole. Even in science, apart altogether from industry, it will only be those men who believe themselves to be inheriting and working out the greatest ideals of the Indian past, who will be able to lay one stone in the edifice of the national future,—if there is to be such an edifice at all. Not by the man who is working for 230

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his living, and wants it increased, that he may keep his wife and child in respectability and comfort; not by the man who counts the cost; not by the man who holds something back; not by the man who strikes a bargain with ideals will the path of Indian science be ‘blazed’ through the forest. Asoka was the conqueror of Kalinga, and therefore the enemy of some of his people, till the bar sinister was wiped off his scutcheon by the message of Buddha, and he felt himself a man, and an Indian man, with a right to rule in greatness over his own empire. Even so will he who carries the torch of modern knowledge to the India of the future, be one who feels himself enfranchised of the whole greatness of Indian spirituality. That river of renunciation that courses through his will, must find its ocean indeed in Science. But Science will not stand suspect of that bhakta as less than the highest truth. Two things will contend in him,—the passion for truth, and the yearning over his own people in their ignorance. There will be no time for thought of mukti in that heart. Has the soldier thought of mukti when he follows his captain to the breach? A fire of sacrifice, without let or limit, will be. the life that achieves this end. The form may be modern; the name of science may be foreign; but the life, the exfergy, the holiness of dedication will be Indian and know themselves for Indian. So to cease from the quest of mukti is mukti itself. Viewed in the light of such an impulse how mean and pitiful seems the effort at self-culture! The whole body of foreign knowledge can be assimilated easily by one thus rooted and grounded in his relation to his own country. The anxiety for a theory of the right place of foreign culture too often, clothes a mere desire for foreign luxury. With regard to this whole question, a man cannot have too severe a standard of self-respect. There was a time when men were born, either ravenous individuals, or at best, with the instincts of the pack. Today we cannot imagine a child in whom family honour is not a primitive instinct. It may be that ages will yet dawn in which the thought of motherland and countrymen will be as deeply inwrought in the human heart. To the men of that age how might the question look of the place of foreign luxuries in noble lives? Why should we not be ‘anachronisms of the future,’ using only what belongs to us or ours, by right of toil or moral conquest? Some standard of self-restraint and self-denial in these matters is demanded of every individual by his own need of moral dignity. The code that would use to the utmost not only all its opportunities but also all its chances, this code is too likely to turn, Indian men into European women! Effeminacy is the curse that follows upon indulgence, even innocent indulgence. In foreign luxury. Frivolity, in moments of crisis, is the bane of the effeminate. One of the noblest of Christian adjurations lies in the words, “Let us endure hardness, as good soldiers of Christ;” and again the sublime exclamation, “Quit ye like men! Be strong.” The inability to endure hardness, the inability to be earnest, the inability to play the man, either in action or devotion, in life or in imagination, these, if no worse, are the fruits of the tree of a luxury to which we have no right. In the last and final court, It may be said, Humanity is one, and the distinction between native and foreign, purely artificial. The difference is relative. In a man’s own country are many things, foreign to his experience. With many a foreign 231

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luxury he has been familiar from his cradle. Morals, also it may be answered, are entirely relative. The difference between life and death, between victory and defeat, between excellence and degradation, are all entirely relative. By walking truly with discrimination through the world of the relative, do we grow to the understanding of such abstract and absolute ideas as the unity of Humanity. That unity makes itself known to the soul as a vast enfranchisement. It is never even dimly perceived by him who has taken the half for the whole, the outcast from human experience, the seeker after foreign ways and foreign thoughts, whose shame is his own mother,—the man who has no native land.

THE FUTURE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN Here in India, the woman of the future haunts us. Her beauty rises on our vision perpetually. Her voice cries out on us. Until we have made ready a place for her, until we throw wide the portals of our life, and go out, and take her by the hand to bring her in, the Motherland Herself stands veiled and ineffective, with eyes lost, in set patience, on the earth. It is essential, for the joyous revealing of that great Mother, that she be first surrounded by the mighty circle of these, Her daughters, the Indian women of the days to come. It is they who must consecrate themselves before Her, touching Her feet with their proud heads, and vowing, to her their own, their husbands’, and their children’s lives. Then and then only will she stand crowned before the world. Her sanctuary to-day is full of shadows. But when the womanhood of India can perform the great ârati of nationality, that temple shall be all light, nay, the dawn verily shall be near at hand. From end to end of India, all who understand are agreed that the education of our women must needs, at this crisis, undergo some revision. Without their aid and co-operation none of the tasks of the present can be finally accomplished. The problems of the day are woman’s as well as man’s. And how idle were it to boast that our hearts are given to the Mother, unless we seek to enshrine Her in every one of our lives. Indian hesitation, however, about a new type of feminine education, has always been due to a misgiving as to its actual aims, and in this the people have surely been wise. Have the Hindu women of the past been a source of shame to us, that we should hasten to discard their old-time grace and sweetness, their gentleness and piety, their tolerance and child-like depth of love and pity, in favour of the first crude product of Western information and social aggressiveness? On this point India speaks with no uncertain voice. “Granted,” she says in effect, “that a more arduous range of mental equipment is now required by women, it is nevertheless better to fail in the acquisition of this, than to fail in the more essential demand, made by the old type of training, on character. An education of the brain that uprooted humility and took away tenderness, would be no true education at all. These virtues may find different forms of expression in mediæval and modern civilisations, but they are necessary in both. All education worth having must first devote itself to the developing and consolidating of character, and only secondarily concern itself with intellectual accomplishment.” 232

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The question that has to be solved for Indian women, therefore, is a form of education that might attain this end, of developing the faculties of soul and mind in harmony with one another. Once such a form shall be successfully thought out and its adequacy demonstrated, we shall, without further ado, have an era amongst us of Woman’s Education. Each successful experiment will be the signal for a circle of new attempts. Already there is longing enough abroad to serve the cause of woman. All that we ask is to be shown the way. Important to education as is the question of method, it is still only subordinate to that of purpose. It is our fundamental motive that tells in the development we attempt to give our children. It is therefore the more urgently necessary that in the training of girls we should have a clearly-understood ideal towards which to work. And in this particular respect, there is perhaps no other country in the world so fortunately placed as India. She is, above all others, the land of great women. Wherever we turn, whether to history or literature, we are met on every hand by those figures, whose strength she mothered and recognised, while she keeps their memory eternally sacred. What is the type of woman we most admire? Is she strong, resourceful, inspired, fit for moments of crisis? Have we not Padmini of Cheetore, Chand Bibi, Jhansi Rani? Is she saintly, a poet, and a mystic? Is there not Meera Bae? Is she the queen, great in administration? Where is Rani Bhowani, where Ahalya Bae, where Janhabi of Mymensingh? Is it wifehood in which we deem that woman shines brightest? What of Sati, of Savitri, of the ever glorious Sita? Is it in maidenhood? There is Uma. And where in all the womanhood of the world, shall be found another as grand as Gandhari? These ideals moreover are constructive. That is to say, it is not their fame and glory that the Indian child is trained to contemplate. It is their holiness, simplicity, sincerity, in a word, their character. This, indeed, is always a difference between one’s own and an alien ideal. Impressed by the first, it is an effort that we seek to imitate: admiring the second, we endeavour to arrive at its results. There can never be any sound education of the Indian woman, which does not begin and end in exaltation of the national ideals of womanhood, as embodied in her own history and heroic literature. But woman must undoubtedly be made efficient. Sita and Savitri were great in wifehood, only as the fruit of that antecedent fact, that they were great women. There was no place in life that they did not fill graciously and dutifully. Both satisfied every demand of the social ideal. At once queen and housewife, saint and citizen, submissive wife and solitary nun, as heroic combatant, both were equal to all the parts permitted them, In the drama of their time. Perfect wives as they were, if they had never been married at all, they must have been perfect just the same, as daughters, sisters, and disciples. This efficiency to all the circumstances of life, this womanhood before wifehood, and humanity before womanhood, is something at which the education of the girl must aim in every age. But the moral ideal of the India of to-day has taken on new dimensions—the national and civic. Here also woman must be trained to play her part. And again, 233

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by struggling towards these she will be educated. Every age has its own intellectual synthesis, which must be apprehended, before the ideal of that age can be attained. The numberless pathways of definite mental concept, by which the orthodox Hindu woman must go to self-fulfilment, form, to the Western mind a veritable labyrinth. So far from being really un-educated, or non-educated, indeed, as is so commonly assumed, the conservative Hindu woman has received an education which in its own way is highly specialised, only it is not a type recognised as of value by modern peoples. Similarly, in order to achieve the ideal of efficiency for the exigencies of the twentieth century, a characteristic synthesis has to be acquired. It is no longer merely the spiritual or emotional content of a statement that has to be conveyed to the learner, as in the mythologico-social culture of the past. The student must now seek to understand the limitations of the statement, its relation to cognate ideas and the steps by which the race has come to this particular formulation. The modern synthesis, in other words, is scientific, geographical, and historical, and these three modes of knowing must needs—since there is no sex in truth—be achieved by woman as by man. Science, history and geography, are thus as three dimensions in which the mind of the present age moves, and from which it seeks to envisage all ideas. Thus the conception of nationality—on which Indian efforts to-day converge—must be realised by us, in the first place, as a result of the study of the history of our own nation, with all its divergent elements of custom, race, language, and the rest. The civic sense, in the same way, must be reached by a study of our own cities, their positions, and the history of their changes from age to age. Again, the nation must be seen, not only in relation to its own past, and its own place, but also, in relation to other nations. Here we come upon the necessity for geographical knowledge. Again, history must be viewed geographically and geography historically. A great part of the glory and dignity of the ideally modern woman lies in her knowledge that her house is but a tent pitched for a night on the star-lit world-plane, that each hour, as it passes, is but a drop from an infinite stream, flowing through her hand, to be used as she will, for benediction or for sorrow, and then to flow on irresistibly again. And behind such an attitude of mind, lies a severe intellectual discipline. But even the proportion which the personal moment bears to space and time, is not formula enough for the modern spirit. This demands, in addition, that we learn what is to it the meaning of the truth, or science, the fact, in itself. This particular conception of truth is perhaps no more absolute than others, current in other ages, but it is characteristic of the times, and by those who have to pass the world’s test, it has to be understood. Yet even this marked truth, thus thirsted after, has to be held as only a fragment of an infinitely extended idea, in which Evolution and Classification of the sciences play the parts of history and geography. Nature, the Earth, and Time, are thus the three symbols by whose means the modern mind attains to possession of itself. No perfect means of using them educationally has ever been discovered or devised by man. The spirit of each 234

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individual is the scene of a struggle for their better realisation. Every school-room embodies an attempt to communalise the same endeavour. Those who would transmit the modern idea to the Indian woman, must begin where they can, and learn, from their own struggles, how better to achieve. In the end, the idea once caught, the Indian woman herself will educate Indian woman—meanwhile every means that offers ought to be taken. The wandering Bhâgabatas or Kathakas, with the magic lantern, may popularise geography, by showing slides illustrative of the various pilgrimages. History outside the Mahabharata and Ramayana might be familiarised in the same way. And there is no reason why simple lectures on hygiene, sanitation, and the plants and animals of the environment should not also be given by the wandering teachers to the assembled community, with its women behind the screens. Pictures, pictures, pictures, these are the first of instruments in trying to concretise ideas, pictures and the mother-tongue. If we would impart a love of country, we must give a country to love. How shall women be enthusiastic about something they cannot imagine? Schools large and small, schools in the home and out of it, schools elementary and advanced, all these are an essential part of any working out of the great problem. But these schools must be within Indian life, not antagonistic to it. The mind set between two opposing worlds of school and home, is inevitably destroyed. The highest ambition of the school must be to give moral support to the ideals taught in the home, and the home to those imparted in the school—the densest ignorance would be better for our women than any departure from this particular canon. In making the school as much an essential of the girl’s life, as it has always been of the boy’s, we are establishing something which is never to be undone. Every generation as it comes will have to carry out the great task of the next generation’s schooling. This is one of the constant and normal functions of human society. But much in the problem of Woman’s Education as we to-day see it, is difficulty of the time only. We have to carry our country through an arduous transition. Once the main content of the modern consciousness finds its way into the Indian vernaculars, the problem will have disappeared, for we learn more from our Mothertongue itself, than from all our schools and schoolmasters. In order to bring about that great day, however, the Mother Herself calls for vows and service of a vast spiritual knighthood. Hundreds of youngmen are necessary, to league themselves together for the deepening of education in the best ways amongst women. Most students, perhaps, might be able to vow twelve lessons in a year to be given either in home or village, during the holidays—this should hardly prove an exhausting undertaking—yet, how much might be done by it. Others might be willing to give themselves to the task of building up the vernacular literatures. The book and the magazine penetrate into recesses where the teacher’s foot never yet trod. The library, or the book-self, is a mute university. How are women to understand Indian history, if, in order to read about Buddha or Asoka, about Chandragupta or Akbar, they have first to learn a foreign language? Great will be the glory of those hereafter who hide their ambition for the present, in the task of conveying modern knowledge in the tongues of women and the People? 235

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Seeing that this first generation of pioneer-work must needs be done mainly by men, on behalf of women, there are some who would scoff at the possibility of such generosity and devotion. But those who know the Indian people deeply cannot consent to this sneer. Life in India is socially sound. Civilisation is organic, spiritual, altruistic. When the practice of suttee was to be abolished, it was done on the initiative of an Indian man, Ram Mohun Roy. When monogamy was to be emphasised as the one ideal of marriage, it was again from a man, Vidyasagar of Bengal, that the impulse came. In the East, it is not by selfish agitation, from within, that great reforms and extensions of privilege are brought about. It is by spontaneous effort, by gracious conferring of right from the other side. Or if indeed woman feel the pinch of some sharp necessity, some ill to be righted, is she not mother of man as well as of woman? Can she not whisper to her son, in his childhood, of the task to which she assigns him? And shall she not thus forge a weapon more powerful than any her own weak hands could wield? Such a woman was the mother of Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and such was the inspiration that made him the woman’s champion. But one word there is to be said, of warning and direction to that young priesthood of learning, to whom this generation entrusts the problem we have been considering. Education can never be carried out by criticism or discouragement. Only he who sees the noblest thing in the taught can be an effective teacher. Only by the greatness of Indian life can we give a sense of the greatness of the world outside India. Only by the love of our own people can we learn the love of humanity—and only by, a profound belief in the future of the Indian woman, can any man be made worthy to help in bringing that future about. Let the preacher of the New Learning be consecrated to the vision of one who resumes into herself the greatness of the whole Indian past. Let him hope and most earnestly pray that in this our time, in all our villages, we are to see women great even as Gandhari, faithful and brave as Savitri, holy and full of tenderness as Sita. Let the past be as wings unto the feet of the future. Let all that has been be as steps leading us up the mountain of what is yet to be. Let every Indian woman incarnate for us the whole spirit of the Mother and the culture and protection of the Homeland, Bhumyâ Devi! Goddess of the Homestead! Bande Mâtaram!

A NOTE ON HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 1. In all that you do, be dominated by the moral aim. Remember that Truth, in its fulness, is revealed, not only through the intellect, but also through the heart, and the will. Never rest content, therefore, with a realisation which is purely mental. And never forget that every act of our lives is a necessary sacrifice to knowledge, that a man who consciously chooses a mean or ignoble course cannot long continue to be a pioneer in the march of his fellows onwards. Only if we are always striving, in every way for the highest that is attainable can we actually achieve anything at all in any path. 236

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It has been said that “the great scientific discoveries are great social events.” This is true of all advances in learning. We labour, even to win truth, not on behalf of Self, but on behalf of man and the fruits of our labour are to be given to man, not selfishly enjoyed. Better a low attainment generously shared, than a high vision seen by oneself alone. Better, because more finally effective to the advance of knowledge. The result of the straggle of the individual in our generation ought to be the starting-point of the race in the next. 2. Never be contented with the ideas and the wisdom which are gathered in the study. We are bodies as well as minds. We have other senses and other faculties, besides those of language. We have limbs as well as brains. Use the body. Use all the senses, use even the limbs in the pursuit of truth. That which is learned, not only with the mind, by means of manuscripts and books, but also through the eyes and the touch, by travel and by work, is really known. Therefore, if you want to understand India, visit the great historic centres of each age. Turn over the earth and stroke the chiselled stones, with your own hands, walk to the sight that you want to see, if possible, rather than ride. Ride rather than drive. Stand in the spot where an event happened, even if no trace of its occurrence is still visible. If you desire to understand a religious idea, reproduce as perfectly as you can, in every detail, the daily life of the man to whom it came, or the race to which it was familiar. To understand the Buddhist Bhikku, go out and beg. To understand Aurangzebe, sit in the mosque at Delhi, and pray there the prayers of the Mohammedan. Or, if social formations are your study, be sure to work, to experiment, as well as to learn. Verify each truth, test each idea, that comes to you, Whatever you seek, bend every faculty on its achievement. What you believe, make yourself to it as dough kneaded by the baker, as clay worked by the potter, as the channel to the water of the river. Spurn ease. Never rest content. Make thought into sensation; sensation into experience; experience into knowledge. Let knowledge become character. Glory in suffering. By what your work costs you, you may know its possible value to the world. 3. Never forget the future. “By means of the past to understand the present, for the conquest of the future.” Let this be your motto. Knowledge without a purpose is mere pedantry. Yet at the same time, the intrusion of self-interest upon the pursuit of knowledge, must be turned aside, as with the flaming sword. Purpose, moral purpose, others-regarding purpose is the very antithesis of selfinterest. Refuse to be drawn into personal, social, or doctrinal disputes. Release the energy that belongs to these worlds, and let it find a higher function, in aiding you to your self-chosen goal. 4. And now comes the question of the scope of your work, the question of what you are actually to do. On two points I know you to be clear,—first, you are determined, whatever you do, through it to serve the Indian Nationality; and second, you know that to do this, you must make yourself a world-authority in that particular branch of work. On these two points, therefore, I do not need to dwell. With regard to the actual field of labour, it has long, I think, been determined amongst us that India’s assimilation of the modern spirit may be divided into three 237

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elements, which She has not only to grasp but also to democratise. These are: Modern Science; Indian History; and the World-Sense or Geography,—Synthetic Geography. 5. Now in whichever of these you choose your own task, most of your intellectual pleasure must come from the others. If you were a worker in Science, you might read a good deal of History, in interesting forms, as recreation. And so on. One of the modes by which a line of high research becomes democratised is just this. The historical epoch, for instance, that is opened up by the scholar is immediately appropriated and clothed with flesh, by the novelist, the poet and the dramatist. Scott’s novels have been one of the chief factors in the creation of the modern spirit. And you do not need to be told what poetry has done for the popularising of Buddhist research amongst the English-speaking peoples. 6. But whatever you do, plunge into it heart and soul. Believe that, in a sense, it alone,—this modern form of knowledge, young though it be,—is true. Carry into it no prepossessions, no prejudices. Do not try, through it, to prove that your ancestors understood all things, but manfully determine to add its mastery to the intellectual realm of your ancestor’s descendants, I see this vice on all hands. People imagine that it is “national” to reply when told something new that ought to thrill them through and through, “Ah yes, I am familiar with that in Sanskrit, or from the Mahabharata, or from the sayings of such and such a Sadhu.” And there their thought ends. This is pure idleness and irreverence. Such recognition kills thought, and coffins it: it offers it no home in which to dwell, no garden in which to grow! The man who would conquer new realms intellectually must never look back except to find tools. The man who would see truth face to face must first wash his eyes in dew, unused by human kind. Afterwards, when the task is done, when you come home laden with your spoils, you may perform the great sacrifice of reverence. You may tally this and that, amongst your own discoveries, with this and that amongst the utterances of the fore-fathers, and find, in an ecstacy of reconciliation, that you have gone by the same road as they, only calling the milestones by different names. But, to-day, set your face sternly towards the tabulation of difference, towards the new, the strange, the unproven, and undreamt, you will prove yourself the true son of your father, not by wearing garments of their fashions but by living their life, by fighting with their strength. Concentration and renunciation are the true differentiæ of the Hindu mind, not certain subjects of study, or a pre-occupation with Sanskrit. 7. And now, as to the subject itself. Already you have progressed in the direction of History and Indian Economics. It is to be supposed therefore that your work itself will be somewhere in this region. But side by side with your own specialism—in which you will faithfully do, with your trained habits, what Professor Jadu Nath Sarkar calls “spade-work”—do not forget to interest yourself in subjects as a whole. If you take up Geography, read History for recreation, but be a great geographer, like Reclus. If you take up History do not forget to read Reclus’ Universal Geography, and every other synthetic work that you can find. The mind seeks energy by reposing in synthesis or unity, and uses the energy so acquired, in 238

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analytical or specialistic fields. Again if Indian History be your work of research, read the finest European treatises on Western History. They may not always be valuable for their facts, but they are priceless for their methods. Read Buckle and Lecky as well as Gibbon. And read the great Frenchmen if you can. It is said that Bossuet’s short work on the movement of History, written for a Dauphin of France, was the spark that set the soul of Napoleon on fire. I have not yet read it but I hope to do so. I hope also to read Condorcet and Lamartine, and more than I have yet done of Michelet. About Comte, I feel unable to advise you. I believe fully that his has been the greatest mind ever devoted to History. But whether his treatment of the subject is as valuable as his conclusions, I am unable to tell you; for my own part, I have hitherto only been able to grasp a little bit at a time, and with regard to the thousands of questions that are in my mind, I cannot even tell whether he has given definite answers to them or not. Yet the two books that I have lent you, by an English Positivist,—“The Meaning of History”—and “The New Calendar of Great Men,”—seem to me, though very popular yet extremely profound. As I have already pointed out to you, the short essays with which each division of the latter book is introduced, and the connectedness of the treatment of each life with others, are to my mind worth their weight in gold. In Indian History, such a point of view is conspicuous by its absence. Some writers are interested in Buddhist India (if indeed we have any right to employ such a term) and some in various stages of Mahratta or Sikh or Indo-Islamic History, or what not. But who has caught the palpitation of the Indian heart-beat through one and all of these? It is India that makes Indian History glorious. It is India that makes the whole joy of the Indian places. I felt this when I was at Rajgir, and saw so plainly, shining through the Buddhist period, the outline and colour of an earlier India still,—the India of the Mahabharata. And the other day amongst the ruins at Sanchi, when a lady who had been in Egypt turned and said to me, “If you think so much of 2,000 years what would you think of 4,000?” I said “I care nothing for 2,000! Even Sanchi is but a heap of stones. But this strength is in the Indian people still!” Are you the man who can catch this truth, and justify it before the whole world by the mingling of stern scholarship, with poetic warmth? Better still, are you the man who can make India herself feel it? An Upanishad of the National History would make eternal foundations for the Indian Nationality, in the Indian heart, the only world in which the nationality can be built enduringly. Or do you lean rather to the economic side of your studies? If so, do not allow yourself to become a mere specialist on statistics, and still more earnestly guard yourself against being the one person in the world who knows all that is to be known about India’s grievances, and knows nothing else. Every country and every community in the world has grievances, and grievances against certain definite other persons and communities also. To think of our mistakes and weaknesses as our grievances against another, is to postpone indefinitely the day of setting them right. The active, the aggressive, attitude is quite different. Accepting the past—and if you wish to be proud of some of your ancestor’s deeds, you must be calmly prepared to suffer for 239

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others. The law of opposites will hold here, as elsewhere!—the question is, what is to be done next? Even the science of economics may be made moral, may be made constructive. The doctrine that man always does what pays him, is vulgar nonsense. In fact the highest men are rather attracted to the opposite extreme, of doing always what does not pay. Ruskin, Wicksteed and the Fabians, amongst English writers, may help one to a true viewpoint for economics, for these have felt the wholeness of human interests, through the specialism. For the technology of the subject, you must read many books. But the morality and wholesomeness of human love, in it, you will share with very few, and those nearly always representatives of some cult or other, which teaches the love and service, instead of the exploiting and extermination, of human beings, as the highest and most permanent joy of man. There is however a third subject which you might take up, and feed from both your studies, of Indian History and Indian Economics. I allude to Sociology, or the Study of Society. This term was the creation of Comte, but was popularised by Herbert Spencer, a very different person. Spencer and a host of other writers have gone into the subject, through the study of Customs, in which there can be little doubt that the history of society is chiefly written. Comte regarded it rather from the point of view of an organism having a meaning, a responsibility and a destiny. He saw the whole spirituality of man in every human being of every human race! And many writers have attempted to work out theories of society, by comparing those of men with those of ants and bees and so on. King of modern sociologists is perhaps Kropotkin, with, his book on Mutual Aid published by Heinemann, in which he works out the idea that mutual aid, co-operation, self-organisation, have been much stronger factors than the competition of fellows, in, the evolution of the higher forms of life and in the determining of success for the community. Now this is surely a line of thought and research which is most important to the question of Nationality. In my own opinion, we are entering here on a new period in which Mutual Aid, Co-operation, Self-organisation, is to be the motto, and we want, not only determined workers, but also great leaders, equipped with all the knowledge that is to be had, and therefore capable of leading us in thought. Is it true that an industrial society represents the highest social formation? If so, is it equally true that it is always based upon an antecedent military? “From the military, through the active, to the industrial,” some one said to me the other day. We stand here on the verge of great questions. Yet one thing would seem clear— only a people who are capable of industrialism, are capable of anything else. If the beginning determines the end, clearly the end also determines the beginning; the struggle to become fully industrialised is as high as the highest struggle that there is. Even to write the History of India, even to set down clearly the problems which that history involves, I have long felt that we must first have experts in sociology,— men who can at a glance assign to a social group its possible age in pre-historic chronology. We want after that, and combined with it, those to whom the History of the early Asiatic Empires,—Chaldean, Assyrian, Tartar, Pelasgian, Egyptian, 240

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Phœnician,—is an open book. And, lastly, we want those who are competent to look out upon the future and determine towards what goal, by what line upon the traceless ocean, the great ship of national well-being is to be navigated. Are you to be a solitary student? Or are you one of those most happy and fruitful workers who can call about them fellow-captains and fellow-crewsmen to toil along the same lines and exchange the results of thought?

A NOTE ON CO-OPERATION. As to what you can read. First, for what part of the national work do you wish to train yourself? I believe, if rightly carried on, India is now entering on a period in which her motto is to be—“Mutual Aid: Self-organisation: Co-operation.” If you will look into the matter you will see that most cases of oppression and corruption—where the advantage of numbers is so uniformly on one side, as here—could be met by Organisation. It is more difficult to do wrong to ten thousand men who stand solid and are intelligent, than to an isolated and illiterate person. Take the case of clerks in offices, of Government servants, railway servants, rate payers, peasants. Much could be done amongst all these classes by simple enrolment and united action. But everything depends on such cases on the organiser, who is usually the Secretary. Do you care to do, such work as this? It is not merely for self-protection that the organ could be used, but for obtaining credit, tools, knowledge, co-operation and mutual aid of many kinds. If this is the branch which you are to take up, you will find that the subject has a history and a literature of its own. Read up Co-operation in the Encyclopædia Britannica. * * Read Mutual Aid, a scientific work, by Kropotkin, published by Heinemann. Study the history of Trade Unions, Study the history of Co-operation in Denmark. And study particularly the history of small countries, Norway, Sweden, the Hanseatic League, Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, etc. Make a small society for reading and discussing these subjects. Indeed do this in any case. Share your own knowledge, and co-operate in extending and deepening it. Above all, think things out, and put your thought into practice, learning from your own mistakes. Organise a single group of people for some definite aim, and see how you get on. Organise a class for, say, legal aid. That ought not to be difficult. But I think it would be a better experiment to make than organising for a charity, an enterprise which we are all accustomed to attempting and failing in. Organise for a united struggle of some kind, against something definite. Or do you want to specialise in politics? In that case you must study the Economic History of India,—and the Congress publications, together with the books of Dutt, Digby, Naoroji, P. C. Ray and others, with the speeches of Ranade, Gokhale, and so on, will be your best fare. Or is it India? In that case, work at History and do not neglect the History and Geography of other countries besides your own. For remember, it is the national sense in the world-sense that we have to achieve. The structure of human society,—Spencer, Tylor, Clodd, Lubbock and others; the history of Early 241

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Empires,—Assyria, Chaldea, China, Persia, Egypt, Greece, etc., and for India,— Tilak’s two books, Fergusson’s Architecture, Cunningham’s Ancient India, and other books. M’Crindle’s collections. Archæological survey reports etc., etc., etc. In this kind of reading, constantly reinforced by pilgrimages to the places of which you read as far as possible—you can find the materials for a history yet to be written. Or will you serve the great cause through the Industrial Revival? In that case all that helps for co-operation should help you. And a different class of work is wanted. Or do you care to undertake the work of getting modern knowledge written up in the vernaculars? What books have you in your own vernacular, in which women can read History? If you worked at this, in your own language, you would need helpers, an army of them. And then, again, you would want the courage that is born of feeling that others were carrying out the same idea in other languages. For this, we would need the heroic devotion of thousands, of our choicest graduates the country over, each choosing his own subject, and filling up a single space in your great roll. There is nothing that so much needs doing. Nothing that would bring more illumination with it. Here is a case of co-operation. Each man would give only a few hours of leisure daily. The rest of his time he would be earning his bread. Do you see? But there are other causes. There is physical training, for example. This is much needed. And so on and so on. In any case read everything you can lay hands on, by Frederick Harrison. His books are expensive, but worth their weight in gold. They are published by Macmillan.

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COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

Edited by Pramod K. Nayar Volume IV Indian Responses

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Pramod K. Nayar; individual owners retain copyright in their own material. The right of Pramod K. Nayar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-7655-2 (set) eISBN: 978-1-351-21216-8 (set) ISBN: 978-0-8153-8083-2 (Volume IV) eISBN: 978-1-351-21196-3 (Volume IV) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Publisher’s Note References within each chapter are as they appear in the original complete work.

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV INDIAN RESPONSES 1 Raja Rammohan Roy, ‘Letter to Amherst, 11th December 1823’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 98–101

1

2 ‘Petition by Students of Sanscrit College to Auckland, Seeking Continuation of Funding for Sanskrit, 9th August 1836’, in H. Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records Part I, 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920), 145–146

5

3 K. M. Banerjea, ‘An Essay on Native Female Education’ (Calcutta: R.C. Lepage & Co., British Library, 1848), 1–123

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4 ‘An Appeal from a Native Christian of the Punjab to the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society’, Indian Female Evangelist (July 1875), 289–291

62

5 Evidence of Syed Badruddin Tyabji on Muslim Education, Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1884), 497–508

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6 Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. II (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1881), 223–242, 255–259, 261–270, 302–313, 11–14 (Appendix)

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7 Jotiba Phule’s statement to the Education Commission, Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Vol. II (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1881), 140–145

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8 Report by the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1884), 282–302, 351–353, 373–376, 397–411, 412–418, 433–434, 442–443, 452–453, 462–470, 471–474, 478–479

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9 S. Satthianadhan, extracts from History of Education in the Madras Presidency (Madras: Srinivasa Varadachari & Co., 1894), 36–38, 73–76, 109–112, 165–168, cxiii–cxxi

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10 Gopal Krishna Gokhale, ‘Speech in the Imperial Legislative Council on the Primary Education Bill, 16th March 1911’, Speeches of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Vol. 2 (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1916, 2nd edn), 718–803

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11 Appendix to the Report of the Commissioners. Vol XX: Minutes of Evidence Relating the Education Department Taken at Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and London (1915), 46–55, 119–129, 138–143

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12 Jadunath Sarkar, ‘The Vernacular Medium’, Modern Review 23 (1918), 2–7

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13 K. M. Panikkar, ‘The Educational Problems of Indian Education’, Modern Review 23 (1918), 8–17

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14 H. V. Dugvekar (ed.), extracts from National Education (Benares: Balabodha Office, 1917), 4–10, 29–33, 62–86

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1 RAJA RAMMOHAN ROY, ‘LETTER TO AMHERST, 11TH DECEMBER 1823’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 98–101

(26) Address, dated 11th December 1823, from Raja Rammohan Roy. SIR, I beg leave to send you the accompanying address and shall feel obliged if you will have the goodness to lay it before the Right Hon’ble the GovernorGeneral in Council. I have, etc., RAMMOHUN ROY. CALCUTTA; The 11th December 1823. To His Excellency the Right Hon’ble WILLIAM PITT, LORD AMHERST. MY LORD, HUMBLY reluctant as the natives of India are to obtrude upon the notice of Government the sentiments they entertain on any public measure, there are circumstances when silence would be carrying this respectful feeling to culpable excess. The present Rulers of India, coming from a distance of many thousand miles to govern a people whose language, literature, manners, customs, and ideas are almost entirely new and strange to them, cannot easily become so intimately acquainted with their real circumstances, as the natives of the country 1

Address by Rammohan Roy.

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 Address by Rammohan Roy.–contd.

are themselves. We should therefore be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty to ourselves, and afford our Rulers just ground of complaint at our apathy, did we omit on occasions of importance like the present to supply them with such accurate information as might enable them to devise and adopt measures calculated to be beneficial to the country, and thus second by our local knowledge and experience their declared benevolent intentions for its improvement. The establishment of a new Sangscrit School in Calcutta evinces the laudable desire of Government to improve the Natives of India by Education,—a blessing for which they must ever be grateful; and every well wisher of the human race must be desirous that the efforts made to promote it should be guided by the most enlightened principles, so that the stream of intelligence may flow into the most useful channels. When this Seminary of learning was proposed, we understood that the Government in England had ordered a considerable sum of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian Subjects. We were filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European Gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Anatomy and other useful Sciences, which the Nations of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the world. While we looked forward with pleasing hope to the dawn of knowledge thus promised to the rising generation, our hearts were filled with mingled feelings of delight and gratitude; we already offered up thanks to Providence for inspiring the most generous and enlightened of the Nations of the West with the glorious ambitions of planting in Asia the Arts and Sciences of modern Europe. We now find that the Government are establishing a Sangscrit school under Hindoo Pundits to impart such knowledge as is already current in India. This Seminary (similar in character to those which existed in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon) can only be expected to load the minds of youth with grammatical niceties and metaphysical distinctions of little or no practicable use to the possessors or to society. The pupils will there acquire what was known two thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced by speculative men, such as is already commonly taught in all parts of India. The Sangscrit language, so difficult that almost a life time is necessary for its perfect acquisition, is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of knowledge; and the learning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. But if it were thought necessary to perpetuate this language for the sake of the portion of the valuable information it contains, this might be much more easily accomplished by other means than the establishment of a new Sangscrit College; for there have been always and are now numerous professors of Sangscrit in the different parts of the country, engaged in teaching this language as well as the other branches of literature which are to be the object of the new Seminary. Therefore their more diligent cultivation, if desirable, would be effectually promoted by holding out premiums and granting certain allowances to those most eminent Professors, who have already undertaken on their own account to teach them, and would by such rewards be stimulated to still greater exertions. 2

R O Y, ‘L E T T E R T O A M H E R S T , D E C E M B E R 1 8 2 3’

From these considerations, as the sum set apart for the instruction of the Natives of India was intended by the Government in England, for the improvement of its Indian subjects, I beg leave to state, with due deference to your Lordship’s exalted situation, that if the plan now adopted be followed, it will completely defeat the object proposed; since no improvement can be expected from inducing young men to consume a dozen of years of the most valuable period of their lives in acquiring the niceties of the Byakurun or Sangscrit Grammar. For instance, in learning to discuss such points as the following: Khad signifying to eat, khaduti, he or she or it eats. Query, whether does the word khaduti, taken as a whole, convey the meaning he, she, or it eats, or are separate parts of this meaning conveyed by distinct portions of the word? As if in the English language it were asked, how much meaning is there in the eat, how much in the s? and is the whole meaning of the word conveyed by those two portions of it distinctly, or by them taken jointly? Neither can much improvement arise from such speculations as the following, which are the themes suggested by the Vedant:—In what manner is the soul absorbed into the deity? What relation does it bear to the divine essence? Nor will youths be fitted to be better members of society by the Vedantic doctrines, which teach them to believe that all visible things have no real existence; that as father, brother, etc., have no actual entirety, they consequently deserve no real affection, and therefore the sooner we escape from them and leave the world the better. Again, no essential benefit can be derived by the student of the Meemangsa from knowing what it is that makes the killer of a goat sinless on pronouncing certain passages of the Veds, and what is the real nature and operative influence of passages of the Ved, etc. Again the student of the Nyaya Shastra cannot be said to have improved his mind after he has learned from it into how many ideal classes the objects in the Universe are divided, and what speculative relation the soul bears to the body, the body to the soul, the eye to the ear, etc. In order to enable your Lordship to appreciate the utility of encouraging such imaginary learning as above characterised, I beg your Lordship will be pleased to compare the state of science and literature in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon, with the progress of knowledge made since he wrote. If it had been intended to keep the British nation in ignorance of real knowledge the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sangscrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British Legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the Government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be accomplished with the sum proposed by employing a few gentlemen of talents and learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with the necessary books, instruments and other apparatus. 3

Address by Rammohan Roy.–contd.

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In representing this subject to your Lordship I conceive myself discharging a solemn duty which I owe to my countrymen and also to that enlightened Sovereign and Legislature which have extended their benevolent cares to this distant land actuated by a desire to improve its inhabitants and I therefore humbly trust you will excuse the liberty I have taken in thus expressing my sentiments to your Lordship. I have, etc., RAMMOHUN ROY. CALCUTTA; The 11th December 1823.

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2 ‘PETITION BY STUDENTS OF SANSCRIT COLLEGE TO AUCKLAND, SEEKING CONTINUATION OF FUNDING FOR SANSKRIT, 9TH AUGUST 1836’, IN H. SHARP (ED.), SELECTIONS FROM EDUCATIONAL RECORDS PART I, 1781–1839 (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1920), 145–146

(38) The humble petition of the Students of the Government Sanskrit College of Calcutta, to the Right Hon’ble Lord George Auckland, Governor-General, dated 9th August 1836. SHEWETH, THAT impressed with the importance of cultivating the Sanscrit language owing to its being a vehicle to the sacred writings of the Hindoos and containing all works which represent their manners and customs, the ancient kings of Hindoostan endowed grants of lands to those Brahmins and Pundits who devoted themselves to its acquisition, in order that they may cultivate it without interruption, and impart it to the children of other Brahmins and Pundits, who came to them for instruction from different parts of the country. Students when found competent and deserving, received grants of lands as rewards of their merit. Since the accession of Mohamedan power, though the progress of Sanscrit language was a little retarded; yet the Mohamedan kings notwithstanding their tyrannical measures encouraged its cultivation not only by allowing the undisturbed possession of the former grants of the Hindoos; but also presenting new ones to those who most deserved them. Altogether the English, having got possession of this country, neglected for a long time the cultivation of the Oriental languages and particularly the Sanscrit. Grieved at this indifference, many Maulvees assisted by those Englishmen who 5

Petition to Lord Auckland, 9th August 1836.

C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5 Petition to Lord Auckland, 9th August 1836.–contd.

appreciated the value of Sanscrit presented a petition to the Court of Directors praying for the establishment of an institution for the purpose of preserving and propagating this Sanscrit language of the Hindoos. Lord Amherst, who was then Governor-General established the present college in obedience to the orders of the Court of Directors, and greatly benefited the natives of this country by employing good and able Pundits, and allowing small stipends to the students who resorted to it, from the different parts of the country, and prosecuted their studies with industry and success. But to your petitioners’ great misfortune and mortification, Lord William Bentinck in 1835 passed an order depriving the newly admitted students of the Sanscrit College of their stipends. This measure your petitioners feel to be a great detriment to the progress and interest of the Sanscrit College,—it is in fact indirectly abolishing the said institution and eradicating that sacred language from the East; for your petitioners, having none to support them in the city, cannot attend it nor acquire that proficiency which can reform their manners and customs. They therefore, pray that your Lordship will graciously enquire of men, who have studied, the Sanscrit language, its value and importance. Your petitioners believing your Lordship to be a great patron to the civilization and reformation of the Hindoos, pray that your Excellency will mercifully confer on them the little allowance they enjoyed, for that will enable them to prosecute their studies without any inconvenience and preserve the Hindoo shastras from sinking into oblivion. The expense the Government will incur for this purpose is at the utmost 600 rupees a month, a sum quite insufficient and trifling for the object for which it is to be defrayed. Further your petitioners believing that your Lordship will not forget the duties of a ruler who is the protector not only of persons and property, but also a promoter of a knowledge and reformation, Your Lordship conferring this boon on Your Lordship’s petitioners does not make only them happy but the Hindoo community in general, for the preservation of the sacred language. If your Lordship be of opinion that the Government should not impart knowledge by means of allowing stipends to the students, your Lordship’s petitioners beg to remind your Excellency that in such a cause, the Government would be guilty of partiality for allowing the students of the medical college that stipend, upon which all your petitioners’ hopes of improvement depended. However, your petitioners, now thrown into greatest despair, pray that Your Excellency as a patron of learning, and protector of the helpless will adopt such means as would enable your petitioners to acquire that proficiency in the Sanscrit language which will not only enlighten them, but reform their degenerated manners and customs. And your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray. Signed by 70 Students. GOVERNMENT SANSKRIT COLLEGE, CALCUTTA: The 9th August, 1836. 6

3 K. M. BANERJEA, ‘AN ESSAY ON NATIVE FEMALE EDUCATION’ (CALCUTTA: R.C. LEPAGE & CO., BRITISH LIBRARY, 1848), 1–123

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. THE present tottering condition of Brahminism, occasioned by the free circulation of European knowledge, is an index not to be mistaken. It shows that the fabric reared by the labours of centuries has received a blow from which it can never recover. It predicts a mighty revolution sooner or later to overturn the institutions of Menu and Vyas, and to confound the philosophy of Gautama and Kapila. Not only has Hinduism now to withstand the organized and openly avowed attacks of British Missionaries, pledged to toil for the subversion of error, but multitudes of insidious opponents have also arisen from within its own bosom, corroding, as so many destructive gangrenes, its very marrow and substance. Though commanding for centuries the most servile submission of high and low without exception, and firmly withstanding the philosophic hostility of Buddhism, the violent attacks of Islamism, and the insinuating arts of disguised Jesuitry, it has since been so violently shaken in the metropolis of British India by the gradual diffusion of education and the magical wand of European science, that its present appearance is that of a dilapidated system ready to crumble to the dust. Its authority is questioned, its sanctions are unheeded, its doctrines are ridiculed, its philosophy is despised, its ceremonies are accounted fooleries, its injunctions are openly violated, its priesthood is decried as a college of rogues, hypocrites, and fanatics; and all this, not by a confederate band of Buddhists, Yavans, and Mletchas, but by its own professed votaries; by those who are reckoned among the most respectable members of its own corporation, upon whose support depend its very vitals. Traitors in the camp are opening the way for enemies without. It does not, under such circumstances, require an extraordinary exertion of sagacity and penetration to foretel the dire catastrophe that awaits it. If its own followers be thus disaffected, and breathe such desperate hostility to it, the stronghold must share the fate of a house divided against itself. It must sooner or later be demolished by the joint attacks of treacherous friends and inveterate enemies. Such being the state of Hindu society, at least in the capital of Bengal, few questions can assume more vivid interest than that which stands as the theme of 7

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these pages. Under the present laxity of Hindu observances in Calcutta, while new habits, new manners, new sentiments, and new feelings, are daily imported into native society, it becomes a very imperative call upon every friend of humanity to remind the rising generation of their duty to the weaker sex, and to excite their attention to the subject of Female Education. For attempting to impart a favourable direction to the current of exotic sentiments pouring in from so many quarters, the present may be considered a peculiarly advantageous season. Native society in the metropolis is fast renouncing its characteristic obduracy, and evincing a disposition to accept a reform in its thoughts and actions. Why then may not a change in its treatment of females be deemed feasible? In the present transition-state of the Hindu mind, why may we not hope to infuse an ardent desire of educating the females, and of raising them to the position which nature has designed for them. Under the influence of these impressions, the author’s attention had long been directed to the duty of admonishing his countrymen on the obligations they owe to their females; and the public offer of a prize to the best attempt on the subject tallied harmoniously with his previous design. But to compete for a prize in a foreign language may be considered a bold undertaking; generally speaking one cannot pass such an ordeal with honor or advantage. The present instance was however so far an exception that the lists were open only to natives of India. Where everyone had to run his race over ground equally rugged, no charge of temerity could be preferred against a particular competitor. This is the author’s only apology for coming forward on this occasion. In the distribution of the following Chapters, the author has been guided no less by the reasonableness of the division itself, than by the rules prescribed by those who offered the prize. The present condition of those whose interests the Essay is designed to promote, might justly demand attention in the leading chapter. The consideration of their intellectual and moral capacities, with a view to determine their proper position in society, would naturally follow a review of their existing wretchedness; while the means whereby they might be raised from their present degradation, would constitute very appropriately the third and last branch of our inquiry.

CHAPTER I. ON THE PRESENT CONDITION OF NATIVE FEMALES. TO a succinct account of the present condition of females in Bengal, a general survey of the religious and social institutions to which they are subject, would not be an improper introduction. The influence which such institutions exercise upon human interests is unquestionably powerful in all parts of the world. The rule of life which religion prescribes, and the sovereign enforces, forms the habits, manners, and customs of a people; principles that are esteemed sacred, and laws which are enacted by authority, cannot fail to leave their stamp upon 8

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the mind; even those who consider priests as hypocrites and kings as tyrants cannot easily unlearn the respect and awe with which they are insensibly taught to contemplate the institutions of their country. The force of such institutions is still greater in India. In common with other oriental nations the Hindus are averse to the exercise of private judgment; their mental quietude is remarkable; they are incapable of the revolutionary suspicion that kings or priests may err; that politics or religion may admit of reform or improvement. Everything here is fixed by law; a text of Menu will silence the most obstinate; and antiquated institutions are allowed to interfere with the commonest affairs of life. The habits which the follower of Brahminism is to contract, the mode in which he is to spend his day,1 are minutely and strictly regulated; he is not at liberty to awake or arise, clean or dress, read or worship, at any time or in any way that himself may choose. He is bound hand and foot by the legislators of his country; and in the discharge of the most ordinary functions of life, he must bow before the authority of the ancients, and submit to the dictates of their fancy. The doctrine of implicit faith and passive obedience is no where so rampant as on the banks of the Ganges; whatever is written in the Shasters, whatever was taught by revered sages, whatever is inculcated by living priests must be received without question. The tenacity with which such a system is maintained and upheld, and the jealousy with which innovations are regarded, might appear incredible, did we not know, that the majority of mankind were unable or unwilling to strike out new paths for themselves, and that opinions and prejudices, that had the sanction of great men and of antiquity, easily passed for time-honoured dogmas of unquestioned authority, and obtained without difficulty the tame submission of the indolent vulgar. Successful reformers, or opposers of popular opinion, are not characters of every day’s growth; nor are many pages of history adorned by the lives of Wickliffs and Luthers. Such servile submission to custom and practice without regard to their tendency for good or evil, such implicit faith in the wisdom or discretion of those who lived in the infancy of the world, can only serve to fix human society in a stagnant state of degradation and semi-barbarism. Excessive deference to the opinions of spiritual guides has in all ages proved injurious both to pastor and flock; the meekest spirits have been spoilt by the adulations paid to them; the strongest intellects have deteriorated by grovelling superstition. The most formidable obstacles have thereby been interposed in the course of human improvement; the greatest checks have been given to the well-being of human society. Man has not been allowed to outgrow the errors of his forefathers, and the corruptions of dark and unenlightened ages have become rivetted upon the unhappy countries where they had once chanced to take root. The haughtiest kings, the mightest princes, have been charmed to submission by the magical wand of superstition; and have stooped before the shrine of antiquated opinions and prejudices. Even when the temporal sword has clashed with the spiritual, the latter has frequently exhibited a sharper edge than the former, and kings have rued their rash movements against the pretended vice-gerents of God. The chains of corrupt antiquity have thus galled the lives of men, could women then escape the common scourge? If the effects of 9

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laws and institutions are so glaringly visible in the society of men, could the community of females be uninfluenced by them? A short review, therefore, of the institutions of our country, especially as they regard the female sex, will serve as a comment upon the present state of our female society. Few subjects however are more difficult of a methodical description than this. So intricate, so various, and so seemingly conflicting are its multifarious ramifications, that it would be highly presumptuous in a person of ordinary talents to pretend to much accuracy and precision in his representations; and the difficulty of the task becomes still more appalling, when the picture is to be drawn in a foreign language, and for the inspection of men to whom the features of our female society are entirely unknown. We shall commence our review with adverting to an institution by no means peculiar to the Brahminical ritual. Like the Levitical dispensation, the Hindu religion pronounces a woman to be unclean upon her confinement. A separate room is not unreasonably allotted to her, where she must complete her period of purification, which in the case of a male child lasts for three weeks, but is prolonged to a whole month in the case of a female offspring.2 A more marked and invidious distinction between male and female children is perceived at a ceremony which follows the delivery of a woman. On the sixth night after parturition, the eventful night, big with the new-born infant’s fate, when Vidhàtá is supposed to mark upon its forehead, in unseen, but indelible, characters, its pre-ordained fortunes, the goddess Shashthi, the tutelar guardian of infants, is worshipped. Offerings and adorations are paid to her in order to render her propitious to the child lately born, and thereby to ensure its life and health. The peculiar way, in which the prayers,3 to be offered upon the occasion, were composed, should not of itself be taken for an index of disregard to the weaker sex. It is neither uncommon nor unnatural for formularies of religion to use masculine nouns and pronouns even when the intention is to include females. The Bible itself does not exclude women, when apparently it talks only of men; πας ὁ πιστευων does not shut out πασα ἡ πιστευουσα. Declarations of doctrine and ceremonial forms admit great latitude of interpretation, when the immemorial practice of the society by which they are transmitted does not fix a narrower signification. But in the instance under review not only is the phraseology applicable to male children alone, but the supplications are never used in practice except in their case. The ceremony is attended with festivities when a son is born, but is entirely omitted when a female child comes into the world. This difference in parental anxiety for the life and health respectively of sons and daughters, is not an improper criterion for estimating the value that is set upon them severally. We cannot blame our countrymen for the extreme eagerness with which they long for male offspring in preference to female. The natural superiority of the former, both mental and physical, induces the mother no less than the father to participate in that desire. Neither is such preference confined to India. The religion and politics of all countries attach greater importance to a boy than a girl. The boy is the hope of a family. We have no right to reprove the Hindus 10

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on this account. But where a religious ceremony, supposed to ensure a child’s life and health, is dispensed with in the case of a girl, the omission may be considered invidious. The same spirit pervades the Hindu Institutes with reference to the subject of education. Provision has been religiously made for the mental development of boys; guardians are solemnly enjoined to introduce them to the study of literature at the age of five. This initiation is to be accompanied with invocations to Saraswati, the goddess who presides over letters, and to be conducted throughout as a holy sacrament.4 The position in which the tutor and the pupil are respectively to be seated, the direction in which their faces are to be turned, have been religiously regulated. The mode in which the work of tuition is to be prosecuted, the occasions when there must be vacation, and even the kind of letters that a good scribe ought5 to attempt, have been prescribed as objects of faith, and are received as matters of revelation. But in these detailed rules concerning initiation into learning, no precepts are found imposing any obligation upon parents to instruct their female children.6 The silence of the Hindu writers on the important question of female education, while they are so minute in their provisions for the intellectual culture of boys, may be construed into a disregard for the sex; it indicates their ignorance of the vast influence which women exercise over the happiness and well-being of society. They did not seem to understand that a nation could never rise in the scale of civilization, while illiterate mothers and wives obstructed its growth by perpetuating the moral degradation of the present and the rising generations. But the Shasters have gone further than neglecting, by mere passive silence, the interests of womankind. Females are strictly prohibited to read or hear the Vedas. This privilege is restricted to the first three castes; neither the servile class, nor women, being at liberty to read, chant, repeat, or even to hear those sacred compositions. Shasters of inferior sanctity, such as the Puranas, the Smriti, &c. may be listened to by the proscribed classes while the Brahmin reads them; but the holy sentences which issued from the mouth of Brahmá, are not to be7 desecrated by either passing their unholy lips, or entering into their profane ears. And as pronunciation,8 grammar, versification, arithmetic, mixed mathematics, were included in the number of the Vedángas, or members of the Vedas, an almost impassable barrier may be said to have been opposed to the education of the Shudras and the women. No language could be studied without its grammar; and no education would be of much worth, whence arithmetic and other elements were carefully excluded. The Indian sages have sapped the very foundation of female education by placing grammar upon a basis not easily accessible to the sex; they appear to have studiously retarded their intellectual progress by representing some of the ordinary branches of knowledge as members of the interdicted Vedas. The effects produced by these restrictions are female ignorance, and female misery. The key whereby the treasures of learning might be unlocked was denied to this devoted class, and a seal was set upon some of its most useful and important parts, which they dared not break. 11

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It would, however, be unjust to the Shasters not to acknowledge that the prohibitions extended no further than to the authorized grammars and scientific works in the Sanscrit language; the proscribed classes were not excluded from the enjoyment of other sources and kinds of instruction. They were at liberty to learn the Prakrita, which then stood in the same relation to Sanscrit as Bengali, Hindui, and other dialects now do;—they might even study the sacred language itself, if they could dispense with the patent grammars. But as uneducated females were not the most suitable persons for mastering a language in spite of difficulty and obstacle, the indulgence has been productive of hardly any solid benefits. To exonerate the Shasters still more from the heavy charge of obstructing female education, we must mention the existence of several examples, recorded with applause, of women that had successfully pursued the study of literature. Of these, the first place is undoubtedly due to Lilávati, the daughter of Udayanáchárya, whose name has been rendered immortal in two works, one on Jyotis, and the other on Nyáya,9 both designated after her. Tradition attributes to her extraordinary learning and intelligence; she is said to have been appealed to as judge in a philosophical controversy held between the famous Shanharacharya and her husband. Another name, already given in a note, occurs often in the Shasters, proving that female education was not rigorously forbidden. Yagnawalkya is frequently introduced as instructing his wife on the doctrines of the Vedas, and unfolding to her the mysteries of the esoteric philosophy. Lilavati and Maitreyi were however among a few happy exceptions. The other educated females of whom we read, did not profit much by the study of letters; amatory composition and clandestine correspondence appear to have been the principal uses to which they had turned their attainments. This unhappy circumstance, the natural consequence not of learning itself or of a well-regulated education, but of the restraints under which they were placed, and of the mis-direction that was given to their taste, produced, in process of time, a prejudice against their improvement, the effects of which are sadly visible in the present state of society. We must also mention, that although the Shasters have thrown many obstructions in the way of female education, by breathing a spirit of hostility to the weaker sex, and apparently excluding certain branches of knowledge from their participation, they speak nevertheless in terms of commendation of their learning, where examples of superior females are incidentally noticed. The Hindu writers had sufficient respect for intellectual acquirements to laud them even in women; and therefore characters like Lilávati and Maitreyi are esteemed, instead of being depreciated. Every instance, however, where they speak of learning with reference to females, is not to be considered as decidedly one of intellectual cultivation: for the word vidushi is not unfrequently applied to persons that had merely good practical sense, but had never turned their attention to the study of letters. Notwithstanding the partial encouragement which the Shasters give, the conventional rules of society have for ages proved so cruel towards the sex, that it is now considered almost disreputable to furnish them with opportunities of education. Although the Brahmin can bring nothing either out of his theology or 12

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his philosophy which might be construed into a prohibition of their instruction, yet the tone of society has so long been raised against this humane proceeding, that no Hindu can attempt it without encountering the opposition, sarcasm, and brow-beating, which a firm resistance of popular prejudices, and of the influence of a false priesthood, has always in every country to withstand. Taunts and sneers, so powerful in their operation on ordinary minds, are likely to damp the energies and disconcert the efforts of the friends of humanity under present circumstances: and this is one of the reasons why numbers approve in theory, without reducing to practice, the great question of female emancipation. The customs of disposing of females by very early marriages, and of shutting them up in the Zenana, have helped in a fearful manner to perpetuate their ignorance and misery. It is a lasting disgrace upon Hinduism that marriage should be considered a gift10 on the part of the father to a person of his own selection, and not a contract solemnized by the parties themselves. That the parent and natural guardian has a right to direct his own daughter in the most sacred of all civil engagements,—one on which her happiness and welfare mainly depend,—cannot for a moment be called in question. The most enlightened laws forbid a girl’s marriage, while she is under age, against her father’s consent, and recommend her to follow his superior advice even after she is at liberty to act for herself: the Liturgy of the Church of England itself requires that the father or some friend should give her away to be married to her husband elect. The father to whom her infancy and childhood were entrusted by Providence ought never to stand an unconcerned spectator of a ceremony which binds her for life to another individual, and makes her a sharer of his joys and sorrows; nor should a dutiful daughter despise the counsel of age and experience, tendered for her own happiness and comfort, by one that had nourished and cherished her in the helpless state of infancy. But that the father should be the principal or the sole party in the formation of the contract; that, not contented with a mere veto, he should imperiously dictate his daughter’s choice; or that the girl should have a perfect stranger, whom she had never seen, forced upon her as her husband, is a monstrous error, that could only be sanctioned by the most depraved society. No human superior, however sacred his title to reverence, and how unquestionable soever his right to advise and direct, should take upon himself to close this most sacred of all contracts without the consent, declared ex animo, of the parties concerned. The father might for a thousand reasons pitch, with the best intentions, upon a person with whom his daughter could never be happy. He might, in his anxiety to secure an honorable alliance for his family, or a wealthy consort for his child, overtook numberless discordances between the parties, in point of taste, feeling, and sentiment, for which no rank or fortune could be an adequate compensation, and which would perhaps render the unfortunate girl miserable for life. The shasters legalized certain other modes of marriage which would reflect as little honor on our legislators. The Gandharva union was a desecration of holy matrimony for which the female was the only sufferer. The husband might follow the impulse of his passion and multiply his wives without restraint; the wife 13

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became a victim for life if once she gave way to a momentary feeling. The case of the king in the Sacuntala, unable to recognize the victim of his own pleasures, is a sufficient proof of the evil against which we are inveighing. The Rakshas matrimony11 is another instance of the disregard shown to the happiness of the female sex. The dishonor of females, taken captives by force, is unscrupulously allowed to the military class. An outrageous soldiery, pampered with success, cannot indeed be easily restrained; they will not readily acknowledge that victory gives no absolution from the obligations of common morality; no martial discipline which our legislators could dictate could perhaps have enforced the calls of justice, moderation, and hnmanity in the moment of victory. But shame to the philosopher and theologian who could so far forget his position as gravely to sanction such excesses against innocent females, and hold it up to admiration as a soldier-like act in the sons of Mars. We must not here overlook a practice that sometimes prevailed in former ages, but is now entirely discontinued, of allowing a daughter to select her own husband from a number of suitable persons invited for that purpose. This appears, however, to have been restricted to the royal families. The only instances on record are those of kings convening assemblies of princely suitors, and permitting their daughters to select their own husbands. But even this practice was connected with many serious evils. The princesses had to make a hasty selection on the spot from a number of persons they had never seen or known: there could be little room for consideration in making such a choice; the external appearance of the suitors and the impulse of the moment would probably alone decide the question. The practice of Swayambara was a mockery, scarcely better calculated to ensure their happiness, than the mode in which matrimony was otherwise contracted. The present custom of getting rid of daughters by an early marriage, before they can possibly understand the meaning of marriage, must exert a baneful influence upon their minds, and put a stop to all intellectual improvement. The Shasters enact that a girl12 must be bound by the ties of wedlock before the age of ten; while the eighth is pointed out as the most proper season for imposing a husband upon her. The gift of a daughter at the latter age is considered the most meritorious way of disposing of her. The misery and unhappiness which this law must occasion to its female victims, can be more easily conceived than delicately expressed. Before the dawn of reason enables them to use the eyes of their understandings for any purpose, they find themselves already bound by an indissoluble tie; and when they attain to the age of puberty, they must suit themselves to the yoke as best they can. The females of Hindustan are celebrated for their patience and submission; hence they easily reconcile themselves to their fates; but the violence by which a rational creature is forced into the bed of a stranger must, in minds not altogether lost to moral sensibility, be associated with the utmost horror and disgust, and can be characterized by no better title than shameful prostitution. The moral influence of such a system upon the unhappy girl’s mind must be equally sad. Before reason and judgment are allowed to gather strength, and before any principles are formed, the animal passions are artificially ripened, in a precocious way, by the 14

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presence of an object calculated to inflame them, and the connivance of an agent interested in their premature development. Their total exclusion from society is no less an obstacle to their education and happiness. Just at the time when they should learn letters, and pursue a course of intellectual study, they are consigned to close imprisonment in the Seraglio, and are made inaccessible to any but the nearest relations. It is not the Mahometan conquest, as many are apt to suppose, whence we are to date the commencement of their exclusion from society. The division of a house into courts—that for the women being called the inner house,—and the inability of a stranger to get admittance therein, are plainly adverted to in the Shasters; while the epithet of 13Asuryampashyá, applied to females, sufficiently proves of itself their condition in this respect. The female department of a Hindu’s residence was as much secured in times of yore, as it is now found to be;14 and the fair inhabitants of the Zenana were nearly as much forbidden to tread the outer courts, except upon special occasions, as they are in our own times. The Mahometans may have confirmed the practice by the outrages which they often committed in the country, and rendered the exclusion closer, but they were certainly not its originators. That under the circumstances that existed there were cogent reasons for the enforcement of this practice, can scarcely be doubted. The honor and virtue of the females would perhaps be subjected to too severe a test, if in their uneducated and ignorant condition no restraints were put upon their liberty. But this jealous provision was, in fact, the adoption of one evil in order to counteract the unhappy influence of another which was wilfully perpetuated. The first barbarous act of consigning them to ignorance, was of itself sufficiently iniquitous; and all subsequent strictures by way of remedy, must partake of the same character. An improved state of society would have condemned both the one and the other acts of male tyranny. The female mind ought to have been fortified by instruction and education; and, rendered thus superior to the weaknesses incident to ignorance, they should have been allowed to act their parts as rational members of society. The multiplication of wives, which the Shasters tolerate, is another fruitful source of suffering to the female sex. It reflects great disgrace upon human nature that this evil has existed almost in every country; that females have been considered as servile ministers of pleasure, and that before the introduction of Christianity, the principle of a steady and faithful attachment to one wife, was unknown on the face of the earth.15 The perpetual widowhood to which the death of their husbands dooms the Bengal females, must prove another source of misery and wretchedness. The Hindu laws are exceedingly severe on this point. The first and the most meritorious course which is recommended to them on the loss of their partners in life, is selfimmolation. Hence arose that inhuman practice of the Suttee, the abolition of which has redounded so much to the honor of Lord W. Bentinck, Governor-General of India, whose name is enshrined in the hearts of the Hindus, no less for this act of humanity, than for his general policy in governing the country for the benefit of the people. Rewards of the most attractive kind are offered to poor illiterate 15

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widows, in order to propel them to an atrocious suicide, from which nature itself would shrink with horror; and a number of ceremonies, calculated to stifle the voice of reason and judgment, helps to fulfil the bloody intentions of our unfeeling legislators.16 But self-immolation had something so horrible in it, that in spite of the allurements that were held forth, and the fascinations of the ceremonies that were instituted, the voice of reason and nature would often be heard, and many a woman recoil with horror from the idea of putting a violent period to her existence. The crafty fabricators of the Shasters were aware of the powerful obstacle which nature would thus oppose to the execution of their inhuman recommendations, and they have, accordingly, kept up their ungracious tyranny against the sex, by enacting a series of the severest rules for the regulation of a widow’s life. Not only is she strictly prohibited to enter again into the state of wedlock, even when she loses her husband in early life, but she is also required to practise the most rigorous austerities, and to mortify herself, as it were, to death. The widow shall never exceed one meal a day, nor sleep on a bed. She is to take nocare of her person, nor regale herself by any aromatic cordial.17 She is to observe a rigid fast on every eleventh day of the lunar fortnight, besides many other occasional abstinences. She is forbidden to taste animal food of any kind; and even the one meal of pulse, roots, and vegetables that is allowed to her, must consist only of such articles as can be cooked together in one pot, to make up a single dish. The reasons for which they are forbidden to marry a second time arise from the notion,18 that even death does not loosen the tie of wedlock, and that a husband’s future happiness depends, in a great measure, upon the strictness with which his widow performs the accustomed offerings to his manes. If she enter again into the state of matrimony, her affinity with the deceased husband must cease; she must be incapacitated to practise those rites which are so closely connected with his future interests. “And when he dies,” say Menu, “let her never neglect him.” The perpetual pupilage to which the Bengal females are condemned, is of a piece with the institutions just noticed. They can never be independent; they must ever remain subject to the controul of some relation or other. In infancy their fathers and natural guardians are masters of their persons; in youth they must submit to their husband’s yoke; and in widowhood their sons become their19 lords. So far as this law might serve as a protection against those dangers and difficulties to which constitutional imbecility might expose them, no strictures could be made against the enactment. It is neither unnatural nor unreasonable that females should always have a guardian and a protector. But from the spirit which pervades the Shasters, we may safely infer that the enactment was designed, like the others, to enchain their minds, and perpetuate their servitude. Notwithstanding the stringent rules just mentioned, the Hindu legislators were not so totally devoid of humanity as not to condemn what they considered unnecessary severities to helpless females. They had sufficient gallantry to demand a tender regard for the feelings of the weaker sex. The language of law speaks of women as if they were mere children, and while it arms the husband with almost plenary powers over the wife, holds him responsible for any feeling of distress 16

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which may become her portion.20 The Hindus may in this respect be called a chivalrous race. The epithet of avala, (powerless) applied to females, excites the strongest sentiments of compassion toward them; and, though paradoxical, it is nevertheless true, that the very people who are so indifferent to the question of female education, and who are so jealous in guarding their Zenanas, have exhibited the utmost tenderness for the weaker sex. Such tenderness has in fact been considered by all nations as an essential part of good breeding. Savage cruelty to creatures so impotent, and so nearly allied, has been every where stigmatized as base and unmanly. The native of Hindustan has not been destitute of this characteristic of refined manners. His treatment of females may not have been throughout consistent; but if he has irrationalized her by denying opportunities of intellectual cultivation, he has rendered the yoke of ignorance easy by conciliating her feelings and showing attachment and love. But the institution of Kulinism in Bengal has served to render the condition of a Hindu female as unhappy as it is degraded. To be a Kulin’s daughter is generally considered a severe misfortune. Conjugal felicity there can be none where the husband continues to multiply his wives without any regard to their feelings, or any intention of maintaining them from his own resources. After the statements just made, the present condition of Bengali females will not require a lengthened detail. The actual state of things is such as might be expected from the influence of the institutions already adverted to. However cared for by their guardians and protectors, they drag on lives, which those who can appreciate intellectual superiority, cannot help considering wretched and degraded; they pass their days as ministers of pleasure, rather than companions or counsellors to their husbands. It is a notorious fact, that the Hindu never stops to consider the prosperity or adversity of his circumstances, when he forms an intention of marrying. He does not apprehend that his wife will be a source of additional expence; he hopes on the contrary she will prove a most effectual instrument of saving him money and trouble. She indeed becomes a servant, if not a slave, that performs all his household business; and although his marriage imposes upon him the maintenance of another soul, yet the bargain is not for all that the less cheap; he thereby has the command of an additional servant without giving pecuniary wages. There is no such thing as an unmarried person in all Bengal; the only exceptions are those who have formally adopted an ascetic life. The state of a Hindu woman’s maiden life is perhaps the most free from trouble and anxiety. In the tender caresses of her parents, and in her exemption from the task of reading and writing, to which her brothers are unwillingly yoked, her happiness continues uninterrupted and unalloyed. She is lulled in the indolent inactivity which is then her portion; she has no tasks to preform, no lessons to get up; and her little mind is incapable of thinking of the future. She reposes in ignorance and quietude; and amidst expressions of affection from indulgent parents, she continues in happy ignorance of the bitter cup that may await her riper years. The only evil which is sometimes presented to her fears, and which she is led to deprecate by means of puerile and vulgar ceremonies, is the misfortune of having copartners 17

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to share a husband’s affections. Nothing is more dreaded as likely to poison her happiness for life, than her husband’s polygamy; supplications are therefore made to the Deity by means of rites, as degrading as they are superstitious, that it may not be her lot to be yoked with a husband of more than one wife. Infancy too is the only stage in which she is privileged to see any thing of the world around her. The sentence of imprisonment in the Zenana is seldom passed upon her before her marriage, and remains generally unexecuted until she attains to the age of 10 or 12. Previous to her wedding, no restraints are put upon her liberty; this indulgence betokens the regard which the Hindus in common with other nations entertain for that innocency, whereof childhood is a most gratifying emblem. Male and female children are equally at liberty to appear in public; it is not until the latter are settled in life that they are forbidden to enter into the outer courts of their houses. Under the roof of their parents they enjoy considerable freedom even after their marriage; for as long as they do not actually grow up to maturity, it is not indelicate in them to trespass beyond the boundaries of the Zenana in their parental dwelling. But this privilege cannot be enjoyed in the houses of their husbands, where they must never step out of the recesses of the Zenana, nor ever unveil their faces before any but the female and junior members of the household. Childhood is also the time when the greatest attention is paid to them. Infant virgins of Brahminical extraction are considered as divine incarnations, and accordingly worshipped upon various occasions as goddesses. At the celebration of the Doorga Poojah, in particular, female children of the sacerdotal order are in great request. Religious homage is paid to them, accompanied with pecuniary gifts, food, and wearing apparel. The wealthier Brahmins, however, consider it a derogation from their dignity to send out their children on this traffic; the poorer priests gladly avail themselves of this extraordinary source of gain. The happiness of maiden life is, however, of very short duration with our females. Often at the age of eight, sometimes when much younger, they are dealt away in marriage. Their parents are guided in the selection of sons-in-law, not so much by their personal qualifications, as by their rank in the Tables of Kulinism. One of the later kings of the Sen family, the last Hindu dynasty that swayed the sceptre in Bengal, had instituted an hereditary order of titled noblemen, whose alliance by marriage has since been most eagerly sought by all ranks of Hindus. Although these miserable aristocrats have at present degenerated in most instances to a wretched and beggarly clan of marriage-dealers, without wealth, talent, or personal qualifications to recommend them, yet the anxiety with which their connection is sought, is a painful proof of the popular veneration for longcherished customs. The greater majority of the Kulins pursue no occupation in life, but feed idly upon the relations of their wives. So high is their alliance held in the estimation of the people, that not only are large sums of money presented to them at the time of their marriage, but they are also often maintained with their wives for life; and not unfrequently are lands and houses settled upon them by their fathers-in-law. These marriage-dealers have so little regard for their family, 18

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and are so strangely wanting in natural affection, that they multiply their wives almost to an unlimited extent,21 if offers of money are made. The unfortunate creatures that are yoked with them reside under their father’s roof almost as if they were actual widows. Their husbands seldom live with them; they spend their time in passing from one father-in-law’s house to another; and are continually contemplating fresh bargains of marriage. The poor women are scarcely able to see their partners, and are obliged to live as it were in a state of widowhood.22 The number of Kulins is, however, not very large, and in consequence of an intricate point in the system, it is rapidly declining. One of the fundamental laws of this order is, that no Kulin should form an alliance with an inferior family. Where such an undignified marriage takes place, the Kulinhood is pronounced to be dissolved; and, although the perpetrator of such a marriage enjoys his own title for life, his children are degraded in their dignity, and reckoned as secondgrade Kulins. Every succeeding race, after such a dissolution, loses one step in rank, and the fourth and fifth generations degenerate almost entirely to the state of untitled commoners. And as the largest bribes are offered when an unprivileged family seeks the alliance of pure Kulins, many a first-grade worthy has been unable to withstand the temptation, and has sacrificed the dignity of his descendants for the sake of enriching himself. The body of pure, or even of second and third grade Kulins, has therefore considerably diminished. Every generation reduces the numerical strength of the order, and there can be no possible hope of a fresh number being created to recruit the exhausted clan. Neither is the respect that is paid to them now, any thing like what it was before; and these causes have happily contributed to reduce the number of female sacrifices at the shrine of Kulinhood. After her marriage, the young bride is allowed to reside under her father’s roof until she attains to the age of puberty, and then she is consigned to perpetual incarceration in her husband’s Zenana, there to minister to his pleasures and perform the drudgery of a menial. Except in families which are noted for opulence, the wife is charged with the task of performing, helped or unhelped, all the work of the household,—from the sweeping and cleansing of the rooms, to the preparing and serving out the meals. In consequence of several ramifications of the same stock continuing to reside in the same house, under the controul it may be of an aged father, who exercises a sort of patriarchal authority over them, the young wife has to pass her days generally with many females of various ages and ranks in the family. She is seldom ushered into her husband’s dwelling without being greeted by several sisters-inlaw, with whom she vies to secure the good-will of the aged mother-in-law. But it happens, not unfrequently, in cases where her own daughters reside in the family, that the old lady sets her face against all her sons’ wives, and by an undue partiality to her own daughters, sows the seeds of jealousy and contention. The young girls, without any principles to fortify their minds, or knowledge to rectify their taste, are apt for the most trivial reasons to take umbrage against one another; and then the most trifling causes may inflame their antipathy into contention and 19

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disquietude. Often does the Zenana thus become, during the absence of the men, a scene of disagreement, jealousy, and quarrel. The quickness with which these disagreements are compromised, and the alternate repetition that takes place of war and truce, are indeed very surprising. The Hindu female’s mind appears to be too contracted to harbour, for a length of time, even jealousy and grudge; quarrels are made up with the same speed with which they are fomented. If the several brothers in the family be not all equally well off in the world, and especially if the junior members succeed better than the seniors, much jealousy prevails among their respective wives. It is a great humiliation to a Hindu woman to reflect upon her husband’s ill-success, and the humiliation soon degenerates into envy; while the wife of the more successful brother is strongly disposed to treat her sisters with scorn, and to provoke their ill-will by over-imperious demeanor. The utter prostration of the intellect in creatures that were never led to learn letters, nor ever allowed to see or hear of the world, may be easily conceived. The highest ambition of the Bengal female, in the days of her youth, is to please her superiors, by discharging the duties of the kitchen to their satisfaction, and by neatly performing the other tasks allotted to her care; and few things serve to gratify her more, as pledges of her husband’s love, than gifts of jewels and ornaments. Though made in a clumsy manner, and kept still more carelessly, these are often manufactured with the most costly materials, such as gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, and stones. For young women to carry about their persons golden ornaments to the value of seven or eight hundred Rupees is no way uncommon. These are estimated highly, both for their intrinsic pecuniary worth, and for their being regarded as marks of love and affection; and in visiting (under a purdah of course) and receiving visits, the sentimental ladies never forget to deck themselves with their gaudy trappings. Their minds are scarcely ever exercised on any subjects, unconnected with their immediate and most obvious interests. Bereft of the advantages of reading and observation, their thoughts seldom extend beyond the walls of the Zenana, or soar above the roof under which they are secured; the little exchequer of their minds contains almost nothing besides images of jewellery and household articles. Intellectual amusements and recreations are wholly unknown to them; the only employments of which they are capable during moments of leisure, are preparations of pickles and confectionery—if sleeping or quarrelling can be avoided. Nor are their moral faculties at all more ennobled than their intellects. The only virtue that adorns the sex in their estimation is continence, and this, to their honour be it recorded, they preserve inviolate, no less from a sense of duty, than from the absence of temptation. Cases of conjugal infidelity very seldom occur in respectable Hindu families; but their ethical category contains scarcely any other principles of virtue and rectitude. They live in a state of moral insensibility, and do not consider themselves bound, as rational and responsible agents, to perform any thing besides their assigned work in the house. The standard of honour and moral 20

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excellence is not very high even among the men; the degradation of the women may hence be easily conceived. The religious sense of a young Bengali woman is just what might be expected from an uncultivated mind trained under the influence of superstition and prejudice. It is ill-regulated and confused. The idea of propitiating the Deity in any way, seldom enters into her unthinking mind. Occasional supplications to the gods, in order to be able to bear children, and invocations of their protection upon her little ones, when she has brought forth any, together with a few other ceremonies of the moat puerile kind, which vary in form in different families, according to diversity of taste and sentiment, are the only duties which her liturgy prescribes. After she attains to full grown age and has become a mother of children, and perhaps the sole manager of the family, the freakish predilection of her youthful days for vain gewgaws is rectified by her better experience; her life now settles down in a more fixed way, either for happiness or misery. If her husband prosper in the world, and exhibit proofs of attachment to her, and if no other co-partner shares his affections, her household labours become a pleasure; she cheerfully performs the duties which devolve upon her. A great portion of her anxiety is at this time directed toward her children, whose health and long life she seeks to ensure by human and divine means. The affection which she displays towards them is, in its simplicity, a most pleasing proof of the principle of parental attachment, with which Providence has endowed human nature. Her bowels literally yearn upon her children; the troubles she cheerfully undertakes on their account, and the mortifying and self-denying austerities she inflicts upon herself, in order to deprecate the wrath of the gods against them, are striking evidences of that maternal solicitude, which nature has implanted for the preservation of the animal creation. Hindu mothers are distinguished by a tenderness seldom exemplified in any other country. The Hindu mother is however incapable of conferring upon her children, the blessings of education; she never dreams of training them up “in the way they should go.” As to exercising a salutary discipline upon them, her own ideas of moral responsibility being vague, she expresses no solicitude about their being governed by principles; and since the Hindu society is notoriously lax in its moral discipline, she cares little about the moral formation of their minds. Nor are the children only passively suffered to grow wild in a moral and intellectual point of view; they are actually taught things, which their tutors would afterwards have them unlearn. She scruples not to avail herself of false promises and threats in her management of them, and is not very cautious in avoiding the use of indecorous and improper expressions in their hearing. The docility of their tender minds, combined with the depraved inclinations of human nature, thus leads them to imbibe the most hurtful principles, and to contract the most vitiated habits. The afflictions with which providence may visit her in this stage of life, by the untimely removal of children, prove a sad interruption to her pleasures. Bereft of the hopes with which true religion inspires its votaries, and a stranger to the 21

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consolations which an enlightened faith in the promises of God administers, the Hindu mother’s heart receives an almost insufferable blow on the loss of her children. No salve of which her friends are possessed, can heal her wounded feelings; and the malady becomes past remedy when she is deprived of an only son, the hope of her family. Her grief may be moderated for a season, and the disease remain dormant for a time; but the cycle of festive solemnities and of occasions of rejoicing constantly brings her departed child to remembrance, and rankles the mortifying sore of her heart. Hinduism, in fact, cannot cherish any hope of reunion after death; it inculcates indeed the reality of a future life, but the doctrine of transmigration prevents its votaries from ever expecting to see their departed friends in a different scene of existence. Before the surviving relation is called away from this troublesome earth, the deceased will perhaps have passed into another form, and returned into the world; the living and the dead may thus cross one another without being seen or recognized. It is consequently difficult for the Hindu to calculate on a restoration, in any state of life, of his departed objects of affection; and the fragile heart of an ignorant woman, without any higher hopes to animate it, may very naturally sink under the weight of affliction. When the husband does not prosper well in the world, or cares little for his wife, or if he has espoused more than one partner, the matron’s life becomes very miserable. Incapable of enjoying any but those pleasures and comforts which the senses can communicate, her existence becomes a scene of unmixed suffering and pain, when the hard hand of poverty, and the still harder stroke of a husband’s unkindness, press heavy upon her. Life itself becomes, under such circumstances, a burden to her afflicted mind. To be subjected to the torments of a bleeding heart, without hope of deliverance here or hereafter, is a most frightful idea; and yet this is precisely the case with a considerable body of Hindu women, who are treated unkindly by their husbands, and have no prospect of peace, either in this world or that which is to come. The life of a Hindu widow is still more wretched. If she fall into this condition when young, without any property settled upon her by the father or the husband, she becomes a slave to the family where she resides. Although while her parents are alive she is protected to a certain extent, by their natural affection toward her, yet their death deprives her of her last refuge. The surviving relations of her husband are indeed bound by the tenets of the Shasters to maintain her as long as she lives; but, except in very rare instances, she is still subjected to great suffering and trouble. Her friends do not allow her the pittance necessary for sustaining life, without exacting hard labour from her; and they scruple not to embitter her cup of affliction, by constantly reminding her that she is a dead weight upon their purse. The only favourable juncture wherein a widow is somewhat supported under the pressure of affliction, is, when she does not lose her husband until she is advanced in life, and has either property to depend upon, or sons to provide for her wants. Under such circumstances, a few months will perhaps reconcile her mind to her desolation; even the austerities she has to endure, will then become agreeable by habit. Religious considerations chiefly occupy her time in this last stage of 22

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life, when she is forbidden to look for the relaxation of worldly amusements, and perhaps expects ere long, the dissolution of her mortal frame. We have hitherto dwelt upon women, more or less, of respectable castes and families. A few observations on the lower orders will conclude this chapter. The poorer people, whom poverty forces to employ their wives and daughters in more than mere household work within doors, and whose resources would not allow the erection of quarters consecrated to female seclusion, cannot of course restrain their liberty, or secure them in enclosed premises. Women of the inferior classes accordingly enjoy greater freedom than their wealthier and more respectable sisters. This liberty, which becomes necessary to their existence, is however looked upon by their husbands themselves as an unavoidable disadvantage; and if they accidentally rise in society, they gradually immure their females after the manner of the superior classes. Nor can the freedom alluded to, be justly regarded an object of envy; for although it allows the sex to see more of the world they inhabit, yet this advantage is more than counter-balanced by the evils to which it exposes them. The danger of setting at large ignorant and uneducated women, with clothing that scarcely serves the purpose of a covering, and in the midst of a people, at best but half civilized, is more than a mere theoretic fear. It is a pleasing reflection indeed, that few of the lower classes, thus allowed to appear in public, possess personal attractions to draw the unhallowed notice of unprincipled spectators; exterior accomplishments in such cases subject the poor helpless parties to great personal risks.23

CHAPTER II. ON THE EDUCATION WHICH THE BENGAL FEMALES OUGHT TO RECEIVE, AND THE POSITION THEY OUGHT TO OCCUPY. THE preceding account is calculated to excite the sympathy and compassion of the friends of humanity. The degradation of so many rational spirits can scarcely fail to draw a sigh from those who are familiar with happier instances of female improvement; it must especially call forth the commiseration of their more favoured sisters of the West. Common humanity must actuate those who have right ideas of female amelioration, to long for the regeneration of the daughters of India. The misery which results from the uncultivated state of their minds, as well as that which proceeds from the hardships to which the institutions of Hinduism subject them, even though their parents, husbands, and guardians be themselves the most affectionately disposed, must render them objects of compassion to all enlightened minds. The monstrous system by which the most important and sacred of all contracts—marriage—is turned into a yoke of servitude; the ill-judged jealousy which deprives them of education, and consigns them to close imprisonment in the Zenana; the horrid24 self-immolation that is recommended to their weak minds on the loss of their partners in life; the severe austerities imposed upon them in case of their declining to follow that murderous recommendation: all these conspire to depict the present condition of our females in the 23

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most painful colours, and to force the humane observer alternately to sigh and blush; to sigh for the existence of so much misery, to blush at the tyranny of man in originating and perpetuating such institutions. A question naturally presents itself under such circumstances. Whether the wretched degradation in which the women pass their days in this country is inseparable from their nature, or whether it is capable of remedy? If they were incapable of intellectual culture, or if they could not be treated with greater lenity without endangering their honour and virtue, then their degradation should be called inevitable; it would be idle in that case to speculate on a utopean scheme of education for them, or to dream of their elevation from their present position. Before those speculations are made, and these hopes entertained, it would be important to inquire; To what pitch may the powers of their minds be raised? To what degree may their active faculties be expected to receive culture? What position ought they to occupy in society? What liberties may be safely allowed to them, and to what extent may they be invested with any responsibilities? What part ought they to take in the concerns of this world? What preparations ought they to make for a future state of existence? These are different aspects in which the general question, wherewith this paragraph commenced may be viewed, and every one of which is entitled to serious consideration. To answer this question in its various ramifications is our subject for consideration in this part of the essay; and that we may enter into it with as little declamation, and as much conciseness and perspicuity as the nature of the subject will allow, we shall begin with inquiring into the intentions of Divine Providence with reference to the female sex. Few persons will dispute the truth of the maxim, that the interests of a creature are then best provided for, when the purposes for which it was created are most closely kept in view, and the faculties with which it was endowed, rightly cultivated. Man, for instance, has been supplied with the power of knowing and following the will of his Maker; he is impressed with a sense of personal responsibility and animated with hopes of immortality; and he then best promotes his happiness when he improves, with the greatest diligence, his intellectual and moral faculties, and ensures, as a spiritual and responsible agent, the eternal salvation of his soul by obedience to the precepts of Divine truth; while in proportion as he neglects these duties, he destroys and mars his own interests. But it is conceivable that the lower animals, who are not gifted with moral sense, may ever remain ignorant of their Maker’s will and of the discoveries of human science without suffering any loss or inconvenience. An inquiry into the designs of the Creator in the creation of woman will, therefore, prepare us for answering the question which forms the second division of this essay. We fear we are incurring the danger of appearing prosy to European readers. The propositions here attempted to be proved are by them considered self-evident and axiomatic; we are accordingly afraid of being considered verbose, in labouring to demonstrate truths with which they have been familiar from their infancy. But the local circumstances of the country and the prejudices of our neighbours will prove a sufficient apology. What the European will concede as first principles 24

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on the subject, requiring no investigation or proof, the Brahmin may call into controversy without scruple or hesitation; and as this essay is addressed no less to the latter, than to the former, it is impossible to avoid many inquiries which the inhabitants of Christendom have long outgrown. The superior examples of female intelligence and female usefulness with which history and observation furnish us, may be considered as practical comments on the Divine will in this respect. Our intercourse with Europeans sojourning in the East, has presented to our notice a spectacle of female improvement which throws into the shade all our traditional recollections, whether of Lilavati, of Maitreyi, or any other of our instructed females. Not only do we find every female in the higher classes of society furnished with a superior degree of liberal education, and honourably discharging the duties of the conjugal and maternal life; but we also see her engaged, as a member of society, in performing acts of benevolence and of public utility, and thereby exhibiting a strength of principle, and vigour of mind, that would strike our Menus and Yagnawalkyas with wonder and amazement. The ladies of Europe have been known to cultivate literature and science of all kinds; history has presented to our admiration characters of female scholars and female philosophers of no ordinary stamp. To cite examples of female intelligence and virtue would appear tedious to those who are conversant with European history. Every school boy in Calcutta has learnt enough to understand, that the ladies of the West have for centuries exhibited instances of learning and erudition, calculated to inspire wonder and admiration; and to particularize individuals, might appear invidious to the integral body of our occidental sisters. Nor is the general body of our countrymen likely to dispute this fact. They have seen and heard sufficiently to believe that efforts at female education have been successfully made in the case of every European lady; and that no female that has any position in society is altogether uneducated. Now we contend that what has been done in Europe may be properly attempted in India. If all men are derived from the same original stock, the female mind must be as capable of improvement in the East as it is in the West. A difference in colour and climate could not have produced a total disparity in mental constitution. Apart from the lessons of history and observation, our own reason may instruct us on the subject. Did we know of no instance in which females had cultivated their intellectual faculties with advantage, we might still fairly conclude that such culture was perfectly feasible. In the common affairs of life we find them exhibiting those natural faculties which constitute the character of intelligent creatures and moral agents. They are capable of all those functions which philosophers attribute to the human mind. They can perceive and attend, conceive and imagine, abstract and remember, discover causes from effects, and deduce effects from causes. They can analyze and reason, draw conclusions from premises, and understand the force of an argument when plainly and clearly stated. They can comprehend the general nature of duty, and are subject to remorse of conscience when they err from the right path. They are aware of right and wrong, and are gifted with 25

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moral discernment in common with their husbands and brothers. Their hearts are capable of passions and affections. The sentiments of love and hatred, admiration and approbation, censure and condemnation, have not been withheld from them. Whence have they derived these capacities for thought, feeling, and action, but from the favourable designs of Providence, with reference to their education and exaltation in society? What other object can we suppose the Creator to have kept in view, when he invested them with those powers, than that they should improve them by exercise, and maintain their station as rational creatures and agents? But we need not grope in the imperfect light of reason. We have a far more unerring instructor than Nature to teach us the designs of God in the formation of woman. The volume of Divine inspiration which has been vouchsafed to us, has enlightened us on the subject of our inquiry. The Bible, whose divine original has been acknowledged by the mightiest intellects in the most civilized countries in the world, and to the inspiration of which history as well as its internal contents bears incontrovertible evidence, tells us not only the occasion on which, and the way in which, but also the reason for which, womankind was first created. “But for Adam there was not found an help meet for him, and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord had taken from man, made he a woman, and he brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis ii, 20–23.) This short account sufficiently explains the Divine intentions; the woman was designed to become an help meet for man. She was to be his counsellor and companion, to assist him in his duties on earth, to sympathize with him in his sorrows, to solace him in his affliction, to cheer him when he was downcast, to bear a portion of his troubles and anxieties, to join him in his devotions, to discharge such work for him as he could not personally inspect, to nourish and cherish and instruct his infant children, in a word—to help him in every situation. And as the discharge of such important functions must pre-suppose mental and spiritual illumination, it must have been intended that the woman should prepare herself for the proper understanding and performance of her duties, by receiving the benefits of a liberal and well-directed education. Again, since the man also had duties no less important to perform to the woman, it was undoubtedly the design of Providence that, as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, she should be allowed a reasonable portion of the personal liberty and freedom of thought and action, which Adam claimed for himself. We cannot accordingly suppose that she was designed to be secured in an inclosed Zenana, or compelled to accept of an unknown husband. We cannot suppose that she was destined in the intentions of Providence to bear the yoke of a slave in her husband’s house, or to minister to his pleasures like the irrational inhabitants of a menagerie. She was to be respected, loved, and honoured, and generally treated, as the weaker vessel indeed, but for this very reason with the greater regard and affection; that her fragile heart and tender feelings might not be bruised by harsh provocation, or insulting misrule. 26

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And what was the case with the first woman must also be the same with all her daughters, so far as the intentions of Providence are concerned: there is no reason for making an unhappy exception to the prejudice of our Bengal females. We may therefore fearlessly assert, what all sincere inquirers will perhaps candidly concede, that our sisters were designed to become help-mates to their husbands, and to enjoy the liberty of contemplating the works of Nature, instead of being doomed to a close imprisonment. The question with which we commenced this essay, may accordingly be answered in a few words. The degradation of Hindu females is not necessary to their existence, nor is it incapable of remedy. The objects for which woman-kind was created must be as feasible in Bengal as it is in any other country. Our females ought to be what the first mother of the human species undoubtedly was, and what Providence intended all her daughters to be—help-mates to their husbands; bone of their bones, and flesh of their flesh. They are not to remain unconcerned in the affairs of the family, nor only to bear the drudgery of the household, but on the contrary to advise and counsel their consorts to the utmost of their power. They are to assist them in the discharge of household duties, and render the evils of this mortal life less onerous by their sympathy and exhilarating company. In their affectionate caresses and rational discourses their husbands are to find a cordial, that will allay the troubles and anxieties incident to earthly existence, and stimulate dignifying and ennobling exertions. Their company should administer a pleasure and a comfort more than compensating for the toils and fatigues of the day. Few images can be more gratifying to the fancy, than that of a discreet female vivifying the exhausted spirits around her in the domestic circle, and soothing, by her conduct and conversation, the husband that returns from the heat and burden of his diurnal occupations. There is a charm in the rational sympathy of an intelligent wife which must operate almost with talismanic power upon the mind that is agitated and disturbed by temporal crosses and disappointments. Weak as the female sex is, its influence on the male sex is incalculably powerful. Nothing can impart greater strength to the moral character, or call forth more forcibly the latent energies of the soul, than the sympathy of instructed wives and sisters. Wild as was the chivalry of the dark ages, one of its component elements was pregnant with the happiest results. The desire of gaining female approbation moved the knights with an irresistible impulse to acts of heroism. Its abuses may be attributed to the imperfect and defective education of the times, but the motive which that desire supplied to great efforts must have produced important effects on society. The natives of Bengal are now lamentably deficient in energy and character. It is our firm conviction that their cast of mind will be wonderfully improved, when females will learn how to exercise a salutary influence on their husbands and brothers. Of the duties and privileges of the conjugal life, one of the holiest is that which respects communion in devotional exercises. The reflection of a husband and wife striving in unison to ensure their eternal salvation, by worshiping God according to his revealed will, and contemplating his marvellous works of nature and grace, 27

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with one heart and one mind, has a captivating power over the imagination, which it overwhelms with joy and delight. Thrice happy they in whose case such an idea is realized. It is thus that “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.” The husband and the wife are mutually bound, or rather privileged, to edify one another’s heart by consentient attention to the most important of all inquiries, that their conjugal partnership in life, may be followed by that everlasting communion in glory, which ought to engross the meditation and contemplation of all immortal spirits. As mothers, our females ought to train the young minds of their children in habits of piety, virtue, and good sense. The professional avocations of the father generally requiring his absence from home throughout the greatest part of the day, the child’s infancy must be trusted principally to the care of the mother; the early cultivation of its intellectual soil must mainly depend upon her prudent management. Its moral improvement must be promoted by her wholesome discipline, as much as its physical growth by the sustenance she provides. The infant ought to imbibe salutary principles from the instruction and conversation of her enlightened understanding, while it extracts material nourishment from the milk that she supplies. If the support of its animal life were the only duty which devolved upon her, there would scarcely be any distinction between our sisters and the irrational creatures, who have been endowed in like manner with an instinctive disposition to toil for the preservation of their young ones. But the human species owes higher obligations to its offspring than the grovelling beasts of the field; the education of their minds is no less entitled to parental attention, than the nourishment of their bodies. However novel this idea of infant schooling under female management may appear to our countrymen, who have not yet experienced its blessings in themselves, it is not an unreasonable reverie of an inventive fancy. Our own judgments, if we consider the subject dispassionately, will teach us that it is perfectly feasible. It is impossible to question the propriety of maternal care for the intellectual and moral development of a child’s understanding during such time as it cannot be sent to a public or private seminary. The father who has to work without the house for the maintenance of the family, will not, in most instances, have time to undertake this important duty, and unless his partner attend to its execution, it must be left wholly undone. Nor is the idea of a mother’s moral superintendence over her infants a mere speculative theory, for the first time broached in this essay, and proposed to the practical consideration of the Hindus. Any one who is familiar with European history, and has considered its lessons with tolerable attention, must attribute the illustrious superiority of many a conspicuous character to the influence of female parents, exerted over their tender minds. It was in the cradle, under the judicious management of intelligent and pious mothers, that the first seeds of education were sown in numberless persons, who afterwards bore prominent parts in the literary, scientific, and religious worlds. How many eminent men, that have proved ornaments to society, have thankfully ascribed the early growth of the principles by which they profited in life, to the advantages of maternal discipline reaped in 28

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their infancy. The attentive reader of biography may easily perceive that the elements of intellectual superiority, by which numbers have reflected lustre on the human species, were first implanted in their mother’s lap, and were for a considerable period cherished by her instruction and advice. Our best friends have complained that our educated countrymen themselves begin at an early age to lose their mental brightness; that their intellects shine like the ignis fatuus for a limited period after which they degenerate. The complaint is certainly borne out by facts; but it is not the climate or any peculiarity in our constitution to which the degeneracy is to be attributed. Such an inference would at least be premature, before the effects of female emancipation on the national character have been fairly tried. Education has as yet had a small sphere for its work; its influence has extended only to a mere moiety of the population, even where it has been most widely disseminated. Mothers, wives, and sisters are still as ignorant as they ever were. The infant mind is still neglected. The mental soil of the nation is not prepared by maternal care, and we cannot wonder if the impressions produced by the school-master prove to be transient. How the case may turn out if every boy commences his academical career with a mind previously worked upon, and, after leaving school, is impelled to maintain the dignity of an educated person at home and abroad, by the influence of an instructed wife or sister, has still to be seen. In the capacity of mistresses of the household, it is the province of women to ensure the proper transaction of all domestic affairs. They are to ascertain their husbands’ wishes on points wherein they need advice, and to provide for the fulfilment of the same with diligence and activity. The menials, especially of their own sex, demand particularly their direction and care. They are the most suitable agents for exercising a salutary discipline over these members of the family, and for performing acts of kindness and benevolence to them. They are charged with the whole executive power in the household, while their partners are drawn out of doors by their public employments. The wife is, in fact, the governor of the house, the husband being prevented by his more arduous engagements, from entering into the details of domestic economy. As members of society, our females ought to shed a humanizing influence over the great body of the Hindu community. The indelicacy, and even obscenity of language, and the laxity of manners, tolerated in company by our countrymen, are calculated to disgust all observers of any moral sensibility. The education of women, and their introduction to society, will operate as a powerful check upon such licentious practices. Few are so depraved as not to shrink from offending the ears of their wives and sisters by the indecorous use of a corrupt and corrupting vocabulary; the presence of the sex must therefore prove an effectual barrier against the viceous stream that now flows with violence unbated. The freedom with which the most celebrated authors of the Sanscrit literature have represented, without a blush, the vilest and the most abominable thoughts and images, under the imposing garb of poetry, could never be tolerated or exercised, if the writers or readers had the most distant fear of their own wives and sisters perusing them, 29

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or if the community to which they belonged contained educated females, before whom such lettered obscenities could not be introduced. The remark is likewise applicable to the older Bengali literature of pure indegenous growth.25 In the state of widowhood too, our ladies ought to be more serviceable to themselves and to society, than they can at present be. The servitude to which the death of their husbands reduces them, when they inherit no property, might be prevented in many of its unhappy consequences, if they could apply themselves to any kind of pursuit. Their misery and destitution admit under existing circumstances scarcely of any alleviation. The provisions which the wisdom of our ancient legislators had created, cannot, and do not, shield them from the unkind strokes of poverty and bondage. It would be preposterous to suppose, that the general injunctions of Hinduism would be able to help their unhappiness, while they were unable to assert their claims, and were consigned to the mercy of their husbands’ surviving kinsmen. So long as they continue incapable of being serviceable to any body, and subsist as idlers on the charity of others, the precepts of Menu and Nárada will be lost equally on the government and on their relations. They ought to return some kind of respectable and decent service to the quarter whence they are to draw their sustenance. Society may derive benefits in various ways from intelligent and well-disposed widows, and will cheerfully undergo the burden of their maintenance, when it reaps the fruits of their exertions. Besides these various objects, claiming the attention of our females in the various relations of life, they have to secure the salvation of their souls. They contain within their corporal frames, spirits no less immortal and capable of eternal blessedness, than those of their husbands and brothers. The sacred obligations of true religion are of equal force upon them. They are naturally “dead in trespasses and sins,” in common with the other sex; and the provisions of revealed religion are alike adapted to their spiritual wants. They must therefore exercise their minds upon the covenant and law of God, as He has been pleased to promulgate them, and study to ensure their title to the blessings, which faith in his promises and submission to his will are calculated to secure. The proper discharge of these offices requires however that their minds should in the first place be cultivated. While the intellect continues uninformed, and the heart unsanctified, no human being is fitted for the right performance of any duties, domestic or public, personal or social; a woman must especially come short in these respects, so long as she is restricted from participating the advantages of education. She cannot be safely placed in the position to which she is entitled, if her passions be not regulated by principle, and if the vagrancies to which she is naturally inclined, be not rectified by an enlightend conscience. No accomplishments can possibly supply her want of discretion and spiritual discernment. It is not a fair, but a virtuous woman, whose illumined and expanded intellect enables her to understand, and whose affections, sanctified by the holiest influences of religious truth, actuate her to discharge her duties, that becomes a crown to her husband, a blessing to her children, and an acquisition to society. But what conceivable benefits can proceed from an illiterate woman? What counsel can she 30

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tender to her husband, but such as is calculated only to thwart and embarrass? What help in the cause of domestic happiness can be expected from a person, who is distinguished from the grovelling creatures of the earth, only by the peculiarity of her physical form? What sanctifying influence can be exercised on the tender heart of an infant by an uneducated mother, whose example and precepts can only increase its natural propensity to evil? What instructions can she impart to its docile mind, which it ought not to unlearn? What impulse can she communicate to its passions and affections, but in the low, grovelling, and vicious channels of sin, depravity, and ignorance? What discipline can be exerted over a household by a mistress capable only of fomenting disturbances, and occasioning vexation? What moral blessings may servants derive from a governess, who needs personally as much instruction as themselves? How can a creature, over whose mind hover the thick clouds of ignorance and vice, guide her menials in the path of righteousness, or help them to improve their intellectual condition. What service, but of the most degraded sort, can be looked for from a set of widows incapable of any avocations which require thought and energy? What profit can society derive from creatures unenlightened, and without principle, and totally destitute of intellectual activity? What return can the human community receive from such useless and unthinking persons, that it may contribute to their comfortable subsistence, without regarding them as objects of charity? What humanizing influence can be exerted upon society by a despised body of uneducated females, fitted only for being immured, and liable to abuse any indulgence that may be allowed to them?26 How can illiterate creatures, scarcely raised above the level of the irrational animals, claim that respect, or occupy that position, by which alone they may soften the ferocity, chasten the taste, and promote the civilization of the united body of their husbands, relations, and countrymen? Females are generally so weak and so sensitive that unless they live under the direction of strict principles, and the influence of holy motives, they are apt to render a wide house more uncomfortable them the corner of the house top. While the greatest portion of the happiness which pervades a domestic circle, proceeds chiefly from the judicious management, and the decorous demeanor of an enlightened wife, the misery and unhappiness caused by a brawling and vicious woman are nevertheless bitter in the extreme. She forgets her proper position, and would compel her husband to adopt the reveries of her own fancy; and thus retards, instead of facilitating, his performance of duty. Phantoms of a freakish imagination are regarded as realities; and a vicious, irregular, and mischievous whim usurps the authority, and claims the obedience, due only to reason, judgment, and rectified taste. And as to the exercise of a salutary influence upon society, the idea itself is preposterous. An uneducated female whose honour demands a restraint upon her liberty, and renders seclusion necessary, is commonly enrolled in the list of her husband’s untransferable moveables, and neither possesses the ability, nor can command the respect by which alone she might correct the laxity, and moralize the tone of her relations and friends. 31

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It is accordingly necessary that the female mind should be improved; that it should be regulated by right principles, and enlarged by useful learning; that it should be brought up in the nurture and admonition of God, so as to be under the government of sanctified feelings and affections; and that its religious impressions should be deepened by rational conviction and internal assurance. The honour and aggrandizement of our country imperatively demand the intellectual and moral improvement of her daughters. India can never rise, while mental degradation unfits them for the attention and respect naturally due to them, and renders their introduction to, and elevation in society, equally impracticable and undesirable. A regard for their virtue and for our own happiness may at present force their husbands to restrain their liberty, and to check their presumption. But it is equally discreditable and cruel wilfully to perpetuate their bondage and mental inactivity, by obstructing the development of their faculties, and denying to them the advantages of education. The cultivation of their mental powers is an obligation which nature and kindred have imposed upon us, and an intentional, deliberate, and habitual neglect to discharge it, will render our situation fearfully responsible in the sight of God. But if our hearts be too obdurate to be affected by a principle of duty, let a sense of interest at least move us. The instruction of females will prove a blessing not only to themselves, but also to ourselves, our children, and our country. The advantages accruing to husbands from the counsel and sympathy of intelligent wives; to children, from the instruction and advice of pious and judicious mothers; and to society, from the humanizing influence of respected and sensible women, have already been considered; we shall reap for ourselves, individually and collectively, no inconsiderable a portion of the benefits which will result from the emancipation of our females. We may then exhibit before the world that the Bengali society is capable of as much elevation as any other on the face of the globe; that our climate is not a necessary obstacle to the development of our minds. Some eminent historians have doubted the possibility of regenerating those races which have once become degenerated. Whether this remark be sufficiently borne out by experience or not, it needs not damp our energies. The Bengali is a rising, not a degnerated nation. Its mental capacities have been proved to be equal to those of any other people, and though still marked by numerous deficiencies, it may yet rise to the highest possible pitch of civilization and refinement. The education of its females may bring on a new and happy era in its history. As to the rules by which this education should be regulated, or the mode in which it is to be conducted, the limits of this essay will scarcely admit of a detailed statement. What moralists have often asserted on the subject of female education in general, might be repeated here with reference to the education of native females in particular; but lucubrations on a trite subject may be properly dispensed with in an attempt, whereof the theme is so peculiarly local. Suffice it to say, that we would give their minds all the polish of which they are capable. We would put no restraints on the cultivation of their intellects. We would not 32

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interdict any branch of knowledge calculated to improve the understanding. There is no reason why the education of girls should be less liberal than that of boys. But we would wish their instruction to be compatible with the natural delicacy of their sex and with their peculiar position in society.27

CHAPTER III. ON THE MEANS WHEREBY THE AMELIORATION OF BENGAL FEMALES MAY BE EFFECTED UNDER EXISTING CIRCUMSTANCES. WE have now described the evils by which our female society is afflicted, and endeavoured to show that they are not incapable of remedy. But the most difficult part of our duty remains yet unperformed. The physician that cuts a sore and pronounces it to be curable, must apply the remedy before he can expect his discharge. The means by which the present condition of our females may be improved so as to allow their elevation to their proper position, are now to be delineated. The measures by the practical operation of which the women of Bengal may be raised to the post which Divine Providence has designed for their occupation, must now be considered. The steps by which they may ascend to an equality with the ladies of Europe, remain still to be traced. In this department of our essay, we labour under singular disadvantages. In the first chapter, we had only to frame a digest of our ancient institutions, and to generalize actual facts around us; and on the subject of our second division, some fight was thrown by the improvement which western females had already made, and which consequently served as a standard, whereby to estimate the capacities of the sex. But under this third head, we are left entirely to our own anticipations and deductions. We have here to tread a path not yet beaten so as to serve the purpose of a guide. This acknowledgment will sufficiently explain our desire not to be understood positively to dogmatize, but diffidently to suggest, certain ways in which the friends of female education may attempt the enlightenment of our Bengal sisters. The question about to be discussed is,—By what practicable means may the females of Bengal be raised in an intellectual and moral point of view, and rendered competent for the discharge of their several duties with credit, and for the maintenance of their proper position with advantage to themselves and to society? We have already asserted that the cultivation of the mind by a well-directed education, must be looked to as the great engine of improvement; and the point under consideration has principal reference to such feasible expedients, as may promote the circulation of knowledge among them. We have to inquire into the most effective plans whereby to afford them such education as is necessary for the accomplishment of the desired end. The instilment of knowledge can be effected either by public instruction or private tuition. Boys or girls of various families may meet in a common seminary for the purpose of education, and vie with one another under the same roof and the management of the same governors; or, if their parents prefer it, they may 33

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prosecute their studies in a more secluded way, within the enclosures of a private dwelling, and in company with their own relations and friends. Each of these modes has its uses and abuses, advantages and disadvantages. Our present inquiry does not however refer to their relative utility or expediency. We are here called upon only to investigate into the most practicable mode of introducing education among our Bengal sisters; our object is to discover to what extent their parents and guardians may tolerate the adoption of either, or both, of these methods of of disseminating instruction among them. The practice of immuring the females, and disposing of them in early life by marriage, must baffle every attempt at conferring public education upon them. No respectable Hindu can as yet be prevailed upon to send his daughter or his wife to school, where she will perhaps become a gazing stock, and be obliged to keep company, indiscriminately, with all castes of people. Few reflections are associated with greater horror in a native’s imagination, than that of a stranger’s obtaining a sight of his females. No friendship, however intimate, will easily introduce a person to the wife of his neighbour; and even in cases where the utmost confidence prevails, the husband can hardly be persuaded to tolerate her appearance before his friends. So strongly have custom and the tone of society rivetted these prejudices upon the mind, that previous to a complete moral revolution in India, the most powerful incentives to female enfranchisement will fail in their object. The obtrusion of a woman in public, especially in youthful life, is considered highly disreputable. If, under these circumstances, a strong desire prevailed of raising the female character, we might entertain some faint hopes of witnessing a defiance of popular prejudices, and a renouncement of long-established customs, for the sake of advancing the good cause. Unfortunately, however, very little importance is practically attached to the improvement of the sex. The aggregate body of the Hindus set scarcely any value upon their attainments, and appear heedless of the advantages to be reaped from intelligent wives and daughters. They can imagine no possible way by which their acquirements may be turned to pecuniary purposes, and have little conception of any nobler ends of knowledge. No motive is accordingly found to exist, which might actuate the Hindus to confer educational benefits on their women, in open violation of the custom of secluding them. The obstacle which fashion opposes, is also to be weighed in the balance against the public instruction of females. Their friends have not only to lament the absence of any incentives to the pursuit of knowledge, but they have actually to pull against a powerful stream flowing in the opposite direction. Although, as we have already seen, neither the theology nor the philosophy of Hinduism is directly repugnant to female education, and although many instances of intellectual superiority in the sex have been mentioned with approbation, yet the current of public opinion has long been unfavourable to the principle of educating them; a spirited protest in practice against this general sense must incur the risk of being stigmatized as uncourteous and heterodoxical. The existence of the conventional feeling against an object so excellent, may be unaccountable on any rational grounds; 34

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the fact is nevertheless unquestionable; and it is the unkindly influence of that feeling which paralyzes every effort to raise the condition of the sex. Those who have received the benefits of a liberal education may sigh for the emancipation of their sisters; but the utilitarianism of the Hindus will raise the question of cui bono, the moment a scheme of female education is proposed to them. Such being the adverse tone of Hindu society, its opposition to female instruction will become almost insurmountable if the question be necessarily associated with a woman’s appearance in public, which the educated natives themselves are not prepared to sanction. The female dress too, must prove an additional inconvenience to public instruction. The one piece of thin muslin with which our country-women shroud themselves, may be tolerated within an inclosed Zenana, the solitude of which can never be disturbed by the intrusion of a stranger; but their appearance in public with such habiliments would be a breach of decency, and might lead to unhappy consequences. This inconvenience might be obviated by the adoption of more substantial garments, but if the jealous repugnance of the Bengali to the least addition or alteration in the articles of female attire be taken into account, the difficulty will appear in its true and appalling character: and however unimportant in itself, the fact is sufficiently serious when viewed in all its actual consequences. These considerations force upon our minds the conviction that nothing can be expected at present, from the system of public schooling as far as the higher and middling classes of females are concerned. The society of the Hindus is not yet prepared for accepting the blessings which might flow from such a measure; until a complete revolution takes place in their thoughts and feelings, no reasonable hopes can be entertained of their tolerating the attendance of females in a public seminary. We do not mean however to express a feeling of hostility to the institutions which have already been reared for the benefit of our country-women, and the most distinguished of which stands as an ornament to Cornwallis Square. It would manifest a total destitution of moral sensibility, not to recognize the zealous efforts of those whose names are associated with the very theme of our essay, and who, in the genuine spirit and with the unwearied perseverance of Christain heroines, first realized the idea of native female education, and exhibited their belief to the world, by their philanthropic exertions, that the women of Bengal were animated by souls as precious as those of the men. But even the patience and fortitude of the agents employed by the “Ladies’ Society,” could not achieve what might be called miracles; and that noble monument of their Christian exertions, the Central School, to which a native gentleman28 himself contributed no less than 20,000 Rs. has failed to attract within its walls any but children of the lowest classes of society. These were little restrained by the law of fashion, and did not scruple to send their girls out of doors. Men of no caste have in this respect shown a feeling of independence, which the high and noble dared not assert. We must not however dissemble that even the lower orders do not send their children to school without other stimulants than love of knowledge. Nor has the result 35

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produced any influence on native society. Severe criticism of female acquirements would reflect little honor on the critic; and in India the day of small things must not be despised. No pecuniary outlay can be considered too great, even if it produced a single educated native female in Bengal. We doubt however whether any Hindu woman has in this way received an education productive of abiding consequences; whether any female, thus instructed, can compose a single sentence in English or in Bengali with grammatical correctness. Not that the honoured and industrious tutoresses are themselves to blame. Far from it. Their diligence and zeal are entitled to the reverence of all that are friendly to the cause. But where parents and guardians exercised an inclement influence at home by precept and example, the effects of a few hours’ instruction at school could not be great. The usefulness of female schools has thereby been much obstructed. Not only have they met with ill success in drawing educational candidates of any respectability; but those they have collected from time to time, have principally come forward from artificial encouragements. The knowledge actually imparted has also been very limited. The early marriages of the pupils, would snatch them away from their studies before they had learnt the simplest rudiments of their own language, and put a stop to the further cultivation of their minds. The result has been a constant fluctuation of pupils, and the actual progress elicited in the classes, has for many years been at a standing mark. In order to do justice to the seminaries above-mentioned, we will institute a distinction between General Education, and the inculcation of Christianity. The former is the formation of the mind by a course of intellectual discipline, and requires a long and connected series of human expedients and literary studies; the latter is the sacred work of initiating in the elementary truths of the Gospel, which depends peculiarly upon the preventing grace of God, and calls more for pastoral admonition, than for literary scholarship. The one is, for the most part, a human operation, where human helps and human instruments are used according to human judgment; the other is an especial work of Divine grace, where means and instruments are regulated more by a reference to the voice of inspiration and the practice of the Christian Church, than by an immediate appeal to human reason and human discretion. General education is therefore to be distinguished from the more sacred work of what in the primitive ages would be called catechizing; and although the former may often, under God’s blessing, subserve the latter, yet this occasional dependance does not annul their essential distinction. Now in the public schools under consideration, little has been done in an educational, though much attempted in the catechizing way. The children are found scarcely to have learnt the rudiments of grammar and construction, when their early marriages, and the irresolute instability of their parents withdraw them from school. With respect, however, to Catechisms and Gospels, they have often been known to have mastered considerable portions by heart. But owing to its necessary imperfection, their literary education has hardly conferred any advantages upon them, the pupils unlearning in a few months, what they had got up in as many years. 36

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Their initiation into Christianity too has been thwarted in most instances by the contagion of their heathen associations at home, and by their entire removal after a time from Christian influence. But as we would magnify the grace of God, and honour the instruments. He has blessed, even in one case of actual conversion, we must express our gratitude at the instances, we find reported of persons professing Christianity who had been instructed in those schools. It must nevertheless be acknowledged, that with the exception of a few individual cases, the spiritual results have not been (if we be allowed to speak from what we see and hear) much greater than the intellectual effects. The children’s stay at school has generally resembled a short episode in their infancy, after which they have fallen into the same habits as before, and grown under the same influence under which they were born. It is only when the continued attendance of children can be secured, that public tuition may be conducted with advantage; and here we must testify to the usefulness which Orphan Asylums promise. Too much commendation cannot be passed upon those individuals and societies, which rescued many a helpless infant from pestilence and starvation, during the several visitations of famine, drought, and inundation, which the Almighty was pleased to send upon the country within the last ten years,29 and provided at the same time for their moral training. Such benevolent preservation of the body from the horrors of famine, followed by a corresponding attention to the welfare of the soul, is worthy the disciples of Him, who came to seek and to save that which was lost, and who, while he spread a genial repast before hungry multitudes, directed them also to the spiritual bread of life. The cause of education, no less than the interests of Christianity, must eventually be forwarded by the noble exertions of His followers in first rescuing the body and then nourishing the soul. But for reasons already mentioned, no attempt can prove successful at present, of conferring public education upon females in the better ranks of society. For these, the only mode left for trial, is private tuition in a well-secured house inaccessible to strangers. No other scheme is likely to command the confidence of parents. The Hindus are still unprepared to risk the reputation of their families by exposing their females. But many have grown so far superior to the prejudices of their country as to feel the propriety of educating them. They appear willing to execute their wishes if it can be done without molestation; they concede, at least in theory, that girls may be instructed, not only with impunity, but also with profit; we may therefore hope that they will not repudiate a proposal to instruct their daughters within their own doors, without the sacrifice of trouble or money on their part. Notwithstanding their practical ignorance of the blessings proceeding from the education of their women, they cannot deny that learning is at least an accomplishment, a portion of which may be safely imparted to their ladies. They do not understand this sufficiently to regret the evils resulting from the intellectual darkness in which their families are involved; but they would still be proud to own wives and daughters capable of rational amusements and recreations. They have not learnt to appreciate the abstract idea, so as to undergo pecuniary or social 37

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privations for realizing it; but they may nevertheless be expected to accept, with greater or less thankfulness, such helps as may be tendered consistently with their jealous prejudices respecting female seclusion, and with the reduced circumstances in point of temporals, under which it is their misfortune to labour. The custom which anciently prevailed in the Greek Churches of instructing female catechumens in their own apartments, will throw considerable light upon the subject of our inquiry. We desire to educate a number of human beings, whom we cannot invite out of doors, and upon whose public appearance we ought not to insist in the present state of their minds; and as some of the Eastern Churches were once placed in similar circumstances with ourselves, we cannot fail to acquire much useful information from a review of this practice. The Greeks were in the days of yore as averse to, though perhaps not so jealous of the introduction of their women into society as the Hindus; and if we inquire into the measures adopted by the friends of female improvement among the former, we may possibly derive considerable light as to the most feasible means of ameliorating the sex among the latter. Upon the wise and charitable principle of becoming all things to all men, and in order to avoid the risk connected with an unseasonable and premature obtrusion of unenlightened women upon the public, as well as to avert the scandal associated in the estimation of unbelievers with such an ill-advised proceeding, the Church provided for the instruction of her feeble-minded daughters, without interfering with the national habits of the people. Female catechists were employed, who visited their sex in private, and thus the light of the Gospel was carried into the Gynæceum, without provoking the opposition, or even exciting the jealousy of the community.30 Now the analogy31 between the manners of the ancient Greeks and the Hindus is in this respect so remarkable, and the selection of those tutoresses was regulated by such wise canons, that better rules cannot be conceived by which to conduct female educational agency in India. The deaconesses were aged and experienced widows, unentangled with the cares of the household, and qualified by long preparatory training for the performance of the duties which they undertook. Their intelligence and strength of principle enabled them to teach their pupils with success, and to prevent scandal; the Church thus carried on her blessed work without unnecessarily disgusting the deep-rooted prejudices of the people, or prematurely exposing creatures, who would probably abuse their liberty, while their minds were yet weak, and therefore neither fortified by religious devotion nor notions of honour. This venerable custom of the ancient churches is entitled to the serious attention of the friends of humanity. An association may be formed upon an extensive scale, and with every possible provision against unnecessary offence to native prejudices, and suitable tutoresses of age and experience may be entertained for the purpose of carrying the light of European knowledge into the Zenanas of the Hindus. Government may be memorialized to patronize, and the natives themselves invited to support a scheme, visibly fraught with inestimable blessings to the country, and based upon the principle of non-interference with religion. 38

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The Council of Education will probably acknowledge, that half the population of India, which exercise such considerable influence, as mothers and wives, upon the students of their colleges and schools, are not necessarily excluded by their sex from a proper share of their attention and good wishes; the sanction of such a body must considerably extend the operations of the corporation we are sketching, and ensure the confidence of parents and guardians. The connection of a few respectable natives would increase that confidence, and serve to stimulate their countrymen to co-operate in the good cause. A liberal allowance may induce many a foreign lady of age and experience, to devote their time and talents to the instruction of so interesting a body of their sex. A great step may be hereby taken towards the consummation of a work which has hitherto been almost entirely neglected. If a few wealthy and influential native gentlemen can also be induced to give up rooms in their inner courts for the use of private schools, where none but ladies shall be admitted as tutoresses or visiters, nor any except girls from select families allowed to enter as pupils, expectations still more sanguine may be entertained of the success of the experiment. People may not be wanting under such circumstances to send their daughters to institutions so select; a goodly number of girls may be assembled, at least, from the circle of the landlords’ own friends. The terms on which education will be hereby offered, may from their conciliating character operate as inducements on many minds, which would otherwise shrink from the prospect of infringing the customs of the country, or of encountering heavy demands upon their purse. The Hindu might reject with indignation a proposal that demanded the appearance of his females in public, or their instruction in Christianity; but he may tolerate their education in general literature, if that could be offered within doors upon terms suited to their circumstances. The Christian friend of native female education needs not question the propriety of a scheme even though it may exclude religious instruction. Religion is indeed so naturally linked with true science and sound philosophy, that a wilful separation of the one from the other, may be condemned as an act of treachery to both. But where circumstances over which he has no control reduce the Christian to the dilemma of either suffering a vast number of his fellow creatures to pine in total ignorance, or of contenting himself for a time with teaching such general elements as may gradually open their minds, he has no other alternative than that of submitting to the necessity of the case, if he wishes to take any part in the improvement of mankind. The admission of European teachers for the education of male children was often allowed by the most respectable members of the native community, who considered it fashionable at one time to employ private tutors for their boys; and if an equal degree of interest could be excited in behalf of their girls, many Baboos would doubtless realize of their own accord the idea of female instruction in the Zenana. In one instance, at least, we know such a course was pursued with considerable success. The provisions which Baboo Prosunno Coomar Tagore had made for the education of his late much lamented daughter, were unequivocal proofs of his sense of paternal duty, as well as of his energy and public spirit; the happy 39

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effects produced by his exertions, were illustrative of the practicability of the plan we are recommending. For a Hindu gentleman of rank and fortune so far to disregard the corrupt prejudices of a bigoted community, as to engage a European tutoress for the purpose of instructing a female member of his household, was no ordinary exhibition of moral fortitude; the success which crowned his efforts, was an earnest of what might yet be expected from similar measures. It would not be chimerical to hope, that if instruction could be offered under the auspices of a well-organized European-native Society, without demanding a sudden and violent revolution in the domestic economics of the Hindus, the cause of female improvement might gradually prosper, in Calcutta at least. While alluding to the almost unique example of Baboo Prosunno Coomar, it becomes extremely melancholy to reflect, that the first native lady that had cultivated European letters and acquired European accomplishments, and to whose instruction large funds had been cheerfully dedicated, by an enlightened and affectionate father, should be snatched away in the prime of life, to the deep affliction of her parents, and the sincere regret of all that have heard of her.32 Attempts on the part of husbands to instruct their own wives within the recesses of their houses, have also been reported to us by testimony on which we can rely. Of these, some have been crowned with partial success, others have proved total failures. All these efforts had, however, been undertaken under the most unfavourable circumstances; and therefore, while the successful cases ought to serve as encouragements, the disappointments that have been experienced, were perfectly natural. The soil had long continued fallow, the atmosphere was most ungenial, the seed had been but sparingly sown, and the exertions spent upon the work were necessarily feeble. The wonder, therefore, is, not that all the seeds did not germinate and thrive to maturity; but that any, however few, produced the desired fruits. Notwithstanding the insignificance of the crop, and the poverty of the harvest, the little that has been done, is an earnest of what may yet be expected from more vigorous efforts, and better regulated plans. If the difficulties which even husbands experience in getting access to their own wives during the day be remembered, the failures just referred to cannot excite any surprise. It is considered extremely uxorious in a person, especially when he is but a junior member in the family, often to spend his time within the female court of his house, or to seek the company of his wife before he retires to his own apartment in the night; he cannot therefore easily get opportunities of conversing with her during the day. If a quick sense of duty actuate him to undertake her tuition, he finds it impracticable to attend to it except at an advanced hour in the night; and since few can be competent at such a time for great intellectual exertions, the ill success we have mentioned was by no means unexpected. Where a husband could not remain in the society of his wife during the day without being marked with an opprobrious stigma, it could not be a matter of amazement or surprise if he failed in instructing her. Neither could the girl herself carry on her studies during day-light without annoyance and interruption. Besides the manual work of the household which might be allotted to her, and which would consume the greatest 40

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portion of her time, she could not easily get off from the company of her sisters and cousins, and retire for intellectual or devotional purposes. The scheme of private tuition, under the direction and management of a well-organized association, may rectify these evils, by reclaiming many a promising student from the vicious influence of her domestic companions, and therefore promises a richer crop and a more extensive harvest. But under the present state of things our teachers must be Europeans, since we shall not for a long time succeed in raising up such native tutoresses as might be able not only to impart instruction, but also to command, by their age and experience, the respect and reverence of those around them, that the mouth of calumny might be stopped, and no scandal thrown in so useful a course. And therefore, our expectations cannot be too ardent. For besides the paucity of such teachers, somewhat answering to the deaconesses of old, many other obstacles must be encountered. Against the frequent admittance of European ladies for a purpose so little appreciated, many doors will perhaps be closed. That in a few instances, the kindness of such visiters may be appreciated and gratefully acknowledged, is not a chimerical hope; but to calculate on their receiving a hearty welcome from many families, would be an irregular flight of the imagination. It is favourable for the scheme, that certain respectable members of the Hindu community and staunch supporters of the Dharma Sabha, have often admitted foreigners into their houses for the tuition of their boys, and entertained European guests upon festive occasions with viands held in abomination by the orthodox natives. The dignitaries of the Hindu fraternity having tolerated the access of Mletchas, no scruples of a religious character will perhaps be harboured against the reception of ladies’ visits for the purpose of female education; nor can the Brahmins consistently discharge their ecclesiastical fulminations against a course of conduct, no more opposed to the tenets of their theology, than the practice of their opulent patrons upon every occasion of a grand nautch. We cannot therefore conceive how any proceedings can be openly and officially instituted to excommunicate those that may receive the educational visits alluded to. But what the Brahmins as a body may be forced to tolerate, owing to the laxity of the age, may yet be counteracted by the general tone of society. The novelty of the step will perhaps provoke jealousy, and subject it to the silent, but unequivocal sneers of the community, and the effect in a thousand instances will prove as hurtful as if the Dharma Sabha had itself fulminated; for it would require as much resolution of mind to disregard biting insinuations, as the open opposition of the sacerdotal clan, A great barrier to private tuition within the boundaries of the Zenana itself, may accordingly be prevented by the unworthy inuendoes and bitter taunts of one’s own friends and neighbours. False reports may be circulated to the annoyance of the spirited Hindu that may afford his women the advantages of instruction; he will perhaps be charged with violating the rules of his sacred fraternity, and degrading the dignity of Brahminical discipline, by constant association with those, whom to touch were of itself an abomination. His name may become a proverb for habitually polluting the 41

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sanctity of a Hindu residence by admitting into its courts the defiled footsteps of an impure race. These obstacles, though not insurmountable, will nevertheless thwart the operation of the plan alluded to, by proving in several instances too powerful to be contended against. Still, since they are not insurmountable, they are to be resolutely encountered; and considering the little offence which the scheme proposed directly offers to the customs and institutions of the country, we may hope that as the blessings of female education will be more practically understood, and its influence even on our temporal interests more justly prized, many will be heroic enough to despise the taunts and sneers of their neighbours, and to contend for the cause of female emancipation in spite of their slanders. The educated native mind is not so destitute of moral energy that on matters of acknowledged importance it will blindly submit to the clamour of an ignorant multitude, whom it holds in contempt, and treats with ridicule. Our countrymen may not be willing to provoke the jealousy and ill-will of their friends and neighbours for things which they have not learnt to appreciate. Nor can apathy in a cause which is itself not prized, be considered a conclusive evidence of a want of moral courage. Radical changes in manners and customs, which the mind has been inured to hold in reverence ever since it first began to think, and over which antiquity has spread her delusive charms, are not to be expected, but in the pursuance of objects which are felt to be momentous, and under the influence of motives, sufficiently powerful to counteract the force of early impressions, and the deep-rooted prejudices of early education. Few can adequately conceive, without actually experiencing, the difficulty which attends the task of reconciling one’s self to new manners, new customs, new habits, and new modes of thought and action; and the repugnance of the Hindus to female education is sufficiently accounted for, when its tendency to overturn the present structure of their domestic economy is minutely investigated. The ignorance of women is so interwoven with the entire government of the household, that no active measures can be extensively adopted, without tolerating considerable innovations in domestic life. Failures, if they attend our scheme for a time, ought not therefore to make us droop in despair; but on the contrary, they should move us to more determined and vigorous exertions, whereby to illustrate the advantages, and create among the natives a just appreciation, of female education. We cannot here refrain from making reference to the attempts, made more than ten years ago, to introduce education into the harem of Mahomet Ali, the pasha of Egypt The success which crowned the exertions of Miss Holliday in the land of Ham, must encourage the friends of female education in the pursuit of similar schemes of domiciliary instruction in Bengal. Our countrymen cannot guard their females more closely than the followers of the Arabian prophet; and if an European lady could find means to recommend herself to the ladies of a Turkish palace, why may not similar openings be looked for in the mansions of the gentry of British India? The friends of female education must however abstain from hasty interference with inveterate prejudices. The spirit of Him who in every practicable 42

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way condescended to human infirmities, and the example of the apostle who was made all things to all men that he might by all means save some, should ever be borne in mind in a country like India. He who is forced to give up what is within his reach in his eagerness to grasp at too much, cannot be exonerated from the charge of imprudence; nor should the intelligent Christian consider himself as neglecting his Master’s cause, if he be obliged to content himself for a time with teaching nothing but literature and science. The sapper and the miner are agents as essential to the success of an army as the gunner and the musketeer. The counsel of Hekekyan Effendi to Miss Holliday, cannot be too strongly enforced upon the attention of similar labourers under similar circumstances.33 The extensive spread of education through the Hindu College, the General Assembly’s Institution, the Free church and other schools, which has caused, in Calcutta at least, a great movement in the native mind, opens a fair and cheerful prospect to our imagination, and is calculated to produce sanguine hopes regarding the future interests of India. It has turned the thoughts of the rising generation into a new channel, and imparted a degree of intellectual vigour which will not easily shake before the nod of a bigoted community. Our young friends have imbibed a spirit of mental independence, which renders them superior to a blind adulation of Brahminical authority; and which will fortify them against the encroachments of corrupt priestcraft. Already have a goodly number asserted their unrestricted right to think and act for themselves, by publicly abjuring the superstitions of the country in the very teeth of her false hierarchy, and by adopting a rational and a holy creed, in spite of the frantic rage of a depraved society; and if all have not displayed a like energy and fortitude, the whole community is still preparing for some great revolution, to signalize perhaps this very century, and to complete the triumph of knowledge against ignorance. As the educated youths become masters of families, a wide field will be opening for the exercise of female benevolence. We may hope that many of their number will accept for their wives the advantages of education, if tendered within their doors. Their minds have been sufficiently strengthened by the ennobling effects of education, so as not to waver in the performance of acknowledged duties to their wives and daughters, when a feasible plan shall be laid before them. The plan to be feasible must wink at certain conventional customs believed to be essential to the preservation of social order; nor should it demand great pecuniary sacrifices. Their resources is not generally so large as to suffice for the employment of proper instructors for the members of their Zenanas; nor are the bonds of kindred and natural affection so fragile in their breasts, as to be violated by any motive short of those which true religion furnishes; and if the simple object of education involved disbursements of funds which they could not command, or insisted on a renouncement of caste and relations, for which no earthly advantages could be felt as an adequate compensation; it would be difficult to conceive how the cause could prosper. But happily, the question of female education is not immediately connected with loss of caste, and may render a person obnoxious only to vain sarcasms from an ignorant and powerless multitude; and if it can be procured without 43

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great pecuniary sacrifices, a clear prospect will be before us, of, at least, a partial operation of the system. The progress of the system, however, will mainly depend upon the infusion of a more kindly spirit. The apathy which marks the efforts of the Hindus for the elevation of their females, must be supplanted by an animating zeal before much can be expected. In proportion as our countrymen will appreciate the benefits accruing from the instruction of their wives, they will be persuaded to exert more powerfully, and to contend more decidedly, against the impediments in their way. Under the present circumstances, therefore, every effort that tends to rouse them from their moral lethargy, and to incite them to energetic action, must be acknowledged to be a preparatory step towards the consummation of the object. But with speculative expositions of its benefits, our patience has nearly been exhausted. The error of our friends, we are convinced, lies not in theory. They acknowledge the advantages of female education, and are not afraid or ashamed to assert them in their writings. In fact, verbal approbations of such a cause have become so fashionable in the new school, that a deep stigma is set upon a person that presumes to raise a dissentient voice. But empty and theoretic assertions that survive not their articulation, have as yet procured no benefits for the sex; and the cause shall continue stagnant, so long as the support it meets with is confined to mere wordy declamations. Even though the professed advocates of female improvement continue for ages to plead by their lips and pens, the objects of their benevolent declamation shall nevertheless continue in their present state, while nothing is actually done. It is much to be regretted, that our intelligent countrymen have so little personal experience of the happy results of female education in European society. Although they can comprehend in theory the advantages to be derived from the instruction of their women, and may be fairly charged with coldness of heart and weakness of principle, for hesitating to act upon their convictions; yet it must be acknowledged in justice to them, that their inactivity is neither surprizing nor unnatural. They understand speculatively, indeed, that females, when educated, must become more valuable members of society, and better fitted for the discharge of their duties; but they have not as yet practically witnessed these effects. They have not as yet seen with their eyes the superiority which education imparts to female recipients: the reports of female elevation of which they hear or read, cannot influence their hearts so much as ocular evidence might do. Few would be able to answer in the affirmative, if asked, whether they had ever been in company with and spoken to any educated females; and none could say, yes, if the question referred to their acquaintance with many superior members of the sex. Whatever plans may introduce intelligent Hindus more extensively to the society of educated ladies, and thereby familiarize their senses with spectacles of female superiority, must operate like a magical spell upon the civilization of the country. Few minds are so dull as to witness the happy effects of female enlightenment among their neighbours, without a longing desire of enjoying the same blessings in their own family; and an ocular attestation of what is at present 44

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known only from books and oral reports, cannot fail to exercise an actuating and a persuasive power peculiar to itself. When such large bodies of Europeans are sojourning in the East with their ladies, the ocular evidence, which is so great a desideratum, is perfectly feasible. If every gentleman that desires the amelioration of native society, would condescend to allow the intelligent Hindus of his acquaintance a sight of what female education has done in his own domestic circle, by occasionally introducing them to his family, the happiest results might be anticipated. Man has been often styled an imitative creature, that is influenced more by the tangible effects of a beneficial scheme, than by all the theories and fairy prospects which his judgment or his imagination can conceive or fancy. The actual operation and visible consequences of a salutary project are as greater incentives to duty than mere theories, as examples are more efficacious than precepts; and accordingly, if our educated countrymen can themselves witness the happy fruits of education among European females, their minds will receive an impetus, which cannot but lead to vigorous efforts for the reformation of their domestic lives.34 If the minds of the rising generation be deeply imbued with impressions favourable to female education; if they be made, by constant intercourse with Europeans, to witness with their own senses the advantages produced upon society, and the benefits accruing to families, from the moral and intellectual improvement of women, more than half the work which we fondly desire, shall be thereby consummated. The elderly members of the Hindu community, who have been accustomed all their life to review with religious reverence the institutions of their country, and the examples of their ancestors, cannot be expected easily to renounce opinions and prejudices to which such sanctity is attached, or to discontinue practices endeared to them by the observance of their forefathers, and enforced by the advice of priests and the general tone of society. Much cooperation or assistance in the cause of female education cannot therefore be looked for from the older and more orthodox Hindus. These champions of Brahminism dote upon every thing which they find was sanctioned by Menu or Vyas, and are hostile to any advance towards improvement. But the rising generation who have themselves received a liberal education, and upon whom the tenets of Hinduism have but a feeble hold, and the Brahmins possess scarcely any ascendancy, who have imbibed from the examples of high-minded Reformers, commemorated in History, sentiments of aversion to antiquated superstitions, promise to become the most powerful and efficient instruments for helping in the cause of female education. If opportunities be sought whereby to direct their energies to this great object, if proper and powerful inducements be offered in order to move them to ameliorate females under their influence, their good will and co-operation may be secured. If those whose opinions they treat with respect, and whose approbation they are ambitious of securing, constantly remind them of their duties to women, and they begin to feel that it would be almost disreputable to neglect one half of their wards and dependents, they may not only embrace with gratitude every opportunity offered by European benevolence of educating their wives and 45

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families, but also labour of their own accord to ensure this object. The youthful husband may then be filled with a desire of imparting to his wife those advantages which he has freely received at school, and thus a spirited beginning may be made to end with the most important consequences. Large fields for the dissemination of education among females have been opened in those places, where great numbers of natives have embraced Christianity. Relieved from the spell of those prejudices which have perpetuated female degradation in the East, and stimulated by motives which are inseparable from a healthy state of Christianity, these Hindu Christians have the singular felicity of freely imparting to their daughters the advantages of a liberal education. But the author is deterred by a feeling of delicacy from expatiating on the efforts a community of which he is himself a member, and which, though yearly rising in importance by fresh accessions, is still but a mere speck in native society. Nor must we confound the efforts of a few individual converts with cultivated minds, who have embraced Christianity after rational conviction, with the doings of the mass whose principles and motives must be estimated agreeably to what we are bound to believe in charity rather than according to what we can depose from actual observation. For it must be acknowleged that the vast majority of converts have come from the lowest ranks of Hindu society and are perfectly illiterate. But the religion they have adopted possesses a self-elevating power, the influence of which must eventually benefit the community of its recipients. We are aware, indeed, of the suspicions with which their strength of evangelical principle is viewed by many of their own friends and supporters; but much, we are assured, may nevertheless be done among them and with them. In a country where a most monstrous and demoralizing system of error has prevailed for ages immemorial, it cannot be a matter of surprise, if the first converts be tainted with the corruptions under which they had so long lived and grown. Even of the European nations constituting the ornament of Christendom, the original converts were weak in the faith, and had but faintly adorned the doctrine of God their Saviour. The barbarians who emigrated from the vast plains of Central Asia, and carried misery and desolation wherever they went, put on, upon their conversion, the form, without exhibiting in their lives, the power of godliness. It was not till the Gospel had taken deep root in their countries, that its influence was visible in their life and character; and then what the fathers had merely professed, the sons adorned in the succeeding ages. Similar may in the Providence of God be the case with the multitudes that have embraced Christianity in India. However weak their own principles and doubtful their personal improvement, their children are under the influence and controul of their pastors; and if the Church perform her duty to her neophytes, happy results may be anticipated with God’s blessing upon her efforts. Not that we are at all to slacken our discipline with reference to the admission of new professors. We cannot be too cautious in the reception of candidates to the fellowship of the gospel. But as the most vigilant minister is not proof against deception, and as unworthy professors have crept in, we must do what we can to extract good from evils which we cannot avoid. Much may and ought to be done 46

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with their children, for whose education the Christian community is partly responsible, and whose characters must, to a certain extent, be influenced by the advice and instruction of their pastors and teachers. We cannot here dissemble our surprise at the little that has been done with the children of native Christians. We can name several individuals whose fathers for two generations had been Christians by profession, and we know numbers who were born after the conversion of their parents. These have from their infancy been brought up more or less under the eye of European missionaries, and yet none from their ranks has to this day received any but an imperfect education; and strange to say, the only native catechists as yet raised in that great collegiate institution of the Church of England, which stands as a monument, on the banks of the Hooghly, of the piety and Christian energy of the first Protestant Bishop in India, are students of the Hindu and Medical Colleges, subsequently embracing Christianity. Not a single native has passed Bishop’s College, whose parents were Christians, or whose elementary education was conducted under the auspices of a Missionary Society.35 We hope not to be understood to reflect against any of those respected and honoured individuals, who from love to God and regard for souls, have left the society of friends and relations, and have braved oceans and seas in order to preach the Gospel to the heathen. We would gladly bear testimony to the privations and troubles they voluntarily undergo, and the cares and anxieties which incessantly harass their minds in the prosecution of their Master’s cause; and for the deficiencies we have mentioned, the whole Christian community generally, and not any persons individually, appear to be responsible. One great cause which has occasioned the shortcomings alluded to, and sadly embarrassed the educational and other agencies of Missionary Societies, is the want of union, and consequently of strength, in the Church. So little do Christians of modern times endeavour to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, that sects and denominations have multiplied without number, and as each pursues a separate interest, and keeps a separate establishment, the large funds which Christian piety supplies, are spent upon multitudes of isolated schools, which, in consequence of these divisions, all become more or less inefficient. If the unity and uniformity which Christ himself so fervently desired (John xvii. 21.) were sought by those that bore his name, a graduated series of institutions, mutually depending upon each other, might be founded, from elemental and grammar schools, to academic and collegiate establishments;36 the children of Christian natives would not then occupy that degraded and prostrate position in morals, intellectuals, and spirituals, which is at present their portion. To return from this digression;—we consider the education of the female children of native Christians as a great step toward the instruction of the weaker sex in the country, and most decidedly would we raise our feeble voice in support of the appeals made from time to time for the education of Christian children in the interesting district of Kishanghur. We hope however that the managers of Missions will aim at a high standard in the education they bestow. 47

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The establishment of infant schools in different parts of the country, for the instruction of both male and female children, would also greatly help the cause of female education. The Hindus do not seclude their women in the tender age of childhood, and might be easily prevailed upon to send them to school as infants, if respectable institutions were opened. The effects of such a system would perhaps surpass all expectation, and lead to a new æra in the history of our females. Many husbands would gladly, as they might easily, keep up the instruction of their wives, where it had already been carried to a certain height; and if the case has been otherwise with those whose partners have been instructed in the central and other schools, it is because the husbands in the lower classes (and the present public schools have never been able to attract the higher orders) are themselves illiterate, and could neither help nor encourage their wives to continue their education. But we must not be understood to look with very fond hopes or sanguine expectations on any of the plans we have suggested above. As almost the only expedients that can be adopted under present circumstances, with any prospect of success, they are doubtless entitled to a fair trial. But the progress of female education depends so much upon the social improvement of the nation, that we cannot calculate upon much success before we advance considerably in civilization. The education of females may at the same time be considered a cause and an effect of social improvement. The one is intimately associated with the other. No people can be civilized while their women are in a state of moral and intellectual prostration; nor can women be long suffered to pine in ignorance, when civilization is once introducted. Neither the way here recommended of sending female teachers into the Zenana, nor any other that is imaginable, can work vigorously before the demoralizing institutions of Brahminism are subverted by the sacred fabric of divine truth, and before the secular affairs of our countrymen prosper under the twofold influence of more liberal and humane legislation on the part of our conquerors, and of more industrious and active habits in our own community. While the women continue as exiles from society under the sentence of seclusion, and while they are forced to accept unknown husbands long before the dawn of reason in their minds, little can be attempted with any hope of success for ameliorating their condition. The authority of Menu and Vyas must be superseded by the higher sanctions of divine inspiration, before a complete, or even an extensive, emancipation of the weaker sex can be expected in India. If our educated countrymen consider attentively the lessons of history, they will easily discover the true remedy for the perils of female society, and ascertain what has proved the most mighty instrument in the enfranchisement of women. It is a remarkable fact, striking the senses of the most superficial observer, that Christianity, and Christianity alone, has as yet been their most faithful and devoted friend. By practically inculcating the salvability of their souls, and their responsibility as moral agents, the Gospel furnished a provision for their comforts and improvement, which has teemed with such happy consequences in the West. The father was taught the duty of educating his daughter as an intelligent and moral agent; the husband was instructed on the propriety of loving his wife, even as Christ loved his Church; 48

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and on society was enforced the obligation of honouring those that composed the better half of the human species. The practices of polygamy, of unlawful and arbitrary divorces, and of tyranny over the weaker sex were thus eradicated from the face of Christendom; and an impetus was communicated to the cause of female elevation, the effects of which are visible in the society of European ladies. Previous to a like radical change in the sentiments and feelings of our countrymen, and a like stimulus to female improvement conveyed by the sanctifying influence and the holy motives of the Gospel, one could not look with sanguine hopes for the full consummation of our object. The unhappy captive in the Zenana cannot be rescued so long as the inhuman monster that sentenced her incarceration, is not spoiled of his dominion and banished from the land; nor can the degradation of our sisters tadmit of complete relief, before the nation will acknowledge the truth, and be actuated by the spirit of that religion, whereof one characteristic motto is, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” But though our own belief is that female education will not generally prevail before the introduction of Christianity, we are prepared to hail with joy every movement toward the instruction of our country-women. An enlightened Hindu, that is not himself a Christian, will of course disagree with us in our anticipations. We shall rejoice to find him realizing the idea of female instruction in the present state of society. We shall rejoice to see any person, whatever be his religious creed, leading in the great cause of improving the fairer half of the population of India. This cause demands the most attentive consideration on the part of all who can appreciate the benefits of knowledge. Those, especially, who would make us believe that pure Hinduism, the unadulterated teaching of the Vedas, is in itself a most rational body of divinity, are bound to show that their theory is not practically incompatible with the improvement of their wives, daughters, and sisters. As our improvement in spirituals is necessary to awake us to a sense of our duties, and thereby stimulate our exertions for the welfare of just one half the human species, so is the temporal amelioration of our condition necessary to the execution of our project. It is a sad but an undeniable fact, that the greatest portion of our countrymen can ill dispense with the services of their women to afford them leisure for study, and are forced by their reduced circumstances to impose upon them their whole domestic drudgery. This hard necessity must long teach them the policy of perpetuating the ignorance and degradation of those, for whose intellectual recreation they can allow no vacation, and whom they cannot exempt from the meanest employments of the house. The mental exertion which the reception of education requires, can scarcely be made with any success, while the hand is full of such a variety of hard tasks as falls to the lot of the woman in Hindustan; nor can placidness and contentment, in a mind capable of literary occupations, consist with incessant calls to the most laborious and fatiguing toils. What time or taste can our sisters have for intellectual amusement, while they are continually worried by the alternate performance of the duties of sweepers, bearers, cooks, khetmutgars, and masalchees? And yet their husbands cannot help this. The rooms must be swept, the beds and lights 49

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must be prepared, the meals must be dressed and served out, the plates must be cleaned; and if the men must attend to their professional employments, and their poverty allow not the entertainment of servants, the tasks must devolve upon the women. How then can the natives be reasonably expected, under such circumstances, imprudently to encourage a system of education, which may interrupt the performance of domestic business, and create in the females a refined taste for expensive articles, the gratification whereof must multiply calls upon their exhausted purses? Under this extensive view of things, every attempt that is made to enlighten and convert, to enrich and raise the males from their present spiritual and temporal condition, must eventually exercise a happy influence upon the welfare of the women. Knowledge must be disseminated, superstition must be eradicated, truth must be implanted, trade and the arts must be countenanced, indigenous talent, genius, and industry must be encouraged, before a considerable change can be expected in native society; and prior to such a change, much improvement cannot take place in the most delicate point of treatment to females. Men must be reclaimed from a blind adulation of custom, the sanctifying energies of truth must work upon them, the languor and inclemency of poverty must be removed from the leading members of society, before the Hindus will set their hearts upon such a total reform of domestic life, as female education, if extensively diffused, will call for. To expect that they will at once relieve their partners from hard manual task, or that these will turn to good account an immediate lift to the post enjoyed by the educated ladies of the West, is to expect a miracle. If the past dealings of Divine Providence may form good criteria for anticipating the future, no sanguine expectations can reasonably be entertained. For centuries did the renovating truths of the Gospel shed their benign influence upon Europe, once involved, more deeply perhaps than Asia, in darkness, before society acquired its present tone, and put on its present features. Long had the powers of the human mind developed in various ways, and commerce and the arts had helped the cause of human improvement, before the spectacle of female enfranchisement, such as we now see, was exhibited. And is a precocious advancement to be expected in India? Are we to do here in a few years, what was not achieved in Europe before many ages? Are inveterate evils of deeper root to be eradicated in a moment from Hindu society, when the work of destroying the same in Europe occupied so many centuries, and required such continued exertions? Thus then we see that previous to the conversion of the natives, and the amelioration of their temporal condition, much cannot be looked for in the way of female education. It is impossible that many can be instructed under the present unfavourable circumstances. Respectable native females must be raised up as tutoresses and schoolmistresses, and the women must be liberated from their imprisonment and relieved from their laborious tasks, before the cultivation of letters can come into general vogue among them. But such a system can never be introduced before the dissemination of the gospel, and the social improvement of the people. 50

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We must here take the liberty of reminding our British conquerors of the duties devolving upon them from their peculiar position in the East. Divine Providence has tolerated their elevation to the dignity of rulers in an empire, which even the Macedonian victor had failed to annex to his almost unlimited dominions. They are now enjoying precedence and supremacy in a land, which had from time immemorial attracted the eye of the world, but of which, by their birth, they possessed not even the rights of citizenship. They are deriving wealth, and patronage, and influence, and power from a country, thousands of miles distant from the place which gave them birth. Is it to be supposed that God has crowned their projects with success, and signalized their arms with victory, for the sole purpose of multiplying their enjoyments, extending their patronage, and increasing their opulence? Was it only that they might taste the milk and honey with which the heritage flowed, that they have been suffered to obtain such a firm footing in India? By no means! He that had promised to his Son, “the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession,” rescued this vast empire from the clutches of Brahma and Mahomet, that the standard of the Cross might supplant those of the Trishula and the Crescent. He that had predetermined the preaching of his Gospel unto all creatures, and the restoration of the numberless sheep he owned among the Gentiles, entrusted the country to his favoured servants of Christian Britain, that the superstructure of divine truth might accompany the erection of their castles and fortresses, and that the religion of peace, with all its attendant blessings, domestic and social, might be offered to the adoption, and commended to the consciences of the people, about to the emancipated from the thraldom of demons and monsters. So long then, and so far only, as our masters labour in the execution of these great purposes, they rightly retain their vassalage under God. How immensely does this consideration enhance their obligations in the sight of the Almighty! It is their part not only to assist, but to take the lead in the improvement of the country, and the regeneration and complete civilization of her inhabitants! If the possession of gospel knowledge, and the enjoyment of the two-fold promises of gospel godliness, entail of themselves the most weighty obligations on their partakers, so that every Christian may say with St. Paul, “I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise;” how much more pressing do these duties become, when, in addition to these advantages, the facilities that have been opened, and the active influence that has been vouchsafed to the British nation, is taken into account? Be it understood that we are talking generally of the duties which Christian England owes to her heathen dependancy India. We acknowledge with gratitude that our country is infinitely better off under British auspices, than she ever was within the memory of man. Neither the Mogul, nor the Afghan, nor any of our own native dynasties, understood the principles of that enlightened policy, which is the glory of British supremacy. We do not therefore mean to deny our own obligations to England, when we still speak of her duties to us. We are fully sensible of the improvements effected in our country under her influence; of the security 51

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we enjoy under her powerful protection; of the progress of education under the immediate patronage of the local governments; of the encouragement tendered to native talent, and the removal of invidious distinctions and disabilities as far as the power of the authorities on the spot extends; of the stimulus given to the commerce of the country and the development of its wealth; of the principle of a representative government generously introduced by the municipal act of 1847. We also acknowledge with thankfulness the piety and charity of many a private society in England, devoting large funds for the spiritual improvement of our countrymen. Why then, it may be asked, do we still admonish our governors on their duty? Simply because there is room for further improvement; because our estimate of British duty is formed by a consideration of the high principles which distinguish the august legislature of Westminister; because Britain stands on a proud eminence as the improver and civilizer of the world. The children of a great man may be excused for lofty aspirations which might ill befit the offspring of a pauper; the subjects of a great sovereign may desire boons, proportioned to the moral dignity of their rulers. We have already remarked that the temporal amelioration of our countrymen is necessary for the improvement of our females, and it may not be irrelevant to add that this amelioration depends in a great measure on a still more liberal encouragement of native talent on the part of our rulers. The local governments of India have indeed given this encouragement to the utmost of their porwer, and it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge that we could not be placed under governors more humane. They have never neglected the claims of native subjects in the distribution of preferments. But their hands are fettered; their powers are restricted. They can only make Deputy Collectors, Deputy Magistrates, Deputy judges (i. e. Moonsiffs and Sudder Ameens,) and Sub-assistant Surgeons. In appointments of greater importance their choice is limited by law. Is it unreasonable to desire, now that the country can produce so much of indigenous talent, that the supreme ruler of this magnificent appendage of the British crown, representing the majesty of a kingdom, at once the most powerful and the most civilized on the face of the globe, may be unfettered in his selection of public functionaries? may be invested with those powers of which even the viceroys of the Afghan and Mogul dynasties were not destitute? The possession of such unrestricted powers will, on the one hand, impart to the British Proconsul the full complement of the dignity, due to the representative of a sovereign, whose dominions extend to every quarter of the globe, and to the supreme ruler of a country which produces an annual revenue of twenty crores of Rupees; and it will, on the other hand, supply every one, permanently attached to the soil, with fresh motives of self-improvement, and stimulate him with the laudable ambition of serving his country under the auspices of a powerful and paternal government. The administration of some of the Mogul emperors was rendered illustrious in India by the co-operation of Hindu and Mahometan functionaries in the service of the state; but that lustre will dwindle into the glimmering of a feeble taper, when a galaxy of Todermuls and Man Sings will reflect the full 52

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blaze of the policy, which magnifies the honor, and consolidates the power of Great Britain, while it raises the character, and promotes the social improvement of the most distant nations of the Earth. But it is time to relieve the reader’s patience; we will trespass only a few moments longer on his attention, while we briefly advert to the duties our own countrymen owe to themselves, their families, and their country. The regeneration and complete civilization of India are objects, with reference to which, the duty and interest of the natives are intimately linked together. They ought therefore to put forth all their energies for the amelioration of their native land. And much depends on their personal exertions. The philanthropic efforts of Europeans can be no avail, so long as the natives will not help themselves. However liberal the parliament may be in its legislation for India, and how zealously soever the local governments may give effect to laws calculated to improve the social condition of their subjects, no permanent good can result unless the people introduce reforms in their own households; unless those that are educated reduce their principles to practice in their own homes. Many there are who can beautifully theorize on female improvement; how small the number that is resolved to verify the theory! Many there are that can inveigh against the custom of giving away infant girls by early marriages; perhaps none has yet waxed bold enough practically to protest against the evil. How long is the present state of things to continue? How long is principle to be sacrificed to custom, fear, or policy? The custom is acknowledged to be vicious; the fear is groundless; the policy is questionable. The heads of Hindu dals or clans may threaten with excommunication the spirited individual that may think of rescuing his daughter from the debasing effects of the Hindu rules of marriage; but the number of educated natives is sufficiently large to form a dal of their own. Why do they not attempt it? No exertions can be more patriotic, more worthy of instructed minds, more honourable in themselves and beneficial to India, than efforts to improve the tone of female society and to ameliorate its condition Let the educated Hindus discontinue the force of a child of eight or nine entering into a solemn matrimonial contract; let them in their own turn brand with the stigma of inhumanity, the man who would sacrifice the lasting interests of his daughter for the sake of maintaining his caste; let them excommunicate from their dal those who would continue to perpetuate female degradation. Such a practical exhibition of principle would be truly heroic; it would embalm the memory of the leading reformers in the estimation of the latest posterity; it would raise the Bengali character beyond conception, and put the bitterest of our detracting opponents to silence. Nor must it be forgotten that righteousness exalteth a nation. We are far from desiring that our countrymen should adopt our opinions on our own credit; Christianity itself repudiates the idea of depending on no other basis than human influence. But addressing ourselves to intelligent and educated men, we do not perhaps incur the danger of being mistaken or misrepresented, when we say, that it is the part of a rational man to inquire for himself and satisfy his mind of religious truth. No social reform in India can be complete without the aid of true religion. False 53

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religion deteriorates the mind; no religion leaves a blank in it, and deprives society of its only great bond. It is when true religion sheds its benign influence over the instructed mind, that nations and individuals may expect all the improvement of which they are capable.

Notes 1. The following is a list of the duties which the Brahmin must religiously perform every day in the order in which they are here mentioned, and according to the manner prescribed under each head in the Shasters. 1. Answering the calls of nature.—2. Cleaning.—3. Washing.—4. Binding the hair.—5. Rules for taking water into the hand for purifying the mouth.—6. Brushing the teeth.—7. Morning bath and prayer—8. Duties during the first eighth part of the day.—9. Those during the second eighth part.—10. Concerning writing.—11. Duties during the third eighth part of the day.—12. Those during the fourth eighth part.—13. Offerings of water to the manes of deceased relatives.—14. Prayer.—15. Worship—16. Worship of the Sun.—17. Meditations on the Vedas.—18. Worship of the Gods.—19. That of Ganesha.—20. Of the lingum of Shiva.—21. Offerings of incense.—22. Of lighted candles.—23. Of eatables.—24. Rules for entertaining guests.—25. Offerings to cows—26. Of eating.—27. Offering to the five airs of the body, and eating only with the fingers.—28. On the six seasons, and the food most appropriate for each.—29. The qualities of the six tastes.—30. Criteria for judging of different constitutions of the body.—31. Qualities of rice.—32. Of herbs and pulse.—33. Of salt.—34. Of fruits.—35. Of water.—36. Of milk.—37. Of curds— 38. Of sugar.—39. Of ghee.—40. Of sugar cane.—41, Duties during the sixth-eighth part of the day.—42. Duties of the night.—43. Rules relating to making and going to bed. Each of these heads has been largely dwelt upon in the A’hniha Taltwa, whence we have extracted them. The prescribed rules have scarcely left room for individual discretion in any of the actions just enumerated. The arrogance with which the Hindu legislators have ordained uniformity of observance in a religious way on the most indifferent and ordinary matters, cannot be contemplated without the utmost indignation and contempt; while the two-fold authority, to which they aspired, of physical and spiritual doctors, and the confidence with which they delivered opinions on the medicinal properties of eatables and drinkables,—and that under the pretended sanctions of the Most High,—may be somewhat amusing to the professors of materia medica. It was almost impossible, however, that such encroachments upon personal liberty could be tolerated for any considerable length of time. Custom has long since dispensed with this daily ritual; the rules laid down by our sapient lawgivers stand only as dead letters on their writings. Mr. Colebrooke has made a digest of the ceremonies which Brahminism enjoins upon its votaries, whence European readers may derive some notion of the fetters by which the followers of this system are bound. See his Miscellaneous Essays, vol. i. 2.

A mother having brought forth a boy may be allowed to do her accustomed work, bathing after twenty nights; but after a month, when she is delivered of a girl.—PAITHANASI in the Suddhi Tatttwa.

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3.

“Come, O thou blessing-dispensing goddess! celebrated by the name of the Great Shashthi, and by thy divine energy protect my son in the watch-room. “As Scanda the son of Gouri, was ever guarded by thee, so may this my son be likewise preserved! Reverence to thee, O Shashthi!”—Jyotis Tattwa. 4.

“At the age of five, when Janárdan (Vishnu) is not in a state of slumber, a boy is to be made to commence the study of letters, Hari, Lakshmi, and Saraswati having been first worshipped.”—Vishnu Dharmottara. 5.

“The tutor sitting with his face towards the east is to instruct the pupil having his face turned towards the west.”—Vrihaspati. “He is a good scribe whose letters meet at the top, are full, and well arranged in the line.”—Matsyapwrana. 6. A friend who reviewed the first edition of this work pointed out the following passage from the Mahanirvan Tantra, prescribing the duty of educating females:

The daughter should likewise be nursed and educated with care, and married with gifts of money and jewels to a learned man.” 7. “The Vedas are not even to be heard either by the servile class, women, or degraded Brahmins.”—Shri Bhágavat. “Women have no business with the texts of the Veda.”—Menu ix. 18. A few solitary instances are on record of the Vedas being expounded to females; the most striking example is that of Yaguawalkya catechizing his wife Maitreyi. 8.

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“Pronunciation, description of sacred rites, grammar, versification, pure and mixed mathematics, and glossarial explanation of obscure terms are the six members of the Vedas.”—Amara. The friendly reviewer, already referred to, is inclined to think that the Vedangas are not forbidden to the classes to whom the study of the Vedas is decidedly prohibited. This is perhaps a point open to controversy. 9. “The treatise on the Nyáya, above referred to, is by many believed to be Lilávati’s own composition, although the book itself (at least the copy I have used, being that which belonged to the Library of Fort William College, and is now preserved in the Asiatic Society’s Museum) purports to be the production of Acharya Ballabha. It is also a commonly received opinion that there were two Lilavatis, the heroines of the two works mentioned above. 10. The words of Menu are very expressive:

Ch. 5, v. 151, which Sir W. Jones has thus rendered, “Him to whom the father has given her, or her brother with the paternal assent, let her obsequiously honour while he lives; and when he dies, let her never neglect him.” 11. “The seizure f a maiden by force from her house, while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage styled Rakshasa.” Menu iii. 33. This kind of marriage is in the 26th verse pronounced admirable for the military classes. 12.

“The marriage of a girl (whatever her caste) is to be celebrated after she is seven years old, otherwise it becomes contrary to the dictates of religion. At the age of eight she becomes a Gouri, (that is, her father by giving her away at this age obtains the merit attached to the gift of Gouri,) at the age of nine she becomes a Rohini, and at the age of ten a mere virgin. Her youth commences if she is older. Therefore the wise are to dispose of her before the close of her tenth year, even if the time were otherwise inauspicious or improper. The father of an unmarried girl, that has passed her tenth year, incurs the crime of destroying her embryo, and such a girl brings upon herself the stigma of a

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Vrishali. The weak-minded Brahmin that espouses such a girl loses his title to funeral obsequies, and ought to be turned out of society as the husband of a Vrishali.” Bhavadeva Bhatta in Udvaha Tattwa and Atri and Káshyapa. Menu has somewhat softened the rigor of these rules by sanctioning the postponement of a girl’s marriage if a well qualified husband is not found.

“It is better that a maiden, though of full age, should remain unmarried all her life, than that she should ever be given to a worthless husband.”—Institutes ix. 89. 13. See the meaning of in Wilson’s Sanscrit Dictionary.—Lakshmana thus expresses his astonishment on finding a woman, walking in a desert wild:— “What! art thou wandering fearless, whose form is that of one who should not see even the sun?”—Bhatti. 14. Rukmini, daughter of the king of Vidarbhs, a few days before her expected marriage with a person for whom she had no esteem, writing to Krishna, the report of whose accomplishments had attracted her affections, thus takes notice of the obstacles which lay in the way of her lover’s access to her:

“Having come, O thou invincible one! secretly into Vidarbha at the head of thy officers on the day before the marriage, and having subdued the forces of Shishupala and the king of Magadha, carry me away suddenly as the just reward of thy valour, agreeably to the rules of Rakshas matrimony. If thou ask, how thou shalt take me who am secured in the recesses of the palace, without killing my friends and relations, I will tell thee an expedient by which thy way may be cleared. There is on the day before the matrimony a great family procession, when the bride must issue out for the purpose of worshipping Girisha.”—Shri. Bhag. 10th Scandhs. The celestial swan, who cuts such a prominent figure in the Naishadha, and who was boasting of the lessons he had given on gesticulation to the ladies of a royal family, attributes his admittance into their company to his volant powers:

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“The recesses of the palace not being inaccessible to birds, we enter therein and instruct the beauteous queens on the most graceful gesticulation.”—Naishadha, chap. iii. When Nala got access, by an especial and miraculous providence of the gods, into the quarters of Damayanti, daughter of Bhims, she inquires with astonishment:

“How is it thou hast come here? How is it thou hast not been observed? For my quarters are well guarded, and the king is severe in his discipline.”—Mahabharata. We do not mean to assert that females were excluded in ancient times with the same rigor as at the present day; but the practice is not entirely owing to the Mahometans. 15. Cecrop’s law, and perhaps a few others, are happy exceptions. 16.

The wife who commits herself to the flames on the death of her husband shall equal Arundhati, and reside in Swerga. She who thus follows her husband shall dwell in heaven as many years as there are hairs on the human body, even three and half crores of years. Angiras in Shuddhi Tattwa.

“She, whose sympathy feels the pains and joys of her husband, who mourns and pines in his absence, and dies when he dies, it a good and loyal wife.”—Harita in ditto. “According to the Rig-Veda the loyal wife shall not be deemed a suicide”—Brahma Purana in ditto. 17.

18. “He whose widow is not dead, has half his body in the land of the living.”—Yagnawalkya. 19.

“By a girl or by a young woman, or by a woman advanced in years, nothing must be done even in her own dwelling place according to her mere pleasure. In childhood must

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a female be dependent on her father; in youth on her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons: a woman must never see independence.”—Menu.

“On the death of the husband, without issue, his relations have the dominion over his widow, having all authority to controul her gifts, and to maintain her person. If the husband’s relations be dead, then the widow must be subject to her paternal kindred; and if both her husband’s and father’s relations be defunct, then she is to depend upon the reigning government.”—Nárada. 20.

“Where females are honoured, there the deities are pleased; but where they are dishonoured, there all religious acts become fruitless. Where female relations are made miserable, the family of him who makes them so, very soon wholly perishes, but where they are not unhappy, [t]he family always increases.”—Menu iii. 56, 67. 21. The author knows personally individuals that have married twenty wives, without possessing any means, or pursuing any employment, whereby to sustain their own lives, much less to afford a decent maintenance to their wives. It is not uncommon for sons of Kulins to profess perfect ignorance of the number of their half-brothers and step-mothers. Their fathers multiply wives, even after passing the age of 60 or 70, and they do not always succeed in making a correct census of the increasing number of their mothers. 22. A Bengali newspaper lately reported a strange story. The daughter of an inhabitant of Jessore was married to a Kulin, who had not visited the family for a long time. An impostor made his appearance one evening, introducing himself as the husband of the damsel. The inmates of the house had not seen the real husband for many years; and the impostor played his part so artfully that every one was deceived. The parents of the girl were far too glad on the advent of their supposed son-in-law to question the veracity of their guest. They gave him a hearty welcome, and introduced him to their daughter’s quarters, where the impostor slept for the night; but before break of day the next morning he decamped, carrying with himself the jewels which he had stolen from the unhappy girl’s person. 23. A letter appeared lately in one of our Bengali newspapers containing a description of the present state of our female society, and purporting to be the composition of a native lady. The facetious editor attributed its authorship to a fair correspondent with the sole intention, perhaps, of producing a dramatic effect on his readers. The picture, whether drawn by a female pencil or not, appears however to be taken from life. We have elsewhere inserted an English translation of the remarkable epistle. See A Appendix. 24. The abolition of the Suttee has we are happy to say saved our Bengal females from the peril of a violent suicide. The same humane law has now been adopted in many of the native states throughout Hindustan.

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25. So little is the care which our Bengali authors have taken to avoid indelicacy of expression, that even the Probodh Chundrika and the Hitopadesha, works printed under European patronage, are not free from objections in this respect. 26. Menu considers liberty allowed to females as a dangerous indulgence; and classes it in the same category with other incentives to crime.

“The following six lead to crime and impurity in women—vis. drinking, keeping company with bad men, quarrelling with their own husbands, wandering at large, sleeping at unseasonable hours, and lodging at a stranger’s house.”—Institutes ix. 13. Much sagacity is displayed in this remark; it was certainly well applicable to the state of society in which Menu lived. 27. An enlightened friend and countryman, familiar with the idea of female instruction in his own family, suggests the propriety of sketching the kind of education we would recommend to our countrywomen. His letter we have printed by permission in the Appendix. 28. Rajah Buddinauth Roy. 29. This was written in 1841. 30. “Fæminæ per fæminas, says Grotius, primi Christianismi cognitione imbui et sic ad Ecclesias pertrahi debebunt.” Clemens (of Alexandria) speaks more particularly; συνδιακονους προς τας ουκουσας γυναικας (by which he meant the female catechists,) δι ων εις την γυναικονιτια. αδιαβλητως παρεισδυετο ἡ του κυριου διδασκαλια. And the author of the Apost. Const. testifies to the same effect; εστι γαρ ὀποταν εκ τισιοικιαις ανδρα διακονον γυναιξιν ου δυνατον πεμπειν δια του απιστους αποστελεις ουν γυναικα διακονον. It must be acknowledged that we are indebted for these passages to Hamon L’Estrange. 31. The following representation by Corn. Nepos of Greek manners, as contrary to Roman, may be called an exact antitype of Hindu customs in this respect:—“Contra ea pleraque nostris moribus sunt decora, quæ apud illos turpia putantur. Quem enim Romanorum pudet uxorem ducere in convivium? Aut cujus mater familias non primum locum tenet aedium, quæ in celebritate versatur. Quod multo sit aliter in Græcia, Nam neque in convivium adhibetur, nisi propinquorum; neque sedet, nisi in interiore parte ædium, quæ gynæconitis appellatur: quo nemo accedit, nisi propinqua cognatione conjunctus.” —Corn. Nepo. Prefam. 32. It were exceedingly to be wished, that the literary exercises of this lady, if she left any, together with a memoir of her life, and a detailed statement of her intellectual progress, were presented to the public. Such a compilation would be deeply interesting both as a monument of her father’s singular fortitude, and also as the precious remains of the first native girl that was property educated in European literature; and its effects upon intelligent Hindus would be incalculable. Many that followed the Baboo in professing their regard for the females, might thereby be actuated to imitate his example. 33. The history of Miss Holliday’s intercourse with the ladies of Mahomet Ali’s harem is so full of instruction that we have been tempted to reprint several extracts from her letters in the Appendix. 34. We cannot help adverting in this place to the conversational parties that used to be held upwards of seventeen years ago in the house of a gentleman since departed from India. He devoted an evening once a fortnight to the cultivation and maintenance of social intercourse with his native acquaintance, to whom the doors of his drawing room were thrown open, and who were introduced to his family. Those of

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his own countrymen who did not think such familiarity with natives derogatory to their dignity, were also occasionally invited to join these interesting parties. The consequences of such social intercourse between Natives and Europeans surpassed all expectation. The conversation generally embraced local subjects, appertaining to the improvement of the people; and the degree of light thus diffused, and the zeal thus communicated, were incalculable. Unfortunately, however, this exemplary course could not be long pursued by the friend who assembled the parties. His peculiar profession forced him to discharge official duties in the night, and the meetings were necessarily discontinued. 35. A few native students have been received in Bishop’s College since the publication of our first edition, who were born of Christian parents. 36. We are not here reflecting those most efficient institutions, the General Assembly’s and the Free Church. These will not, however, perhaps answer for a long time to come the object of training up the children of native Christians. The respected Missionaries of the Scottish Churches have no large nativ Christian congregations under their care, from which to draw many Christian students for their institutions.

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4 ‘AN APPEAL FROM A NATIVE CHRISTIAN OF THE PUNJAB TO THE INDIAN FEMALE NORMAL SCHOOL AND INSTRUCTION SOCIETY’, INDIAN FEMALE EVANGELIST (JULY 1875), 289–291

To the Honourable Committee, to whom has been intrusted by God the noble work of giving to those who have for long been oppressed by Satan, the perfect liberty which is in Christ Jesus. I make known to you the wish of my heart. About fifteen years ago I was appointed by the Umritsur Mission to preach the Word of Life. At that time very few had heard the Gospel; but through the great diligence and devotion of the Church, the Word of Truth quickly and abundantly spread abroad in the towns and villages. Unfortunately the Missionaries’ work having now increased in the cities, they cannot preach so much in the country. Some of the Missionaries with whom I have been acquainted, such as Mr. Bruce, Mr. Browne, and Mr. Downes, were the means of doing much good in this land, but unfortunately they went home leaving their work only half done, and have never returned to finish it; there has consequently been much loss. Now I will make known my request. Much thought and effort has been spent on the men of the Punjab, but till now the women have been excluded from the blessings which are offered in Christ Jesus to the whole race of mankind. Although four or five Miss Sahibs have come out, they are but few, for the Punjab is not a city, but a large country, in which there are thousands of men, women, and children, whose precious souls are perishing day by day. Certainly this land is in a very sad condition. The wicked practices and false religion of its people are like a bleak mountain. The “purdah” of the women is like a strong fort, in which they are imprisoned from their childhood, and pass and end their days in complete ignorance both of this world and the next. It is the duty of the Church of God to enlighten them. How can it fulfil this responsibility? Man’s part in the matter is this. The “great company of women” which David speaks of in Ps. lxviii. 5–2, must be sent. When the company of priests sounded the trumpets round the walls of Jericho, they fell flat down, and the city came into the hands of God’s people. So the strong fortress of women’s “purdah,” and all its evil customs, 62

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will fall before the trumpets of this army of preachers. Nearly two years have gone by since I first came to live in Batala. When a census was taken some time ago, the population was reckoned at 24,000, another census is now being taken, and the number will probably be found still larger. There has been a great deal of preaching in the bazaars; so much so that probably every man in the place has heard of the gift of salvation through Christ, but the poor women are so shut up in their houses, that the voice of the preacher, be it ever so loud, cannot reach them. Certainly the Hindu women are sometimes allowed to go out to worship their idols, and to sing impure songs at their marriages or to weep at a funeral; but their worship is as it were only a cover, under which is concealed the various forms of wickedness connected with idolatry; the rejoicing at their marriages is but the laughter or fools, which, Solomon tells us (Eccles. vii. 6), is as “the crackling of thorns under a pot,” and their weeping for the dead is like the wailings of despair which come from hell. Their children become from their earliest childhood accustomed to all that is sensual and worldly, while of the heavenly and spiritual they know nothing. They may break the commandments of God, but no one cares. They are most particular to observe all their own ordinances, because, if they did not do so, they would be excommunicated from their caste; but as far as man is concerned they may lie or commit any kind or wickedness with impunity. In this condition, they cannot listen to the word of God. Satan, not satisfied with oppressing them thus, causes them to commit folly upon folly. For instance, when a child or any relation is sick, the devil puts all kinds of evil thoughts in their hearts. He tells them this is the effect of an evil spirit. You must present an offering that it may be pacified and the sick one healed. So they bow down before their gods and on the graves; sometimes they think that some bad man has looked on the child, and that this sickness is the consequence of his evil eye. So mentioning the names of a pir (a false prophet), a faqir, or a charmer, or some verse from the Koran, they breathe over him, or they give away alms even at the risk of parting with all they possess. When they get tired and no effect is produced, this fable is repeated to them:—“The father of a sick child came one day to Mahomet and asked for help. Mahomet said you must sacrifice a sheep; the father having done so, came back and told him the child was no better. Mahomet said, ‘offer another.’ This was repeated six times, but the man refused to give any more. Then the child died. The weeping father came to Mahomet saying, ‘The light of my house has been extinguished.”’ Then Mahomet opened the eyes of the man, and looking towards his house, he saw on the roof a seven-mouthed bala (a monster who comes to carry away the spirits of the dying); in six of the mouths were the sheep he had sacrificed, in the seventh his child. ‘See’ said Mahomet, ‘if you had offered the seven sacrifices, seven sheep would have been devoured and your child would have been saved.’” By the repetition of such tales the faqirs impress on the people the necessity of making offerings, and so the poor unfortunate ones often not only suffer the loss of their relations by death, but much of their substance is wasted in vain attempts for their restoration. Yet they will not understand that this trouble is simply a bodily sickness which cannot be healed without medicine. So, having no doctor for either body or soul, they are brought under the power of divers diseases. The native 63

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doctors understand very little of medical science, and what they do know they sell very dear. So people not receiving from them the benefit they expect, naturally fall back again on their foolish superstitions. Native doctors who have received English teaching have lately been established in the country; but they only carry on their practice from fear of Government or love of gain. There is no love and pity in their hearts towards their patients; indeed they often show such harshness and bitterness that a sick person weakened with illness will bear any amount of suffering rather than meet with it. Of course they receive no medicine, and no doctor will go to see them in their own houses, or if they are persuaded to do so, demand such heavy fees that the people are scarcely able to pay them. Although many refuse the blessings of the Christian religion, and often choose to remain ignorant of them; they do not refuse medicine, but will receive it thankfully from the hands of a Christian; for though they know nothing of spiritual knowledge, they well understand the evil of sickness. Dr. Elmslie’s work amongst them was so valued that they mention his name now with the greatest respect, and lament over his death. They cannot easily forget the kindness that he showed in giving them remedies. By this means Christians can gain entrance into many houses, and by prayerfully administrating medicine and teaching, can give health to the body and light to the mind. On such occasions the women will listen to the Word of God. Would that you could see the state of this country with your own eyes! then the place for pity in your hearts would grow larger, for one glance would show you that the inhabitants are indeed sitting in darkness, and then you would thrust forth a host of goodly women into the Punjab. I am alone in Batála. My knowledge and understanding are very small; still, having studied the Gospel, I make it known to others; but my wife cannot even do so much amongst the women as I can amongst the men. If the state of a city is so bad, what must that of the country be, where no Christian woman has ever yet set foot? Perhaps you will ask what are the wives of our native pastors doing? I don’t wish to blame them, but many of them are not capable of doing this work; they rather need instruction themselves. If they were able to do it, we should not make this request to you. So many preachers of the Word of Life are required here. Please give this notice to your people, that now is the opportunity, by a little effort, to win a priceless crown. It is, as it were, the evening, when only one working hour remains, yet God is calling labourers into His vineyard, and gives them the same reward as those who have worked all through the day. By a little trading now, great profit may be gained; by spending five talents by a little toil, five more may be won. Please consider this my request, and at least send to Batála a Miss Sahib, or some Christian woman who understands medicine. Many women, both from the cities and all around, will come for relief, and so there will be glorious opportunities for sowing the seed of the Word of Life, and for ministering health and soundness to the whole man. When this is accomplished we shall indeed bless God for what you have been the means of doing. All honour and glory be to Him for ever.—Amen. Your obedient servant, SADIK, Catechist, Batála. C.M.S. March 18, 1875. 64

5 EVIDENCE OF SYED BADRUDDIN TYABJI ON MUSLIM EDUCATION, EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE BOMBAY PROVINCIAL COMMITTEE AND MEMORIALS ADDRESSED TO THE EDUCATION COMMISSION (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1884), 497–508

Evidence of THE HONOURABLE BADRUDIN TYABJI, Barrister-at-Law. Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained. Ans. 1.—I do not profess to have had any special opportunities of studying the question of general education in India. My personal knowledge is limited to the Presidency, or rather to the city, of Bombay. I may however say that I am fairly acquainted with the state of Muhammadan education in India. My knowledge and experience have mainly been derived from the difficulties I myself and many members of my family have had to encounter in acquiring English education;— and from my connection with the Surmay a Jamati Sulemani,—the Madrasa-iAnjuman Islam, and the University of Bombay. I have been a somewhat active member of the Anjuman, which has taken great interest in the cause of Muhammadan education. I have been a Secretary of the Anjuman for several years, and have taken a leading part in the foundation and management of the Anjuman schools. I was myself educated partly in India and partly in England, partly at home and partly at public schools and colleges. I was about 7 years in England for the purposes of my general and professional education. Ques. 2.—Do you think that in your province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration, or in the course of instruction? 65

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Ans. 2.—Confining myself to Muhammadan education, I do not think that the system of primary education amongst Muhammadans has been placed on a sound footing. Indeed, no system at all has been adopted with any reference to the requirements of the Mussulman community. I would suggest the establishment of Mussulman schools in all the centres of Muhammadan population. These schools should have Mussulman teachers; Hindustani and Persian should be taught in addition to the vernacular of the place, and the other usual branches of knowledge Special regard should be paid to the feelings and ideas, and even in some respects to the prejudices of the Mussulmans From a report presented to the Anjuman by a Committee specially appointed for that purpose, I find that in August 1879 there were about 110 private schools for Muhammadan boys in Bombay, giving instruction in the Korán, Hindustáni, and Persian to about 3,000 pupils; 70 out of these 110 schools taught nothing but the Korán. The aggregate amount of the salaries of the teachers appears to have been about Ɍ1,000 per month. This subject is more fully dealt with by me in answer to question 36. Ques. 3.—In your province is primary instruction sought for by the people in general, or by particular classes only? Do any classes specially hold aloof from it, and if so, why? Are any classes practically excluded from it, and if so, from what causes? What is the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society? Ans. 3.—Speaking generally I think primary education is sought for by the people in general. The higher classes of Muhammadans are to a great extent excluded from Government schools by reason of no attention being paid to their special requirements. They attach great importance to a knowledge of Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic, and are therefore unwilling, as a rule, to go to a school where instruction is only given in Gujarathi or Marathi and English. I think that the influential Muhammadans would support a system of education suited to the requirements of their community. They are at present perfectly indifferent, if not averse, to the cause of English education, because they consider it inconsistent with sufficient, instruction in their own classical languages. The proper remedy, therefore, is to combine Oriental learning with instruction in Western Literature, Arts, and Sciences. (See also my answer to question 67.) Ques. 4.—To what extent do indigenous schools exist in your province? How far are they a relic of an ancient village system? Can you describe the subjects and character of the instruction given in them, and the system of discipline in vogue? What fees are taken from the scholars? From what classes are the masters of such schools generally selected, and what are their qualifications? Have any arrangements been made for training or providing masters in such schools? Under what circumstances do you consider that indigenous schools can be turned to good account as part of a system of national education, and what is the best method to adopt for this purpose? Are the masters willing to accept State aid and to conform to the rules under which such aid is given? How far has the grant-in-aid system been extended to indigenous schools, and can it be further extended? Ans. 4.—I believe that indigenous schools exist in almost every part of the Presidency. So far as the Muhammadan indigenous schools are concerned, they are 66

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generally attached to a mosque or are conducted by a Kari or a Mulla, where little more than reading the Korán and perhaps a little Urdu is taught, all other subjects being, as a rule, entirely excluded. No discipline is observed. No separate classes are formed. As a rule, there is but one teacher in each school. No registers or catalogues of attendance are kept. Very slight fees are charged. Sometimes no remuneration is paid to the teacher except a present on the completion of each chapter of the Korán, &c. The poorer boys are admitted entirely free. The qualifications of these teachers are next to nothing They know little more than what they actually teach. They have no idea of arithmetic, or geography, or history. Many of them are unable to write These indigenous schools could be easily incorporated into a general national system by bringing them into connection with higher schools and by offering a small reward, say one rupee, for each boy sent up from these indigenous schools at stated periods after having passed a satisfactory examination in the subjects actually taught. There are some indigenous schools of higher description kept by learned men, where Persian and Arabic and logic and philosophy, as well as religious books, are taught. These it would be almost impossible to incorporate into the national system, owing to the religious character of the instruction given and the utter inability of the teachers to adapt themselves to Western ideas. The grant-in-aid system has not, so far as I am aware, been extended to any of these indigenous schools, but it might be extended with great advantage to some of them at least in the manner above indicated. The Anjuman-i-Islám has had for some time past under its consideration the important question of incorporating the indigenous schools in Bombay into the educational system established by the Anjuman itself, by offering a small reward to the teacher for each boy sent up from his school to one of the recognised central schools, as suggested above. Ques. 5.—What opinion does your experience lead you to hold of the extent and value of home instruction? How far is a boy educated at home able to compete on equal terms, at examinations qualifying for the public service, with boys educated at school? Ans. 5.—I attached the greatest value to home instruction when combined with instruction at a public school, but otherwise I think the advantages of a public school are far greater: a boy educated merely at home would not, in my opinion, be able to compete with boys educated at a public school. Ques. 6.—How far can the Government depend on private effort, aided or unaided, for the supply of elementary instruction in rural districts? Can you enumerate the private agencies which exist for promoting primary instruction? Ans. 6.—I do not think the Government can depend very much on private efforts for the supply of elementary education of a satisfactory kind in rural districts. The private agencies for Muhammadans would seem to be schools attached to mosques and other charitable institutions—private teachers who make a living out of the instruction given to their pupils, and learned men who open private classes in the higher branches of Oriental learning and philosophy. To this must be added schools opened by the different Missionary Societies, and which are only resorted to by the people when no other schools are available. 67

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Ques. 8.—What classes of schools, should, in your opinion, be entrusted to Municipal Committees for support and management? Assuming that the provision of elementary instruction in towns is to be a charge against Municipal funds, what security would you suggest against the possibility of Municipal Committees failing to make sufficient provision? Ans. 8.—It seems to me that some of the Municipalities in the Bombay Presidency are suffciently advanced to take charge of the lower as well as the higher schools. We have, however, no practical experience to guide us on the subject, but I can see no reason to apprehend that the Municipal Corporation of Bombay, for instance, would be unable to manage even the higher schools to the satisfaction of the people, as well as the Government. If the provision of elementary education is to be a charge on the Municipal fund, the only security that I can suggest is that a stipulation should be made that a certain percentage of income, not less than the amount now expended, should be spent by the Municipality, and that such expenditure should be gradually increased according to the requirements of the people. Ques. 10.—What subjects of instruction, if introduced into primary schools, would make them more acceptable to the community at large, and specially to the agricultural classes? Should any special means be adopted for making the instruction in such subjects efficient? Ans. 10.—Speaking of Muhammadans only, I certainly think that the introduction of Hindustani and Persian, together with mental arithmetic as taught in indigenous Gujarathi schools, would make the schools more acceptable to the Muhammadan community than they are at present (see answer to question 67.) Ques. 11.—Is the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools of your province the dialect of the people? And if not, are the schools on that account less useful and popular? Ans. 11.—Speaking generally the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools is the dialect of the general Hindu population, but not the language of the higher class of Muhammadans; and that is one chief reason why they have hitherto held aloof from resorting to such schools. Ques. 13.—Have you any suggestions to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? Ans. 13.—Considering the great poverty to which the Muhammadan community has been reduced, I would suggest that all poor boys should be admitted entirely free, and that fees should only be charged to those who are able to pay them without inconvenience Such fees should, of course, be always moderate (see answer to question 67.) Ques. 14.—Will you favour the commission with your views, first, as to how the number of primary schools can be increased; and, secondly, how they can be gradually rendered more efficient? Ans. 14.—I think that the number of indigenous primary schools could be easily increased by giving them the benefit of the grant-in-aid system, and they could be rendered more efficient by proper inspection and supervision, and by the introduction of some of the rules in regard to keeping of registers and catalogues. A little arithmetic might be insisted upon with advantage. 68

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Ques. 16.—Do you know of any cases in which Government institutions of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, with or without aid, without injury to education or to any interests which it is the duty of Government to protect? Ans. 16.—I do not know any case in which Government institutions of the higher order could be closed without injury to the cause of education, nor am I aware of any institution which could be transferred to any private agency without causing serious harm to the progress of mental culture in this Presidency. I cannot approve of the suggestion that the Arts College at Poona should be closed. Ques. 18.—If the Government, or any local authority having control of public money, were to announce its determination to withdraw, after a given term of years, from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, what measures would be best adapted to stimulate private effort in the interim, so as to secure the maintenance of such institution on a private footing? Ans. 18.—I think that if the Government or any local authority having control of public funds were to withdraw from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, such institution would cease to exist, or would exist only in a very inefficient condition. I can suggest no measures which would obviate these disastrous consequences. I do not think that the people at present sufficiently appreciate the benefits of education so as to relieve Government of its burdens and responsibilities in this respect. Ques. 20.—How far is the whole educational system, as at present administered, one of practical neutrality, i.e., one in which a school or a college has no advantage or disadvantage as regards Government aid and inspection from any religious principles that are taught or not taught in it? Ans. 20.—I think that the educational system as at present administered is one of practical neutrality, and to my mind it would be dangerous in the highest degree to depart from it. Ques. 25.—Do educated Natives in your province readily find remunerative employment? Ans. 25.—Educated Muhammadans have the greatest possible difficulty in finding remunerative employment either under Government or otherwise. The reasons for this are obvious; first, because little value is now-a-days attached to their accomplishments as Persian or Arabic scholars; and, secondly, because, although perfectly well educated in their own way, they have not, in consequence of the practical difficulties I have already and shall hereafter point out, the same facilities for acquiring English education as their other more favoured fellow subjects; and, thirdly, in consequence of political prejudices which have practically excluded them from all public service whatever. I know several Muhammadan graduates of the University, belonging to the most respectable families, who are unable to get any employment, although most strenuous efforts were made on their behalf by men of position and influence. Ques. 26.—Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information? 69

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Ans. 26.—I think that some branches of knowledge are taught in secondary schools which are comparatively useless to people if they do not prosecute their studies further, and which are generally forgotten soon after they cease their studies. I refer to the details of geography and history, as well as to Euclid and Algebra, &c. I think that mental arithmetic and book-keeping might be introduced with great advantage to the commercial classes. Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance Examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—I think it is perfectly true that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance examination of the University, and that this circumstance to a certain extent impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life. If there were two distinct public examinations, one for those who wish to enter the colleges, and the other for those who do not desire to pursue their studies further, I think it would give room for a more various, as well as a more practical, course of instruction in the different schools, (see also answer to question 26.) Ques. 31.—Does the University curriculum afford a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools, or are special Normal schools needed for the purpose? Ans. 31.—In my opinion the University curriculum affords a fair training for teachers in secondary schools, and I do not think that special Normal schools are absolutely needed for this purpose, though such schools would, of course, be very valuable Ques. 32.—What is the system of school inspection pursued in your province? In what respects is it capable of improvement? Ans. 32.—As a rule, there is no system of school inspection in Bombay, except in regard to Government or aided schools. I would recommend inspection and supervision by an independent Committee of competent and influential citizens. The present mode of inspection by the educational authorities is insufficient to do any real good to these schools. Ques. 33.—Can yon suggesst any method of securing efficient voluntary agency in the work of inspection and examination? Ans. 33.—I think there ought to be no difficulty whatever in securing the services of distinguished gentlemen, both European and Native, for the inspection and examination of schools. There are a large number of perfectly competent gentlemen in Bombay who would deem it a pleasure, as well as an honour, to undertake this task. The Anjuman schools are daily inspected by prominent members of the Muhammadan community, and I think their efficiency is greatly owing to this circumstance, Ques. 34.—How far do you consider the text-books in use in all schools suitable? Ans. 34.—Speaking generally, I see no objection to the text-books ordinarily used in the schools in Bombay. It is highly desirable to secure as great a variety as 70

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possible. In regard to Muhammadan schools there is no series of text-books which can be adopted with perfect satisfaction The compilation of such a series is one of the great aims which the Educational Department ought to keep in view. The Anjuman-i-Islám is also directing its efforts to attain this end. The Urdu Series lately issued by the Punjab educational authorities is a great improvement upon its predecessors, and might be adopted with advantage in the Muhammadan schools until a better one is produced As to Persian there are no satisfactory text-books at all. Ques. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India, what parts can, in your opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? Ans. 36.—I am afraid that in the present backward state of India the whole responsibility of educating the people must fall upon the State The Government could not with any safety or without the certainty of prejudicing the cause of education withdraw from its present liberal policy of providing schools and colleges for the people. It would be impossible to rely upon any voluntary agencies. Such agencies would be very good auxiliaries, and might supply any deficiencies in the Government system of education, but I think it would be a fatal mistake on the part of the Government to rely exclusively upon them. Any high schools or colleges established by Missionary or other religious bodies would always be looked upon with grave suspicion by the people, and a withdrawal of Government in their favour would lead to serious misapprehension in the mind of the people in regard to the general policy and intentions of Her Majesty’s Government. This in itself would be a grave evil and a political blunder of the first magnitude, but I think there are even higher considerations which make it imperative on the Government to continue their present policy in regard to education. Her Majesty’s Government has repeatedly given pledges and assurances that the Natives of this country would be allowed a larger and larger share in the administration of India. The present Viceroy has, by the numerous Resolutions recently issued, given practical proof of his determination to carry out those assurances. It is now the settled policy of the Government of India that the blessings of self-government should be conferred upon the people of this country to as large an extent as practicable. If therefore the Natives of India are henceforth to take a more active part in the administration of their own country, it follows that they must at least be fairly educated, and it is obvious that they could not be so educated without proper facilities being afforded to them It seems to me, therefore, that a clear responsibility rests upon the Government to provide, not only primary education for the masses, and secondary education for the middle classes, but also high education for the future generations of those into whose hands the administration of the country must henceforth be more or less committed. The happiness, prosperity, and contentment of the people of India depend far more upon the civil administration of the country than upon its military system, and no civil administration can be satisfactory unless it is largely carried on by properly educated and enlightened Natives of the country To obtain the services of such gentlemen, however, it is necessary to continue and even to increase the facilities for sound education. It must further be borne in mind that the persons who most appreciate the blessings conferred upon India by the British 71

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Government are the people who have received good education. It is to the educated Natives of this country that the Government must look for moral support, and it is they alone who are, on the one hand, the interpreters to the masses at large of the feelings and intentions and policy of the Government, and, on the other hand, the exponents to Government of the sentiments, aspirations, thoughts, and prejudices of the people. Surely, then, it would be a very unwise policy on the part of the Government to do anything which would have the effect of alienating the sympathy of the educated classes or of giving them room to suspect that the Government was averse to the progressive enlightenment of the people On the whole, therefore, I am strongly of opinion that both the interests of the people and the interests of the State imperatively demand the continuance of the present liberal policy of Government in regard to education in all its branches I am, of course, hopeful that in course of time education will be so widely spread in India, and its blessings so universally appreciated, that its absence would not be tolerated by the people, and voluntary and perfectly efficient machinery would be forthcoming to provide it even without the support of Government In that case it might be well for Government gradually to withdraw from the direct support or management of the high schools and colleges and leave them to the operation of the law of demand and supply. At present, however, the people in general do not appreciate the value of high or even secondary education, there is not sufficient spontaneous demand for it, and the withdrawal of State support would mean the complete collapse of the whole educational system I am afraid there are no grounds for hoping that our wealthy citizens or noblemen would, at present at least, be willing to come forward with contributions of sufficient magnitude for the foundation or endowment of high schools or colleges. If, however, the present system continues in force for some time yet, and if the light of education penetrates to the upper and wealthier strata of Native society, as it will undoubtedly do in course of time, then we may hope that large schools and colleges will be gradually established in all parts of the country by charitable donations, and the burden of the Government will be gradually lightened and ultimately removed. The large endowments, both by Muhammadans and Hindus which exist everywhere in India show that the people of the country are disposed to be charitable according to their lights. Such charity, however, at present finds vent in the establishment of mosques, temples, dharamshalas, &c. From charity for religious purposes to charity for intellectual purposes is, however, but one step, and I entertain very little doubt that in the course of a few years, provided only the Government pursues its present policy in the meantime, rich Hindus and Muhammadans will begin to make the same munificent donations for educational institutions as they have hither to done for purely religious purposes. My objections, therefore, to any change in the present policy of the Government may be summarised as follows— (a) That it would lead to the educational system practically passing into the hands of missionary or other similar bodies and thus shake the confidence of the people in the religious neutrality of the Government. 72

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(b) That it would raise grave suspicions in the minds of the educated classes of the Natives of this country in regard to the policy and intentions of the Government as to the moral, intellectual, and material progress of the country. (c) That it would retard, if not completely stop, the progress of education in India, as there are at present at least no other agencies capable of taking the place of Government with anything like the same efficiency. (d) That the supply of educated Natives would gradually fail, and it would become impossible for Government to give effect to its declared policy of conferring the blessing of self-government upon the people of this country Ques. 39.—Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestions to make on this subject? Ans. 39.—There is no definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct in Government colleges and schools except incidentally in the course of general instruction. I do not think it necessary to teach this as a special subject otherwise than by the instruction to be derived from good examples set by the teachers, &c. In my opinion intellectual training of a high order, combined with college discipline in itself, operates as a great teacher of duty and moral principles. Ques. 40.—Are any steps taken for promoting the physical well-being of students in the schools or colleges in your province? Have you any suggestions to make on the subject? Ans. 40.—As a general rule, there are no special steps taken for promoting the physical well-being of students in the schools and colleges in the Presidency of Bombay. Some of the schools and colleges have a play-ground and gymnasium, &c., attached, while others do not possess either I would recommend that a gymnasium should be attached to each institution of any importance. A prize might be awarded for proficiency in athletic sports, &c., in order to direct the attention of the students to their physical improvement. Ques. 41.—Is there indigenous instruction for girls in the province with which you are acquainted, and if so, what is its character? Ans. 41.—There are very few indigenous schools for girls in the Bombay Presidency Amongst the Mubammadans, however, females belonging to respectable families are usually taught at least how to read, if not how to write. There are some Karis or Mullas in the chief centres of Muhammadan population who teach the Korán and perhaps a little Hindustani and Persian to guls. Every Muhammadan of the higher order thinks it hisduty to teach his daughters how to read the Korán if nothing more’, and, as a general rule, women amongst the genuine Muhammadans are far more generally and far better educated than the women of other Native communities in India. All the remarks which I have made on the subject of the education of Muhammadan boys apply more or less to the education of Muhammadan girls also There are about 70 schools for Muhammadan girls in Bombay containing about 850 pupils But very little more than reading the Korán is taught in these schools. 73

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Ques. 42.—What progress has been made by the Department in instituting schools for girls, and what is the character of the instruction impacted in them? What improvements can you suggest? Ans. 42.—So far as I am aware, very little progress has been made by the Educational Department in instituting schools for girls. It is highly desirable that such schools should be established on a proper basis in Bombay at least. At present Native girls have either to remain ignorant, or be educated at home at great expense, or to attend Missionary schools, where, as a rule, Christianity is taught as a necessary part of the curriculum. There is not a single school for Muhammadan girls in Bombay where English is taught, although such a school, if established on a proper basis, would certainly be a great success, and would be supported by the respectable classes of the community. This important subject is at present engaging the attention of some of the prominent members of the An-juman-i-islam, and I am not without hope that some practical result may ensue from it Ques. 43.—Have yon any remarks to make on the subject of mixed schools? Ans. 43.—I do not think that mixed schools are desirable in the present state of Native ideas and feelings. There is an insuperable prejudice in the minds of the Native community against boys and girls mingling together in the schools. Ques. 47.—What do you regard as the chief defects, other than any to which you have already referred, that experience has brought to light in the educational system as it has been hitherto administered? What suggestions have you to make for the remedy of such defects? Ans. 47.—I think the chief defects of the present educational system are, that it tends to produce scholars of one stereotyped kind, that it leaves little room for the development of different styles of education in different schools in India, that it teaches a number of subjects which are of little practical utility; and that it omits to teach other subjects of far greater practical importance. I think some schools ought to be opened with the special view of assisting those who, for instance, wish to adopt a mercantile career. In the elementary classes more importance should he attached to mental arithmetic than has hitherto been done. Book-keeping might be introduced with great advantage in some of the schools. Classes for agricultural and technical instruction ought to be opened. Ques. 48.—Do you think that any part of the expenditure incurred by Government on high education in the Presidency of Bombay is unnecessary? Ans. 48.—I do not think that any part of the expenditure incurred by Government on high education in the Presidency of Bombay is unnecessary. On the contrary, I consider that the facilities for high education ought to be extended no less than for primary education, and so far from considering any portion of this expenditure unnecessary I am of opinion that it ought to be gradually increased so as to keep pace with the progress of primary and secondary education—until at least institutions of a high order are voluntarily established by the people themselves to take the place of the Government colleges. I have, however, no reason to hope that this will be the case for many years yet to come. 74

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Qnes. 53.—Should the rate of fees in any class of schools or colleges vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil? Ans. 53.—I think that the fees ought to vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil, and I am of opinion that great consideration ought to be shown to deserving pupils whose parents are unable to pay the usual fees; and especially in the case of Mussulmans whose ignorance and poverty have now become almost a danger to the State and for which it has become imperatively necessary to provide a remedy. Ques. 58.—What do you consider to be the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught as a class by one instructor in the case of colleges and schools respectively? Ans. 58.—I think 30 to 40 is about the number that one instructor can teach with advantage in schools, and about 50 to 60 in colleges: this must, however, greatly depend on the mental development of the students and the amount of individual attention required in each class. Ques. 60.—Does a strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools. Ans. 60.—In my opinion a strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality does not in anyway require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools, provided only that Government itself does not in any way identify itself with any particular system of religion. It seems to me that the withdrawal of Government in the manner suggested in this question would simply be fatal to the cause of education in India, as the whole management of such institutions would then practically devolve upon the Missionary bodies, and the people would be put to the alternative of either not receiving a liberal education at all or receiving it at the hands of persons whose primary object in this country is to detach the people from their religion, I do not think that Natives of this country would care to run this risk in the case of their children, and the inevitable result would be that liberal education would gradually cease to exist in India. Ques. 62.—Is it desirable that promotions from class to class should depend, at any stage of school education, on the results of public examinations extending over the entire province? In what cases, if any, is it preferable that such promotions be left to the school authorities? Ans. 62.—I am unable to see why promotions from class to class at different stages of school education should depend on the results of public examinations extending over the entire province. The present system seems to me to work very well. The teachers of each class in conjunction with the examiners seem to me to be the best authorities on the question as to whether a particular pupil should or should not be promoted inasmuch as a variety of matters may have to be taken into account with which the examiners acting merely as such would have no concern at all. Ques. 63.—Are there any arrangements between the colleges and schools of your province to prevent boys who are expelled from one institution, or who leave 75

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it improperly, from being received into another? What are the arrangements which you would suggest? Ans. 63.—There are no arrangements of the kind that I am aware of, nor do I consider any such special arrangements necessary. I presume that each institution makes what it considers sufficient enquiries before admitting a pupil who has apparently received instruction elsewhere, and this seems to me to be sufficient for all practical purposes. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard. Ans. 65.—I do not consider it absolutely necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard for every subject, though I consider such a course highly desirable in regard to some subjects at least. Native gentlemen of exceedingly high qualifications can, without much difficulty, be found to teach some subjects, while for others European gentlemen would be the best. I consider that at present at least English professors ought to be employed to teach English literature and history and the classical languages, and perhaps mathematics and the natural sciences, while Native professors might with advantage be employed to teach all branches of Oriental learning. These remarks are made without reference to the merits or qualifications of particular individuals, because in certain special cases this rule might be departed from with benefit to the students. Ques. 66.—Are European professors employed, or likely to be employed, in colleges under Native management? Ans. 66.—I see no reason why European professors should not be employed in colleges under Native management when their services would be necessary or desirable. The general tendency in the native community is to exaggerate rather than under-rate the value of European agency in giving instruction. European professors might, perhaps, be dispensed with in course of time when our Universities have sent forth a sufficient number of able and competent Native scholars, but I fear that such a desirable consummation is yet far distant. Ques. 67.—Are the circumstances of any class of the population in your province (e g., the Muhammadans) such, as to require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education? To what are these circumstances due, and how far have they been provided for? Ans. 67.—I am convinced that the Muhammadans in the Bombay Presidency do require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education. It is quite apparent that they have not participated in the general prosperity of the empire, or in the diffusion of knowledge, to anything like the same extent as the other classes of Her Majesty’s subjects. The schools, the colleges, the liberal professions, the public services, are all almost exclusively filled from classes other than the Muhammadans. No one has ventured to suggest that, as a body, Muhammadans are wanting in ability, for wherever they have made their appearance they have shown themselves quite capable of holding their own. What, then, is the reason of the general depression amongst the 76

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Muhammadans? I am clearly of opinion that it is capable of being traced to the following causes.— (1) A feeling of pride for the glories of their past empire, and the consequent, inability to reconcile themselves to the circumstances of the present. (2) Love and pride for the glorious literature of India, Arabia, and Persia, and the Oriental arts and sciences to which they have been so long attached, and the consequent inability to appreciate the modern literature, arts, and sciences of Europe, or to bear the former being supplanted by the latter. (3) A vague feeling that European education is antagonistic to the traditions of Islam and leads to infidelity and atheism, or to conversion to Christianity. (4) A feeling that the Government of the country takes no notice of their reduced position and does nothing to extricate them from it. (5) Failure or neglect, or inability on the part of the Educational authorities, to provide anything like the same facilities for the education of Muhammadan youths as the other classes of Her Majesty’s subjects. (6) Poverty which prevents them from availing themselves even of such schools as have been already established for the subjects of Her Majesty in general. (7) A feeling prevailing amongst the trading classes that English education as given in Government schools is of little practical value, and that some of the subjects taught are useless in ordinary life, while others (in their opinion) of greater importance are neglected in Government schools. Now, as to the remedies— The first above specified cause seems to me to be beyond the power of the Government to remove. It will, however, work its own cure in course of time, as the Muhammadans must gradually be convinced that the only way to vindicate and to be worthy of the past is to make the most of the present opportunities, and that a policy of sullen indifference will not in the least ameliorate their condition, but will, on the contrary, make their position worse and worse every day. The more thoughtful portion of the community are already convinced that, while they have been wasting their time on useless regrets for the past, their Hindu and Parsi and Christian neighbours have been making rapid progress towards civilisation and prosperity, and that it is now high time to wake up and, make amends for time and opportunities so long thrown away. As I said before, the removal of this cause, that is to say, the awakening of the conscience of the community and making them feel ashamed of their indolence and apathy, is a task not so much for the Government or the Education Commission as for enlightened and influential Muhammadans themselves, who by holding public meetings, delivering lectures, writing in the press, establishing societies for the promotion of knowledge, &c., can alone convince their co-religionists of the fatal results of their present indifference. The Mussulmans ought to be gradually convinced that while the glories of their ancestors were achieved by the sword, and in the field, the prosperity of themselves and the glories of their posterity will depend entirely, or almost entirely, on the pen 77

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and the desk, and that it is high time for them to exchange the former for the latter. I rejoice to think that this conviction is gradually forcing itself upon the Muhammadan community, and that it has begun to bear some beneficial fruit already. As to the second cause, there is great justification for it. The Muhamnaadans have every reason to be proud of their glorious literature and to cling to it with love and affection. They have no more right, however, to despise the literature of the West than Europeans have to despise the literature of the East. In each case this feeling of contempt is the direct offspring of ignorance. The two classes of literature are, moreover, by no means antagonistic to each other. Oriental learning can well go hand-in-hand with Western literature, and the true solution of the difficulty is to combine the two together and to make the Muhammadans feel that while they are acquiring English education they are not by any means compelled to give up their Persian and Arabic classics. This course has been adopted with wonderful success by the Madrasa-i-Anjuman-i-Islám at Bombay, And on a larger scale by the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Alligurh, and I earnestly commend it to the most careful consideration of the Commission. If good schools and colleges are opened where Indian, Persian, and Arabic classics are taught in addition to the different branches of European learning, I feel convinced that the Muhammadan youths of the Presidency would flock to them, and it would be clearly demonstrated that the present backwardness of the Mussulmans is due, not so much to their own faults as the inability of the educational authorities to understand the real cause of the disease and to provide the proper remedies. The third cause is again one which is not in the power of Government to remove. Government has hitherto very wisely refrained from taking the side of any religion whatsoever so far as educational matters are concerned, and it would be extremely mischievous to depart from this policy even in the smallest degree. The feeling that English education is antagonistic to the traditions of Islám is, however, founded upon a gross misconception of facts and upon an utter ignorance of the true nature of all liberal education. In reality Western education is inimical to Islám at the utmost in the same degree and no more than it le to Christianity, Hinduism, and any other religion whatever on the face of the earth. Muhammadans have, therefore, no greater reason to avoid the European arts, sciences, and literature than have Christians, Hindus, Parsis, and other communities. This feeling of dread is, however, so widely spread that it can only be eradicated by the examples and precepts of educated and influential Muhammadans themselves. Already there are signs of its gradually giving way, and I entertain little doubt that it will completely disappear in the course of a few years if the other causes which hinder Muhammadan education are removed and to which I invite the most careful and earnest attention of the Commission. As to the fourth cause, I think the complaint of the Muhammadan community, though exaggerated, is not altogether without foundation. I am far from attributing the whole blame to Government; indeed, I think that the largest portion of it must fall upon the Muhammadans themseleves. No one is more ready to admit 78

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than I am that the Muhammadan community could never have been reduced to their present wretched condition if it had not been to a great extent for their own indolence and bigotry, and for the operation of causes 1, 2, and 3, for which they are themselves more or less responsible. After, however, making all due allowance for these considerations, I cannot help thinking that the Muhammadans have hitherto been very hardly treated; that until recently they have not received anything like the same consideration as the other classes of Her Majesty’s subjects; and that for some reason or other they have been practically excluded from a share in the administration of the country. These facts have naturally produced a feeling of despair in the minds of the community and made them think that it was no use acquiring education or doing anything else as the Sirkar was not favourably disposed towards them, and that political justice was not to be had when they came into competition with more favoured communities. This is a most dangerous feeling, and not the less so for being largely founded upon mistaken notions as to the policy or intentions of Government. It is a feeling, however, which it behoves Government to take into its most careful consideration and to try and remove if possible. That it can be removed to a very great extent no man who has studied the question can doubt for a moment. Why should not Muhammadan languages, for instance, be recognised by Government? Why should they be supplanted by other and inferior dialects? Why should Muhammadan literature be practically excluded from schools and colleges? Why should not the claims of Muhammadans to State patronage be recognised in the same manner as the claims of the other communities? Let me give an example. There have been Hindu, Parsi, and European Sheriffs of Bombay, but not a single Muhammadan. Is it pretended that there is not a single gentlemen amongst the Mussulmans fit to hold that sinecure office? Are Muhammadans much to blame if they consider this as a gross neglect of their community? If, therefore, Government do really desire, as I have not the least doubt they do, that the Muhammadans should stir themselves and should acquire European education, let them distribute the State patronage in a just and impartial manner; let them organise the educational system on a proper basis and with fair consideration for the feelings and the requirements of the Mussulman community, and the desired result will unquestionably follow, and the complaints about the ignorant and depressed and discontented condition of the Mussalmans will cease to exist. As to the fifth cause. The matter seems to me to be so clear that it would almost be a waste of time to discuss it at any length. It is enough to state that until the Anjuman-i-Islám of Bombay appealed directly to the Government and got a special grant of Ɍ500 a month for the purpose of establishing an institution for Muhammadan youths in Bombay, there was not a single school in the whole of the Bombay Presidency where Hindustani-speaking Mussulman boys could learn English through the medium of their own mother-tongue. They had first to learn either Gnjarathi or Marathi, and then to attend one of the ordinary schools for Hindi or Parsi boys, where English was taught through one of those languages. But in order to learn either of those languages, not only was a great deal of time 79

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wasted for nothing, but the ordinary, as well as the classical, languages of the Muhammadans had to be given up. What wonder, then that only a few Muhammadans could be found who would be willing to give up ther own mother-tongue and their own classical literature for the purpose of acquiring a language like Gujarathi or Marathi, which was of no value to them in ordinary life, and possessed but small literary attractions, and could only be useful to those who wished to enter into Government service, and that too in those places only where those languages prevailed. The absurdity of compelling Muhammadan boys either to remain ignorant of Western literature altogether or to learn Gujarathi or Marathi in order to acquire a knowledge of English, was repeatedly pointed out to the Educational authorities. The Anjaman-i-lslám strongly appealed to the Director of Public Instruction to open a school suitable for Muhammadan boys where English education might be imparted through the medium of Hindustani, which is the mother-tongue of the Muhammadans of India as a body, but to no purpose. The Educational Department could not be convinced that many Muhammadans remained ignorant because there were no suitable means provided to educate them. At last the Anjuman-i-Islám appealed direct to Government and succeeded in obtaining from them a grant of Ɍ6,000 per annum for Muhammadan education only. With the assistance of the Government grant, aided by private subscriptions, the Anjumani-Islám started a school under the name of the Madrasa-i-Anjuman Islám of Bombay on the 20th September 1880. The success of this institution, notwithstanding some persistent efforts to injure it and to depreciate its advantages, has been most encouraging. In less than a year it had 450 pupils on the rolls. So rapid was its growth that the funds at the disposal of the Anjuman were wholly insufficient for its increasing wants. The Anjuman accordingly appealed to the Director of Public Instruction to apply a portion of the Municipal grant for primary instruction in and of the Muhammadan education, but to no purpose The doctrine of “first come first served” was deemed a sufficient answer to the appeals of the Anjuman. The Anjuman then applied direct to the Municipality with the gratifying result that a special grant of Ɍ5,000 per annum was made in aid of schools under the management of Anjuman, and we are now educating 450 boys at Peydhoni and 75 at Nagpada, although the Nagpada branch was opened only on the 20th June last. I may add that no portion of the Municipal grant has yet come to the hands of the Anjuman, although frequent applications have been made for them. The above history of the straggles of the Anjuman on behalf of Muhammadan education and the success of the Madrassa, combined with my own knowledge and experience of Muhammadans, have established in my mind the following conclusions:— (a) That no suitable schools for giving English education to Muhammadans existed before the Madrassa was opened on 20th September 1880 80

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(b) That the Educational authorities were either indifferent, or unable, or unwilling to make any suitable arrangements for Muhammadans, even after the necessity for such arrangements had been clearly pointed out to them. (c) That the success of the Madrasaa-i-Anju man Islám proves that Muhammadans are just as willing and able to learn as the other classes of Her Majesty’s subjects when proper schools are established for them. (d) That the ignorance prevailing amongst Muhammadans is to a great extent due to the absence of all educational facilities for them, and in particular to the absence of instruction through the medium of Hindustáni. (e) That Muhammadan schools to be a success must teach Hindustáni, and perhaps Persian, in addition to the other usual branches of knowledge and the vernaculars of the provinces. ( f ) That a committee of educated and independent Muhammadans is the best machinery for establishing and conducting schools for Muhammadan boys. (g) That such a committee is forthcoming without much difficulty in Bombay, although, of course, great caution must be exercised in selecting men who really take an interest in educational matters. (h) That the ideas, feelings, and sentiments, and even the prejudices of Mussalmans, must be carefully taken into account in founding or managing schools intended for them. (i) That the Muhammadans have not hitherto been treated with sufficient consideration in regard to educational matters, and that a fair share of the Government, as well as Municipal, grants should be applied specially for their benefit. ( j) That their ordinary Gujarathi and Marathi schools are utterly unsuited to Muhammadans, most of whom do not understand or care for either of those languages, and that instruction must be imparted to them in Hindustani. (k) That Muhammadan teachers and Muhammadan Inspectors or supervisors are necessary for Muhammadan schools. Before I leave this subject I am anxious to point out that, although the Government and the Municipal grants have enabled the Anjuman-i Islám of Bombay to place elementary education within the reach of a considerable number of Mussalman boys of Bombay, yet the funds at our disposal will not be sufficient to enable us to carry our institution up to the Matriculation standard. We have now gone as far as the fourth, and we may perhaps go as far as the fifth standard, but there we must stop unless further funds are forthcoming. I would, therefore, strongly urge that some means should be devised by which the education of Muhammadan youths should be carried up to the Matriculation standard, and I respectfully submit that to provide such instruction for Muhammadans is no less the duty of Government, and should be no less a part of the general system of education, than to provide the same for Gujarathi and Marathi-speaking boys. The Muhammadan population of the city of Bombay is about 160,000, and it is, therefore, not asking for more than justice to say that the expenditure on the 81

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education of Mussalmans should at least be in proportion to their numbers, if not in proportion to their requirements. The ignorance of Muhammadans must lead to their poverty, and their poverty to discontent, and no thoughtful politician would deny that the discontent of such a large community as the Mussalmans of India would be a grave source of danger to State, and ought to be removed at all cost and without delay. The sixth cause is again a very important one, and must be carefully borne in mind when considering any scheme for the education of Mussulmans. Special provisions must be made for admitting poor but respectable boys to schools free of charge. So extreme is the poverty of the community as a whole that, although the fees at the Anjuman schools are little more than nominal, yet we have been obliged to admit a large number of boys free of charge Many of these boys, though poor, are very deserving, and belong to respectable families who, but for the indulgence shown to them, would grow up in ignorance and become a burden and certainly not an honour to the community. I have recently received letters from the head master of the high school at Nariad, lamenting the extreme poverty of the Mussalmans of the place, and asking the Anjuman to take some practical measures for giving education to the Muhammadan youths of the district who, he says, are willing to learn, but cannot afford to pay the school fees. This is a state of things which, I submit, the educational authorities ought to remedy at once. Another result of the poverty, combined with the bigotry and indifference, of the community is that Government cannot at present at least reckon upon the foundation of English-teaching schools for Mussalman boys by Mussalmans themselves My late experiences in connection with the Madrassa Fund are not quite satisfactory, and the persistent efforts which have recently been made to depreciate the schools established by Anjuman—to prevent people from subscribing fresh funds, and to deter ignorant people from availing themselves of the advantages offered by the schools—show the enormous difficulties with which the true friends of Muhammadan education have to contend. These circumstances, however, only make the duty of the Government still more plain because they show that the very community which needs education most is the one which is least capable of helping itself. The seventh cause is one of general operation, and applies to the other communities just as it does to the Mussalmans, though perhaps in a less degree. With regard to the Muhammadans, however, its operation is more obviously and extensively mischievous, because it operates precisely on those classes which are not barred from availing themselves of European education by the force of causes 1, 2, 4, and 6 The Muhammadan community may be roughly divided into the trading and the non-trading classes, the former consisting of Memons, Khojahs, and Borahs, and the latter of Dekhanees, Konkanees, &c, and the descendants of the old noble and official classes, &c. Now it will scarcely be denied that the education imparted at Government schools is of a less practical character than that required by the mercantile classes. It is the right sort of education for 82

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those who wish to pursue their studies further—for candidates for the public service or the liberal professions,—but it is not exactly the kand of education that the merchants themselves require. Good mercantile and technical schools, therefore, where real practical knowledge is imparted, seem to me to be great desiderata in India. Ques. 69.—Can schools and colleges under Native management compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management? Ans. 69.—I can see no reason why schools under Native management should not compete success fully with corresponding institutions under European management. All depends upon the gentlemen in charge of the institutions, and primá facte I would say that (caeteris paribus) Native gentlemen would understand the peculiarities and the requirements of Native boys better than Europeans could be expected to do As to colleges, the case is perhaps different, as it may be difficult to find Native gentlemen of sufficiently high qualifications who are both willing and able to take charge of such colleges. For a long time yet to come I think it would not only be desirable, but even perhaps absolutely necessary, that the management of colleges should be entrusted to Europeans. I hope the day may come when European agency in this respect may be gradually dispensed with, but to dispense with it at this moment would perhaps be to postpone that happy day forever.

Cross-examination of By MR. LEE-WARNER. Q. 1.—Can you tell us the history of the decline of the Arabic College founded in Surat in 1809 by Muhammadan Borahs, and do you think it could be revived? A. 1.—I am not very well acquainted with the circumstances, but one cause of its failure was a want of funds. It was a college originally founded, I believe, by the Daudi Borahs, the head of which community got involved in debt. I think it could be revived on a partially secular basis with a grant-in-aid from Government. I shall be happy to obtain information and furnish it in a statement to the Commission hereafter. Q. 2.—What is the monthly income of the Anjuman-i-Islam raised by (i) private subscriptions, and (ii) by fees? A. 2.—The monthly fees realised are about Ɍ100. Our subscriptions nominally amount to Ɍ50,000, out of which about Ɍ40,000 have been paid and invested. This is exclusive, of course, of the grant from Government of Ɍ500 a month, and Ɍ416 from the Municipality, which has not yet been paid. Our endowment fund may be raised when we apply to the Native Chiefs and Princes. Q. 3.—You recommend that the course of study in primary schools be made to include mental arithmetic and book-keeping. Has the Anjuman-i-Islám introduced the subjects, and if so, what is the system of instruction? 83

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A. 3.—We have partially introduced mental arithmetic up to multiplicationtables, but not the book-keeping. In the Baroda State schools book-keeping has lately been introduced. Q. 4.—In reference to answer 4 of your evidence-in-chief, can you tell us the decision regarding incorporating indigenous schools at which the Anjuman-iIslam has arrived? A. 4.—We have decided to incorporate the indigenous schools, if we have funds. We are about to enter into correspondence with the masters of such schools in Bombay city, and we intend to propose the payment of a special grant of Ɍ1 for each boy sent up by them into our Hindustani department Q. 5.—In reference to your answer 8, what do you mean by the amount “now expended”? expended by Government or by the Municipality? The case is this,— Municipalities do not contribute 10 per cent of the cost of primary schools, the cess income raised in the town is very small, and practically the cess raised in the villages, or the Provincial assignment which belongs to it as a grant-in-aid, is spent in the towns The rural boards regard this as a spoliation of the rural cess fund, and I want to know if you would advocate that this inequality be rectified before the present expenditure incurred by Government is handed over to Municipalities. A. 5.—I think that there should be a financial arrangement between local District and Municipal Boards before the ways and means of primary education are handed over to the other, so that any unequal assignment of funds, which at present exists, may be rectified at the outset. Q. 6.—In reference to your answer 67, do you mean the Commission to understand that there were not Hindustani schools in every district in the Presidency? A. 6.—I allude to the fact that there was no school in which boys could learn English through their own Hindustani. Q. 7.—In your answers 2 and 32, and generally throughout your evidence, when the context does not show that you are speaking of the whole Presidency, is not your use of the word “Bombay” meant in the narrow sense of Bombay city? A. 7.—It is. Q. 8.—When you speak in your answer 67 (J) of the vernacular of the Muhammadans not being taught and of Gujarathi being useless to them, have you studied the figures? I understand that in Sind, out of nearly two million Muhammadans, only 16,000 speak Hindustani. In Gujarathi the great mass of the trading classes speak Gujarathi, and although in the Deccan the Muhammadan gentry use Urdu, Marathi, or Marathi and Hindu is the common language used. A. 8.—I considered these facts before I gave my evidence Those who speak the vernaculars are practically the illiterate classes of Muhammadans and outside our system of education. Those whose educational wants are now pressing speak Hindustani Q. 9.—When you talk of the Muhammadans being depressed and more or less left outside our educational system, have you ever compared the percentage of

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Muhammadans educated or under instruction in each division with Hindus? I make it to be as follows In Bombay Island 19 per cent Muhammadans and 17 6 per cent Hindus, in Northern Division 9 per cent. Muhammadans and 7 per cent. Hindus, in Central Division 8 7 per cent Muhammadans and 4 1 per cent. Hindus. In the North-East Division the propoition is the same. In the Southern Division, the Muhammadans are still behind the Hindus, and in Sind the Muhmmmadans are entirely illiterate If you compare these figures with the last census, I observe a marked improvement in the Muhammadan community. A. 9.—I had not worked out the figures in this way, I am very glad to hear of the progress, but I would illustrate the present backward state of Muhamnadan education by the following figures— As to high education, for instance— The Deccan College has 133 students, and not a single Muhammadan The Elphinstone College has 175 students, out of whom only 5 are Muhammadan The Ahmedabad College has 24 students and no Muhammadan The St Xavier’s College has 71 students and only 1 Muhammadan The General Assembly’s Institution has 85 students, but not a single Muhammadan Again, as to scientific or special education— The Government Law School has 152 students, out of whom only 3 are Muhammadan The Grant Medical College has 282 pupils, out of whom only 3 are Muhammadan The Poona Engineering College has 159 pupils’ out of whom only 5 are Muhammadans. Again, as regards Matriculation— During the 23 years from 1859 to 1381 no less than 15,247 students matriculated, but only 48 of these were Muhammadans Again, as to high schools— The Poona High School has 574 pupils, out of whom only 12 are Muhammadans, the Sholapur High School has 110 pupils, and only 2 are Muhammadans, the Ratnagiri High School has 179 pupils, and only 10 are Muhammadans, the Elphinstone High School has 795 pupils, and only 17 are Muhammadans, the St. Xavior’s High School has 675 pupils, and only 19 are Muhammadan. As to secondary education, the case is no better, inasmuch as out of a total of 6,735 boys learning English in the city of Bombay, not more than 220 are Muhammadans Total of scholars learning English in the Central Division is 9,586, out of whom only 307 are Muhommadans, in the North-East Division, 977, with only 39 Muhammadans, in the Northern Division, 4,459, with only 182 Muhammadans, in the Southern Division, 2,801, with only 62 Muhammadans, in Sind Division, 19,965, with only 795 Muhammadans.

The above figures are taken from the Report of the Director of Public lnstruction for 1880–81.

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By MR. TELANG. Q. 1.—Do you think that the Managers of the Muhammadan indigenous schools will consent to keep registers, &c, as required by the Education Department? A. 1.—I think they would. It would merely require explanation. Q. 2.—With regard to answer 16, do you approve of the suggestion to reduce Deccan College to the status of a college teaching up to the Previous Examination only? A. 2.—I do not. Q. 3.—Have you any objection to state the general nature of the difficulties raised against the employment of the Muhammadan graduates referred to in answer 25? A. 3.—I never could ascertain what the objections were. But I understood the feeling to be a fear that Hindu susceptibilities would be wounded by the employment of the Muhammadans in Gujarth for instance. Q. 4.—In reference to answer 26, what is the practical course of instruction which you would recommend for those students who do not wish to enter the colleges? A. 4.—I would recommend the omission of algebra, Euclid, and the details of geography and grammar, I would add book-keeping and mental arithmetic, also object-lessons and letter-writing. By MR. JACOB. Q. 1.—In your 2nd answer you suggest that Mussalman schools under Mussalman teachers should be opened at all the centres of the Muhammadan population. Do you know that at the end of March last the Education Department was maintaining 99 schools and classes at such centres, and that Hindustani only was taught in them? A. 1.—Yes, I am aware of the fact. But I think those schools do not meet the exact wants of the Muhammadans. Q. 2.—Are you aware that in the whole Presidency, including Native States, except Baroda, the number of Muhammadans children in the de partmental primary schools last year was nearly as large in proportion to the Muhammadans population as that of the Hindu pupils in proportion to their population? A. 2.—I had not worked out the question of percentage Q. 3.—You suggest in the same answer that special regard should be paid to the feelings and ideas of the Mussalmans. Are you aware that early in 1881 two special Muhammadan Deputy Inspectors were appointed to supervise Hindustani schools, one for Gujarath and one for the Maharashtra? A. 3.—I am well aware of the fact, as it was the direct result of our own negotiations on the subject with Government. Q. 4.—But would you maintain that the Department had not tried for several years previously to secure the necessary funds for creating these Deputy Inspectorships? 86

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A. 4.—I do not think the Department had been pressing the matter so earnestly Q. 5.—Is it the fact that there are special Persian and Arabic teachers employed at the training colleges for Muhammadan students, and that the conditions of entrance to the training colleges are easier in the case of Muhammadans than in the case of Hindu students? A. 5.—I am not aware of the fact. Q. 5.—In connection with the same answer, are you aware that the masters of the Local Fund Hindustani schools are permitted to teach the Korán in the schoolhouse, provided they do so out of the ordinary school hours? A. 6.—I was not aware of the fact, but if they teach out of school hours, I suppose it does not make much difference. Q. 7.—With reference to answer 13, have you ever heard that in several districts the Local Fund Committees have reduced the fee-rates by 50 per cent for Muhammadan pupils, and that the number of free students is allowed to be 20 and in some districts even more than 40 per cent, of the total number on the rolls? A. 7.—I was generally aware that some allowances had been made for Muhammadans. But I consider them inadequate. Q. 8.—In your 67th answer you recommend that Indian, Persian, and Arabic classics should be taught in addition to European learning. Is not this already done in the Elphinstone College and at a considerable number of high schools At Elphinstone High School, e.g., there are four Persian teachers employed and more than 400 students learning under them. At Poona High School there are nearly 100 students of Persian, and so on A. 8.—That does not meet my point at all. What they teach in the Elphinstone College is mere elementary knowledge to any educated Muhammadan; the educated Muhammadan undergraduates do not even care to attend the lectures, as they already know more than what is taught there. Q. 9.—Then would you maintain that the University standard is far too low and does not touch the standard works of great Muhammadan authors? A. 9.—Certainly, speaking from a purely Muhammadan point of view. Q. 10.—In your answer 67 you state that there was not a single AngloHindustani school in the Presidency before the Anjuman-i-Islám School was opened. Are you aware that the Government were then maintaining AngloHindustan schools or classes at Poona, Nasik, and Ahmednagar, and that an attempt has been made by the Department in 1870 to maintain one in the city of Bombay? A. 10.—I was aware only of the attempt made in Bombay in connection with the class at the Gokuldas Tejpal School. Q. 11.—Yon state that the Anjuman-i-Islám has not been permitted to draw any of the Municipal grant. Is it a fact that the Educational Department expressed its readiness to disburse as much of the grant as was necessary to meet the actual net expenditure incurred by the Society? Is it also a fact that the Director offered the Society the services of some of the best Government school masters? A. 11.—Both these are facts. 87

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Q. 12.—In your 40th answer you state that no special steps have been taken for promoting the physical well-being of students in schools and colleges in the Presidency. Is it not a fact that nearly all the high schools and colleges have gymnasia, that the Deccan College has a boating-club, that Elphinstone and several other high schools have cricket-clubs, and that there are public gymnasia and swimming-baths in the vicinity of most of the schools in the Island of Bombay? A. 12.—I was speaking generally of all classes of schools, specially those of the primary and lower secondary kind. Q. 13.—With regard to your 43rd answer about mixed schools, is it not a fact that the Muhammadans freely send their daughters to the mosque schools? A. 13.—They do; but the boys are taught in separate classes from the girls. Q. 14.—If the Department were to offer grants-in-aid for pupils in the mosque schools and Madrassas who could read and write from the Korán, do you think that the school Managers would be willing to accept such aid? A. 14.—I think so.

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6 EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE BOMBAY PROVINCIAL COMMITTEE AND MEMORIALS ADDRESSED TO THE EDUCATION COMMISSION, VOL. II (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1881), 223–242, 255–259, 261–270, 302–313, 11–14 (APPENDIX)

STANDARD LIST. Questions suggested for the examination of Witnesses before the Commission on Education. (Witnesses are requested to select any of these questions on which they have special knowledge, or they may propose others.)

1. Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of Education in India, and in what Province your experience has been gained. 2. Do you think that in your Province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration, or in the course of instruction? 3. In your Province, is primary instruction sought for by the people in general, or by particular classes only? Do any classes specially hold aloof from it, and if so, why? Are any classes practically excluded from it; and if so, from what causes? What is the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society? 4. To what extent do indigenous schools exist in your Province? How far are they a relic of an ancient village system? Can you describe the subjects and character of the instruction given in them, and the system of discipline in vogue? What fees are taken from the scholars? From what classes are the masters of such schools generally selected, and what are their qualifications? Have any arrangements been made for training or providing masters in such schools? Under what

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circumstances do you consider that indigenous schools can be turned to good account as part of a system of national education, and what is the best method to adopt for this purpose? Are the masters willing to accept State aid and to conform to the rules under which such aid is given? How far has the grant-in-aid system been extended to indigenous schools, and can it be further extended? 5. What opinion does your experience lead you to hold of the extent and value of home instruction? How far is a boy educated at home able to compete on equal terms, at examinations qualifying for the public service, with boys educated at school? 6. How far can the Government depend on private effort, aided or unaided, for the supply of elementary instruction in rural districts? Can you enumerate the private agencies which exist for promoting primary instruction? 7. How far, in your opinion, can funds assigned for primary education in rural districts, be advantageously administered by district committees or local boards? What are the proper limits of the control to be exercised by such bodies? 8. What classes of schools should, in your opinion, be entrusted to municipal committees for support and management? Assuming that the provision of elementary instruction in towns is to be a charge against municipal funds, what security would you suggest against the possibility of municipal committees failing to make sufficient provision? 9. Have you any suggestions to make on the system in force for providing teachers in primary schools? What is the present social status of village schoolmasters? Do they exert a beneficial influence among the villagers? Can you suggest measures, other than increase of pay, for improving their position? 10. What subjects of instruction, if introduced into primary schools, would make them more acceptable to the community at large, and especially to the agricultural classes? Should any special means be adopted for making the instruction in such subjects efficient? 11. Is the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools of your Province the dialect of the people? And if not, are the schools on that account loss useful and popular? 12. Is the system of payment by results suitable, in your opinion, for the promotion of education amongst a poor and ignorant people? 13. Have you any suggestions to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? 14. Will you favour the Commission with your views; first, as to how the number of primary schools can be increased; and secondly, how they can be gradually rendered more efficient? 15. Do you know of any instances in which Government educational institutions of the higher order have been closed or transferred to the management of local bodies, as contemplated in paragraph 62 of the Despatch of 1854? And what do you regard as the chief reasons why more effect has not been given to that provision? 16. Do you know of any cases in which Government institutions of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, with or without aid, without injury to education or to any interests which it is the duty of Government to protect? 90

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17. In the Province with which you are acquainted, are any gentlemen able and ready to come forward and aid, even more extensively than heretofore, in the establishment of schools and colleges upon the grant-in-aid system? 18. If the Government, or any local authority having control of public money, were to announce its determination to withdraw, after a given term of years from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, what measures would be best adapted to stimulate private effort in the interim, so as to secure the maintenance of such institution on a private footing? 19. Have you any remarks to offer on the principles of the grant-in-aid system, or the details of its administration? Are the grants adequate in the case of (a) Colleges, (b) Boys’ schools, (c) Girls’ schools, (d) Normal schools? 20. How far is the whole educational system, as at present administered, one of practical neutrality, i.e., one in which a school or a college has no advantage or disadvantage as regards Government aid and inspection from any religious principles that are taught or not taught in it? 21. What classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children? How far is the complaint well founded, that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? What is the rate of fees payable for higher education in your Province, and do you consider it adequate? 22. Can you adduce any instance of a proprietary school or college supported entirely by fees? 23. Is it in your opinion possible for a non-Government institution of the higher order to become influential and stable when in direct competition with a similar Government institution? If so, under what conditions do you consider that it might become so? 24. Is the cause of higher education in your Province injured by any unhealthy competition; and if so, what remedy, if any, would you apply? 25. Do educated natives in your Province readily find remunerative employment? 26. Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information? 27. Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils in unduly directed to the entrance examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstances impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? 28. Do you think that the number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the University entrance examination is unduly large when compared with the requirements of the country? If you think so, what do you regard as the causes of this state of things, and what remedies would you suggest? 29. What system prevails in your Province with reference to scholarships; and have you any remarks to make on the subject? Is the scholarship system impartially administered as between Government and aided schools? 30. Is municipal support at present extended to grant-in-aid schools, whether belonging to missionary or other bodies; and how far is this support likely to be permanent? 91

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31. Does the University curriculum afford a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools, or are special normal schools needed for the purpose? 32. What is the system of school [Illegible Text] pursued in your Province? In what respect is it capable of improvement? 33. Can you suggest any method of securing efficient voluntary agency in the work of inspection and examination? 34. How far do you consider the text-books in use in all schools suitable? 35. Are the present arrangements of the Education Department in regard to examinations or text-books, or in any other way, such as unnecessarily interfere with the free development of private institutions? Do they in any wise tend to check the development of natural character and ability or to interfere with the production of a useful vernacular literature? 36. In a complete scheme of Education for India what parts can, in your, opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? 37. What effect do you think that the withdraw of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? 38. In the event of the Government withdrawing to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges, do you apprehend that the standard of instruction in any class of institutions would deteriorate? If you think so, what measures would you suggest in order to prevent this result? 39. Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestions to make on this subject? 40. Are any steps taken for promoting the physical well-being of students in the schools or colleges in your Province? Have you any suggestions to make on the subject? 41. Is there indigenous instruction for girls in the Province with which you are acquainted; and if so, what is its character? 42. What progress has been made by the department in instituting schools for girls; and what is the character of the instruction imparted in them? What improvements can you suggest? 43. Have you any remarks to make on the subject of mixed schools? 44. What is the best method of providing teachers for girls. 45. Are the grants to girls schools larger in amount, and given on less onerous terms, than those to boys’ schools; and is the distinction sufficiently marked? 46. In the promotion of female education, what share has already been taken by European ladies; and how far would it be possible to increase the interest which ladies might take in this cause? 47. What do you regard as the chief defects, other than any to which you have already referred, that experience has brought to light in the educational system as it has been hitherto administered? What suggestions have you to make for the remedy of such defects? 92

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48. Is any part of the expenditure incurred by the Government on high education in your Province unnecessary? 49. Have Government institutions been set up in localities where places of instruction already existed, which might by grants-in-aid or other assistance adequately supply the educational wants of the people? 50. Is there any foundation for the statement that officers of the Education Department take too exclusive an interest in high education? Would beneficial results be obtained by introducing into the department more men of practical training in the art of teaching and school management? 51. Is the system of pupil teachers or monitors in force in your Province? If so, please state how it works. 52. Is there any tendency to raise primary into secondary schools unnecessarily or prematurely? Should measures be taken to check such a tendency? If so, what measures? 53. Should the rate of fees in any class of schools or colleges vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil? 54. Has the demand for high education in your Province reached such a stage as to make the profession of teaching a profitable one? Have schools been opened by men of good position as a means of maintaining themselves? 55. To what classes of instit [Illegible Text] you think that the system of assigning grants according to the result of periodical examinations should be applied? What do you regard as the chief conditions for making this system equitable and useful? 56. To what classes of institutions do you think that the system of assigning grants in aid of the salaries of certificated teachers can be best applied? Under what conditions do you regard this system as a good one? 57. To what proportion of the gross expense do you think that the grant-in-aid should amount under ordinary circumstances in the case of colleges and schools of all grades? 58. What do you consider to be the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught as a class by one instructor in the case of colleges and schools respectively? 59. In your opinion should fees in colleges be paid by the term, or by the month? 60. Does a strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools? 61. Do you think that the institutions of University professorships would have an important effect in improving the quality of high education? 62. It is desirable that promotions from class to class should depend, at any stage of school education, on the results of public examinations extending over the entire Province? In what cases, if any, is it preferable that such promotions be left to the school authorities? 63. Are there any arrangements between the colleges and schools of your Province to prevent boys who are expelled from one institution, or who leave it 93

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improperly, from being received into another? What are the arrangements which you would suggest? 64. In the event of the Government withdrawing from the direct management of higher institutions generally, do you think it desirable that it should retain under direct management one college in each province as a model to other colleges; and if so, under what limitations or conditions? 65. How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B. A. standard. 66. Are European professors employed or likely to be employed in colleges under native management? 67. Are the circumstances of any class of the population in your Province (e. g., the Muhammadans) such as to require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education? To what are these circumstances due, and how far have they been provided for? 68. How far would Government be justified in withdrawing from any existing school or college, in places where any class of the population objects to attend the only alternative institution on the ground of its religious teaching? 69. Can schools and colleges under native management compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management? 70. Are the conditions on which grants-in-aid are given in your Province more onerous and complicated than necessary.

EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE BOMBAY PROVINCIAL COMMITEE. N.B.—The serial numbers of tie questions in the Examination in Chief of the witnesses refer to the numbers which those questions bear in the Standard List of queries forwarded to all witnesses and reprinted at the beginning of the volume. W W. H.

Evidence of MR. V. S. APTE. Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on Education. Ans. 1.—I am Superintendent of the new English School at Poona But the views which I express in my evidence represent the general views of the whole body of conductors of the school with which I am connected Ques. 18.—If the Government or any local authority having control of public money were to announce its determination to withdraw after a given term of years from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, what measures would be best adapted to stimulate private effort in the interim, so as to secure the maintenance of such institution on a private footing?

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Ans. 18.—If “private effort” means the effort of the various Missionary societies, then I am decidedly of opinion that the withdrawal of Government from the maintenance of any higher educational institution generally will be productive of very bad effects upon the progress of education in this country This point is discussed at length in my answers to questions 6 and 7, and I do not dilate upon it here. If it be the sincere desire of Government that, when it retires from a direct connection with schools or colleges, it should leave education in the hands of such bodies as are of indigenous growth, and being such would be far better calculated to inspire confidence in the minds of the people, if Government means to teach the Natives of this country the art of self-education as it means to teach the art of self-government, and thus prepare them for taking up the work when it means to leave it, if it ardently wishes that education, upon which the success of men in all their various avocations in life principally depends, and upon the nature of which rests the good or otherwise of their countrymen, should be managed by the people themselves if these be the sincere desires of Government, then I should certainly say that the experiment, such as that which seems contemplated in the question, would be worth trying It would be only another feature of the development of the Local Self-Government scheme; and even if some additional expenditure has to be incurred, the object itself is so laudable that I do not think the expenditure will not be adequately requited I proceed to state the measures that would be adapted to stimulate private effort in the interim, so that the institutions may be maintained on a private footing— (a) If any body of gentlemen come forward and say that they will be ready to maintain some of the institutions of a higher order after a given term of years, Government should, by first assuring itself of the abilities, efficiency, and chances of permanency shown by them, be ready to introduce a more liberal and less interfering system of grant-in-aid, such as would be given further on, free from the faults which the present system shows, as given in my answer to the next question Unless the system of grant-in-aid be liberal and leaves sufficient scope for free development of the institution, the object aimed at, both by Government and by those who would agree to, try the experiment, will not be accomplished to any appreciable degree (b) Another step to secure the desired end would be to maintain one Government institution, at the place where the experiment may be tried, in good order and efficiency, both to serve as a model and to produce the necessary degree of efficiency in the private institution, and thus enable it and the Government institution to continue efficient when Government withdraws from any direct connection with its own institution. The model to be maintained, so long as the private institution becomes thoroughly efficient, ought to be in a very efficient state, otherwise the copy would be ill-made. After the institution has grown up in this manner and become able to take charge of its own institution as well as the model, the body of gentlemen might be asked to take charge of other schools in other districts on the grant-in-aid system. Every facility ought to be given to the private institution that

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it might become a thoroughly efficient central institution, able, in course of time, to take charge of other schools in other places. (c) But the most important measure which would be best adapted to secure the desired end in a rapid and certain manner is the permission to be given by the University to that private institution to open a college branch if it finds that it has the means of doing so. If after a given term of years, say five or six years, the institution, being able to manage the local Government institution, desires to undertake the management of Government schools in other places on the grant-inaid system, it will not generally happen that it will get all the men wanted for this purpose from the Government colleges themselves It will have very often to send out men trained in its own ways of thinking and acting, and very often the number of persons wanted would be greater than what the colleges might supply. If that institution shows ability and efficiency and sufficiently reasonable prospects of permanency, it may be affiliated to the University as an institution teaching up to the PE, First BA or second B.A., according to its efficiency. If the institution, by being recognised by the University, be able to pass graduates from itself, the difficulty to be experienced about the supply of teachers would be considerably obviated But this is too good to be expected all at once. It cannot be expected that an institution will be affiliated within the period of one or two years. People must devote themselves to college-work, and show that they will be able to teach the subjects taught in colleges, and then only may the University be expected to recognise it as a college institution. But how are people to show themselves efficient to teach in a college if they have no opportunities given them to have an experience thereof? To remove this difficulty, I would suggest that the University might grant permission to such an institution to send up candidates for University examinations without keeping terms at an affiliated institution The restriction as to keeping terms prevents several students from availing themselves of collegiate instruction, and they are obliged to betake themselves to seeking employments. If permission of the kind suggested above be granted to an institution, it will benefit not only poor boys themselves, those people that might think of getting their institution affiliated would also have a fair chance of proving themselves able to discharge their higher duties I do not think that this permission will be availed of by anybody to the highest steps at once. The members of the institution will first try to send students for the P.E. only, and when they find themselves able to teach those subjects, they might think of rising one step higher, and, so on, try to rise up by degrees. The candidates that may be prepared in this manner privately may be tested by the same rigid tests as are applied to students from other colleges, those only who might stand that test successfully should be declared as having passed Such a step will, I think, enable men to be prepared to teach higher subjects when the University might affiliate the institution This would be a sort of preparatory college, and I believe that if this idea be properly encouraged, not only will the object aimed at by Government to withdraw from a direct connection with higher education be fulfilled, but the Natives 96

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will be taught a very great lesson of depending upon themselves in the matter of education Now, an objection might be raised: if the restruction as to terms be removed, then the students would be deprived of the general salutary influences arising from the presence of the professors in recognised colleges, and that the attention of the students would be devoted more to the passing of examinations than to the formation and development of their character. With, regard to this objection, I must say it is more fanciful than real under the present circumstances of colleges at least Some 15 or 20 years ago one could have justly talked of the salutary influences produced upon the mind by the agreeable sort of life led at the college, and the frequent opportunities afforded to students of freely mixing with professors and discussing subjects with them, but the change now to be seen is too clear to require any explanation Even if the good of the presence of professors and the wholesome influence of company be actually matters of fact, I do not think that people should be deprived of the advantages of collegiate instruction simply because they are not able to bear the costly expenses of a college life, which, in all, amount to Ɍ25 per month even in a city like Poona If the restriction as to terms be dispensed with, several people who hopelessly give up their studies will be encouraged to prosecute them further, and even if this restriction be removed it will not certainly be attended with a very rapid fall in the attendance at colleges, for some people there will be who will like to avail themselves of the regular college instruction The removal of the restriction will operate as a strong inducement to several people to complete their course those who cannot afford to bear the heavy college expenses will not have recourse to Government colleges, those who can will try to prosecute their studies at Government colleges. In this way scope will be left for both classes of students If this proposal be acted upon, and its execution be assisted by an adequate system of grant-in aid, I see no reason why Native gentlemen should not be ready to take charge of Government institutions after a given term of years As I have said at the outset, the experiment is worth trying, and even slight failures at the commencement should not be regarded as bad signs, seeing that, if vigorously and sincerely continued, the experiment is sure to result in an incalculable good both to Government and the people themselves. Ques. 19.—Have you any remarks to offer on the principles of the grant-in-aid system or the details of its administration? Are the grants adequate in the case of colleges and boys’ schools? Ans. 19.—As this is a very important question, I shall have to dwell upon it at some length. (a) It would not be out of place to give a short history of this system. The grant-in-aid system, which is justly called the pivot of the educational system, was introduced in conformity with the directions contained in the Despatch of 1854 “Since Government can never be expected to do all the work of education by its own unaided efforts,” it was deemed necessary to encourage local efforts among the Natives of India, and to make them, by means of contributions from the State, take a more extensive part in education. In paragraph 52 the Court of 97

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Directors said “We confidently anticipate, by thus drawing support from local resources in addition to contributions from the State, a far more rapid progress of education than would follow a mere increase of expenditure by the Government, while it possesses the additional advantage of fostering a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combinations for local purposes which is of itself of no mean importance to the well-being of a nation.” With this view the system was propelled, and rules were framed for that purpose. At first a large extension of schools was caused by means of what was called the “partially self-supporting system.” But in 1857 (April) the Government of India expressed its censure of this sort of system of extending schools as being opposed to the spirit of the Despatch. Then rules were promulgated for giving grants, but till the year 1865–66 the system of payment by results was not introduced, but a lump sum to be given to a school was determined by the Inspector, considering the efficiency of instruction imparted This system had its own evils, and thus the more efficient system of giving grants according to the results of periodical examinations was brought in. That system, with several alterations and modifications made in the rules from time to time, has been in use till the present day. In the rules framed for grants-in-aid for the first time, the true spirit of the Despatch was scrupulously adhered to, but in the rules subsequently framed the same accuracy was not observed. In the rules given in page 229 of the Educational Report for 1856–57, we find “This system of Government grants-in-aid is founded on an entire abstinence from interference with the religions doctrines inculcated in the schools to be aided, and that aid will be given to all schools in which a good secular education is imparted, but conditions like these do not appear to be given any significant prominence in the rules published in 1867–68, 1871–72, 1876–77, or 1881–82. There are various details in these rules which have been introduced from time to time, and they will be considered when I come to the details of the administration of the grant-in-aid system. (b) One of the principles that is open to serious objections is the principle now followed by the Educational Department of giving grants to Missionary institutions, though they professedly teach their religious books to pupils during school-hours, and thus violate the principles of religious neutrality, the chief point insisted upon in the Despatch. I for myself am unable to see how, following strictly the instructions contained in the Despatch of 1854 which the advocates of Missionary institutions take as the basis of their arguments, Missionary institutions, conducted as they are at present, should be entitled to get grants (I) In the first place the objects with which the framers of the Despatch inaugurated the system of grants-in-aid was to give encouragement to local efforts, “to foster a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combinations for local purposes.” Wherever the grant-in-aid system is alluded to, the idea of local efforts and the encouragement to be given to such efforts are prominently and distinctly brought forward. In paragraph 61 of the Despatch it is said “We desire to see local management under Government inspection and assisted by grants in-aid taken advantage of wherever it is possible to do so” This sort of reliance upon 98

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local exertions and combination for local purposes is not encouraged among the people by encouraging Missionary institutions. In the paragraph above referred to it is clearly said that Government will supply the wants of particular parts of India by temporary establishment of schools, in districts where there is little or no prospect of adequate local efforts being made for this purpose If, then, the spirit and aim of the Despatch be to encourage people to come forward with local contributions and, assisted by Government, to aid in the cause of extending the sphere of education, I cannot perceive how grants paid to Missionary efforts, which, are evidently no local efforts, will bring about the object of the system The Government of India themselves see that Native efforts ought to be encouraged the Resolution No. 2152 of February 1882 says: “It is not a healthy symptom that all the youths of the country should be cast, as it were, in the same Government educational mould. Rather it is desirable that each section of the people should be in a position to secure that description of education which is most consonant to its feelings and suited to its wants. The Government is ready, therefore, to do all that it can to foster such a spirit of independence and selfhelp.” The Times of India, in a leading article in its issue of the 5th of May, writes on thus subject much in the same strain, and, as it properly expresses my views on this point, I give an extract from it— “The Missionaries regard the Despatch as the character by which they claim the right to have their schools and colleges aided by the Government, but in fact there is nothing throughout this Despatch to show that the idea of such assistance was really entertained by its framers. In fact we think it is highly improbable that the idea ever occurred to the real framer of the Despatch (J S Mill) The object of the grant-in-aid system introduced by the Despatch was distinctly stated to be the encouragement of local efforts. (Then follows paragraph 52 quoted above) But when Government support a Missionary school they cannot by any stretch of language be supposed to foster a spirit of reliance upon local exertions. The Despatch informs us that Government expected that their efforts would be aided not only by educated and wealthy Natives of India, but by other benevolent persons. No doubt Missionaries are benevolent persons, but they do not always start schools from the purely philanthropic motive of spreading knowledge.”

It will be seen, therefore, that the application of Government money towards Missionary institutions is not encouraging “local” efforts as was contemplated by the Despatch (II) In the second place the giving of grants to Missionary institutions violates the principle of religious neutrality to which Government adheres. It is one thing to abstain from interfering with the religious beliefs of the students, and only to inculcate precepts of advice and morality so as to tend to their well-being in this world and in the next, as is done in Government institutions; but it is quite a different thing to preach a belief in another religion to students of entirely differing and varying sects of belief, as is done in Missionary institutions Missionary institutions try to subvert the faith of their pupils by introducing them to the belief of their own Christian religion by the use of the Bible in schools and colleges, and thus directly interfere with the religious opinions of the pupils (with what effect is immaterial), whereas Government 99

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institutions give them general precepts of morality without trying to tamper with anybody’s individual beliefs Thus, the former violate the principle of religious neutrality, so clearly and prominently insisted upon in the Despatch It will be seen that when the rules for grant-in-aid came to be first introduced here, the then Director of Public Instruction, Mr Howard, strongly opposed the idea of giving grants to Missionary institutions, concurring in the views expressed on this question by Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control, in a letter to the Chairman of the Court of Directors on 28th April 1858 Mr Howard wrote “I beg to express my respectful concurrence in the arguments by which Lord Ellenborough deprecates grants-in-aid to professedly Missionary schools as inconsistent with religious neutrality. No pecuniary grant has been made in this Presidency to any Missionary school” (Report for 1857–58). Lord Ellenborough’s views are very explicit, and I quote some paragraphs because they fully bear out what I say “22. The primary object of the Missionary is prosolytism. He gives education because by giving education he hopes to extend Christianity. He may be quite right in adopting this course, and left to himself unaided by the Government, and evidently unconnected with it he may obtain some, although probably no great, extent of success. But the moment he is ostensibly assisted by the Government, he not only loses a large portion of his chance of doing good in the furtherance of his primary object, but by creating an impression that education means proselytism, he naturally impedes the progress of Government directed to education alone” *

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“26. Our scheme of education pervaded the land. It was known in every village. We were teaching new things in a new way, and often as the teacher stood the Missionary, who was only in India to convert the people “27. I must express my doubt whether to aid by Government funds the imparting even of purely secular education in a Missionary school is consistent with the promises so often made to the people and till now so scrupulously kept of perfect neutrality in matters of religion “28. It is true that the money of the State is only granted to the Missionary on account of the secular education which alone he engages to give to the Native unless the Native should otherwise desire, but it may often, if not always, happen that it is only through the aid thus given professedly for secular education that the Missionary is able to keep the school at all, which he only designs for other, and those proselytising purposes “29. We thus indirectly support where we profess to repudiate and practically abandon the neutrality to which at all times we have pledged ourselves to adhere. Such conduct brings into question our good faith, and may naturally give alarm to the people”

It is true that these emphatic thoughts, coming so close after the mutiny, will lose a little of their warmth when applied to the present state of Missionary

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institutions, but the fact is none the less true that, though proselytism is not regarded by them as a near certainty now, yet it is that to which all their secular as well as religious efforts are slowly, but surely and remotely, directed. The times have vastly changed no doubt, but the Missionaries, though they are not confident of any success, still retain the principle of religious instruction and thus violate the principle of strict religious neutrality. As for supplying the vacant minds of students, undermined by the secular instruction in Government schools, with a sense of moral obligations in an evangelical way, the Missionaries would do well to leave it to the Natives themselves They might preach morality without going to the Bible. The reason why Natives attend mission schools, though their tendencies are proselytising, is that they generally can afford to admit boys at a far less rate of fees than other schools, and that they admit a large number of free students. Sharp and diligent boys, however, invariably prefer other schools, because they give a far superior instruction. The views of those who had charge of the Educational Department, when the rules were first systematically introduced, were opposed to the principle of granting aid to Missionary institutions, but subsequently Educational officers showed themselves favourably inclined to their cause, and the consequence has been that most of the mission schools, those of the higher class at least, now get grants-in-aid. Missionary advocates must have succeeded in inducing Educational officers to believe that the language of the Despatch guaranteed the grants of money to private agencies that might be available; and even now, having a strong interest at home to back them, and having the sympathies of men like Lord Halifax: and the Duke of Argyll, &c., they are using all the weight of their arguments, and humbly asking for their share by standing upon the provisions of the Despatch (The three or four pamphlets published by the Reverend Johnston during 1880 and 1881 on this subject may be taken as examples) I have no mind to enter into a refutation of their arguments, as this is neither the time nor the place to do so. I merely take the fact as it stands now—that there are very few Missionary schools now that are not assisted by Government with a grant-in-aid (c) The Department of Public Instruction, as now constituted, is generally not inclined to encourage the growth of indigenous private enterprise by a liberal application of the grant-in-aid system. If a school is started by Natives and shown to several able officers, and even if it secures certificates of efficiency and good management both from the results of the Entrance Examinations and from the Educational authorities themselves, the school gets no chance of being registered on the ground, not of inefficiency, but want of funds at the disposal of Government. The Poona Native Institution may, I think, be given as an example of this sort. It is only now that the Manager of the institution has, by a marvellous dint of much personal exertion, succeeded in getting it registered To illustrate what I mean by the attitude of the Department towards this institution, I take the following extracts from letters written to the head-master, Mr. Bhave, by Educational authorities—

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“No. 2219 of 1880-81. 13th September 1880 To THE MANAGER, Poona Native Institution. SIR, With reference to my inspection of your school I have the honour to inform you that the Director of Public Instruction has no money to give to the support of private institutions, &c. 2 At the same time I may inform you that I was surprised and pleased to find your institution so well conducted and efficient. I consider that, looking to the difficulties you have to meet in the way of funds, your management of the institution has been praiseworthy, and the results obtained better than could have been expected I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient Servant, (Sd.) E. GILES, Acting Educational Inspector, C.D.”

Here follows a letter from the Director himself— “No. 2958 of 1880 81. 15th September 1880 To MR WAMAN PRABHAKAR BHAVE, Head-Master, Poona Native Institution. SIR, In reply to your letter of the 11th instant, I have the honour to state that I have no funds for any private high school in Poona. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient Servant, (Sd) K M. CHATFIELD, Director of Public Instruction”

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It might be supposed that the Government grant was withheld from this school on the ground that it showed no signs of permanency, but that this ground was disposed of so far back as 1878 by no less an authority than Mr. Kirkham, may be seen from the Educational Inspector’s Report No 2343, dated 15th November 1878, from which the following is an extract— “Government had very strong reasons for refusing a grant to the institution for so many years. They wanted to see its permanency Since Dr Kielhorn’s inspection, much has been done to improve the teaching staff The mere fact of the institution continuing for so many years without Government and conclusively proves that it supplies an educational want long felt in the town Now, the time has arrived when the benefit of the Government grant can, with great convenience, be extended to this institution.”

Some of the greatest changes made in the grant-in-aid rules occurred in the year 1876, on the ground that there were no sufficient funds available In that year four Native high schools were struck off the list of registered schools When Baba Gokhale’s school was so struck off, it was not, so far as my knowledge goes, given a further trial even of one year; whereas the local mission school, which, I may say from my personal experience of it for six months, was then and is even now in a worse condition than Baba’s school in its worst condition; and though it is a “permanent institution” it has during the last five years, passed on an average 1 60 students every year, while Bhave’s school passed 14 students during the same five years, though it was an unaided institution. It is rather a strange fact that, though Missionary schools are supported by large funds at home by the contributions or subscriptions of their friends, sympathisers here, and still more by the favourable attitude of the Department towards them, yet the results shown by such institutions at the Matriculation Examination during the last five years are far inferior to those shown by Native private unaided institutions From a calculation made of the results of the nine Missionary schools in this Presidency which send up boys for the Matriculation and of those shown by the nine unaided private institutions existing in Bombay and Poona, it is found that the latter schools passed 252 boys, while the former not more than 160! This shows the efficiency of instruction in Native schools though they have to labour under very great disadvantages, and it also shows that Missionary institutions (with one notable exception) are far below the mark even in that branch in which they ask Government to hand over its institutions to them, i e., secondary education When the grants were withdrawn from Native schools in 1876, it was quite natural that their efficiency should be seriously marred. Though the Native schools were struck off the list of registered schools, the number of Missionary schools and other European and Eurasian schools that received grants on the reduced scale continued very nearly the same in 1877–78 The Director in his Report for 1877–78 wrote that the falling-off in the number of aided schools that was recorded “may possibly be attributed to the cessation of the Government grant

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and the consequent inability or unwillingness of the proprietors to employ teachers thoroughly qualified to teach up to the Matriculation standard” If the words “was surely” be substituted for “may possibly” in the above passage, I think the Director will have stated the chief reason of the falling-off referred to. In order to show how the grants of Government are divided amongst aided schools, I give the following table from the Report of 1880–81—

Year

1879–80 . . 1880–81 . .

Colleges

Permanent schools for Europeans and Eurasians.

Permanent Schools for Natives

Rs

Rs

A.

P

Rs

8,525 3,600

30,883 34,800

8 0

0 0

35,780 37,739

A P

Private Schools Rs

A P

Total.

Rs

A. P

4 2 3,815 0 0 76,002 12 2 5 7 4,469 8 0 83,698 13 7

This shows what a despicably small portion of the grants is obtained by schools started by Natives (that is, hardly 12 per cent.), and how great a portion is absorbed by European and Eurasian schools (that is, nearly 46 per cent) An argument is sometimes put forward by the Department that if the Native schools are good they want no Government support, but I must say here that a due appreciation of the efficiency of instruction is not made by 75 out of 100 persons, and though a school might be good, it does not in all cases mean that it will continue long so without a grant from Government If I may be allowed to state here the present Director’s opinion about Native private enterprise in general, I shall re-produce it.—“I think,” said he to me at a private interview, “the system of grants-in-aid to private schools is a sort of fallacy When we find that the ways and means of our Government high schools become equal by the raising of fees proportionately, we might employ the sum we now spend on them in opening other schools, instead of supporting a lot of mushroom schools which may spring up to-day and die in no time.” I must admit here that there is some truth in his remark, Government is not bound to aid a school of which there appears no reasonable chance of permanence, or which might be merely started for filling the belly. Such “mushroomh” schools it might not aid; but I think the “mushroom” nature of school ceases if it continues for more than four years without the least aid from Government in an efficient manner. (d) I now come to the details of the administration of the grant-in aid system itself. The foremost of such points is the system of payment by results, which means the system of awarding grants to schools according to the results of periodical examinations The chief evil of this system is that it does not give facilities for the maintenance of permanency in an institution, its nature is very uncertain A school might get a very bad batch of boys one year, and if the results in an examination of those boys be bad so as to give a less grant that year, how should the school pay the teacher that taught those boys? The labour of the teacher is not 104

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lessened even if the boys be very raw. Even if the results of examinations show a great variation from year to year, the school will have to maintain the number of teachers, and so a constant expenditure. If the results are bad one year the school cannot afford to pay its teachers properly, if it should turn them out, there would be very little likelihood of getting in this manner any teacher who would agree to teach in the school for a certain number of years The frequent change of teacher is greatly detrimental to the interests of boys in private schools, more so than in Government schools; but if the grants be of a varying and precarious nature, the evils arising from such a frequent change of teachers would be seriously aggravated In fact, the Managers of a school would, I think, find it difficult to be able to keep up a standard of efficiency, if they have to depend, for the most part, upon the payments to be got by the results of examinations. It is well known that the results of examinations are generally of a very uncertain nature Far more uncertain, and consequently far more injurious to the interests of a school, are the results of those examinations in which the examiners are bound by a particular limit, beyond which the funds at the disposal of Government cannot go If the amount of funds that can be spent in grants-in-aid is already settled and fixed upon, it can hardly be expected that examiners who are, under the present system, Government servants, i.e., Deputy Inspectors or Educational Inspector, should not try to cut down the grants as far as possible, so as to bring them within the fixed limits. When examiners go to examine a school with the knowledge that the funds at the disposal of Government cannot exceed a certain amount; and when other causes—such as the chance of getting a bad batch, the hurried, and therefore unsatisfactory, way of examinations, the difference in the degree of tests for any two years, the personnel of the Department being liable to constant fluctuations, and the fact that boys frequently get nervous or are quite unable to show their usual attainments before an examiner whom they have not seen before—when these and the like causes are taken together, they all, I think, go to enhance the very uncertain nature of the system of payment by results when applied exclusively to a school. The other way followed by the Department in the case of some schools in the Presidency is to give in the lump a fixed grant every year. In this way Ɍ24,303 2–9 were given to schools during the year 1880–81. Whatever be the advantages of getting a grant free from the unstable effects of payment by results, I am not inclined to think that a fixed grant will have a good effect upon the working of a school Though payment by results has many evils when introduced exclusively, one advantage of it is that it always leaves occasion for vigorous exertions, gives an impulse to work hard, and thus dispels all source of idleness, looseness, or carelessness, which are inevitable when it is certainly known that the school will get very nearly the same grant next year. By this system one of the chief incentives to work sincerely and zealously, which are essential in a private school, is removed, and I think the sure prospect of getting a certain amount of grant, whether the work is done sincerely or not, prevents teachers from increasing every year the standard of efficiency once attained. Payment by results has the element of rousing a spirit of emulation which is wanting in the fixed grant system. I, for myself, would not like to 105

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have a fixed grant given every year, though at the same time I should not wish the payment-by-results alone maintained without other elements of permanency. When we apply for the registration of our school, we should certainly like to have the elements of both the systems—a fixed grant and payment-by-results— combined in a manner in which the evils of both would be removed and the good promoted. Payment-by-results by itself might be of some use in the case of those schools which are not likely to suffer, if passing certain examinations be made the goal of ambition of their teachers Such schools would be the primary schools and the extension of primary education might be sought by a judicious application of this system and thus encouraging the growth of indigenous schools in villages wherever practicable. But this system, if used exclusively in higher schools and colleges, will not be productive of much good, and how it may be made beneficial by a just combination with the fixed grant system, will be given in my answers to questions 11 and 12, where I shall propose a system of grants-in-aid, combining the advantages of both the present systems (e) Several important changes were made in the grants-in-aid rules from time to time; but three very important changes, among others, were effected in 1876; namely, the withdrawing of grants for passing Matriculation and grants for the salaries of teachers, and reducing by one-half the grants for passing the F A and B.A. Examinations, which were formerly 200 and 350 respectively. Since 1877 a college that passed a F.A. and B.A. got only 100 and 175; when the rules were again revised in the early part of this year, the grants for Matriculation and teachers’ salaries were not renewed, though the causes which prompted the sudden changes in 1876, i e., the paucity of funds owing to famine, had to a great extent disappeared in February 1882. The only changes made were in the grants for the three University examinations, for each of which Rs 100 were assigned. By this great decrease, where a college got before 1878 Ɍ550 for sending out one graduate, it can now get Ɍ300 only with the additional risk of having to get a student through three, instead of two, examinations, with one more chance of failure. The effect produced by these changes upon the progress of aided colleges must indeed have been very serious, and if Government be desirous of encouraging indigenous private efforts in the work of education, I think the scale of these grants will have to be considerably increased But in the ease of aided high schools also the sudden and great changes with regard to salaries and Matriculation grants, which still continue unmodified even in the recently revised rules, told very heavily, and will tell more heavily still, on the aided schools. It is a strange anomaly that the standards below the Matriculation standard are examined and grants paid for them, but that standard which determines the degree of efficiency of a high school remains out of consideration. It is this standard of which the greatest care is required to be taken, as it is that which proves the school to be efficient and prosperous Passing one boy in the Matriculation could, before 1876, give the school Ɍ100, but since then it gives nothing. Besides, there being now no grants allowed for salaries of masters, the Managers of a school have no inducements to employ abler and efficient teachers, for they cannot, merely depending upon 106

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the uncertain payment-by-results, afford to spend large sums for this purpose. When masters get some fixed grants according to their degree of knowledge, it is very easy for a school to secure the services of competent teachers. The result of these circumstances has been that private schools find it impossible to obtain the services of able teachers on low salaries; failure to get able teachers renders the standard of instruction very low, and thus the cause of the school begins to sink more and more, till at last a final extinction is considered better than a disgraceful, lingering death Owing to the withdrawal of grants in these two respects, the progress of high schools conducted by Natives has been hampered, and I don’t think that, unless important changes are made in these two particulars, the Natives of this Presidency would find it worth their while to take a part in the education of their own countrymen. ( f ) Leaving the minor defects in the administration of the grant-in-aid system, such as the undue severity of examinations in considering a boy as incapable of getting a grant for a head if he fails in any of its subdivisions, the greater attention paid at the time of an inspection or examination to the neatness of external forms and their exact conformity to Government or prescribed modes rather than to the kind or quality of instruction given, the uncertainty of the standard adopted by an inspecting officer to enable him “to speak well of the quality and intelligence of boys” at an inspection, and the like defects, I must not omit to mention the last, but not the least one, i e, that the present rules interfere largely with the free growth of private institutions. The chief faults of the official machinery as contrasted with private enterprise are, as pointed by Herbert Spencer as early as 1854 in the Westminster Review, the want of promptness, want of efficiency, and the want of adaptability to the requirements of those affected by it Though the second fault cannot be in all cases charged against Government institutions, yet the two others may, I believe, be predicated of most of them. And the way in which the grant-inaid rules are applied to schools only serves to heighten them instead of trying to remove them The tendency of the Government machinery is to reduce everything to stereotyped forms and to leave no scope for the free exercise of independence in internal management. The rules require that the schools should be examined according to the standards prescribed for Government institutions. The several serious faults noted with regard to the arrangement of subjects for different standards and touched upon in my answer to question 10, are, therefore, carried into private schools also, and the unadaptability of subjects, instead of being cured in the socalled independent institutions, is increased, by being scrupulously followed Any school, therefore, that may be registered and may claim to get grants-in-aid, has to regulate all its studies according to the models act by Government, howsoever illconstrtucted or faulty they may be. Thus, if it wants any assistance from Government, it must conform itself to all the rules, regulations, forms—good or bad—in fact, everything done in Government schools. It yet remains to be seen whether a school being registered and presenting boys for examination under standards differently constituted from the Government ones, not merely in point of difference of books, but in the change of subjects also, will be assisted by Government with 107

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a grant. If Government desire to ultimately withdraw from the direct management of its schools and colleges by encouraging local efforts, private institutions ought to be given a perfect liberty of action in all internal arrangements; they must not be bound dawn by the stereotyped forms obtaining in Government institutions, even though they be seriously faulty; there ought to be every room for improvement and progress and continued development as circumstances may render necessary. The University has fixed the standard for the Matriculation, and whatever paths, easy or difficult, private schools might follow to attain this end, in other words, though the standards that they might adopt be different, Government ought to have no objection to examining such schools on the ground that they are not, as it were, “uniform in one volume.” Many Managers of aided institutions might desire to make some radical changes in the course of instruction, but they dare not do so, lest they should be in danger of forferting what small grants are placed within their reach If, for example, the New English School is registered, we would make it as the first condition of making ourselves amenable to the grant-in-aid rules, supposing the present rules be allowed to remain unmodified, that the Inspector will not see by what kind of standards the school course is regulated, what the intermediate ways are by which we reach the goal. He should satisfy himself about the efficiency of instruction as conveyed in the school, and should declare results accordingly We have adopted standards, adapted, in out opinion, to the wants of students as they advance. We have now reduced the whole course to six years, and by opening a vernacular feeder, which we hope to do at no distant date, we hope to reduce the school course by one more year at least Thus, where a boy in a Government school might complete his Matriculation course after 11 years at least, supposing him to be a very sharp boy all round, we hope we shall be able to arrange to complete it within 8 or 9 years. If such changes are effected, and if the grants-in aid rules continue to he as rigid as now, I do not see how such a school will be thought worthy of Government support. It is upon a right adjustment of this point that the success of private institutions in my opinion depends more than upon others. If we should become ready to join the banners of Government standards and submit to their rules, that which has, I may say without any feeling of egotism, made it a school having some distinctly peculiar features of its own, will be lost, and it will be only going over the old beaten path without the means of making any improvements in the course of instruction It is this point in the administration of grants-in-aid that must be grappled with and solved with care, prudence, and honesty of purpose Ques. 21.—What classes principally avail themselves of Government of aided schools and colleges for the education of their children ? How far is the complaint well-founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? Ans. 21.—The classes that generally avail themselves of instruction in schools and colleges are the poorer and middle classes, and the higher classes generally do not take as much interest in any education as it is supposed they do. The persons who send their sons to schools or colleges are mostly Government officials, clerks in Native States, or in private offices or businesses, or small land-holders, and there are very few who can be said to belong to the wealthier classes. Even a person 108

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who gets 100 or 200 rupees a month, but who has a large family to support and has to look to the education of, say, two sons or relatives at college, cannot be said to belong to the rich class In proof of this I give a statement with regard to the Deccan College. Out of 105 students from whom information could be obtained, 5 are the sons of persons getting Ɍ500 and upwards per mensem, 11 are the sons of persons getting between Ɍ250 and Ɍ500 per mensem, 19 are the sons of persons between Ɍ100 and Ɍ250 per mensem, 31 are the sons of persons getting between Ɍ50 and Ɍ100 per mensem, and 39 are the sons of persons getting below Ɍ50 per mensem From this it will be clearly seen that the students in the Deccan College at least are not the sons of wealthy parents Nearly 38 per cent are the sons of poorer classes who ill afford to give Ɍ20 or Ɍ22 per month for the education of a boy at college out of an income of only Ɍ50 per mensem About 48 per cent, are the sons of parents who get above Ɍ50 or below Ɍ250, and this, too, I must say, does not show that the rich class avails itself of education. Hardly 4 per cent are the sons of persons who get anything like Ɍ500 or upwards. As an example of what classes of people send their boys to secondary schools, I give below a table showing the rank of parents of boys in the New English School taken on the 28th of July 1882— Standards

Total Number 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th of Boys

{

YEARLY INCOME.

Beggars . . . . . . . . . . Within Rs. 100 From ” 100 to Rs 200 From ” 200 to ” 400 From ” 400 to ” 600 From ” 600 to ” 1,000 From ” 1,000 to Rs 3,000 From ” 3,000 to ” 5,000 and upwards Total of Boys

.

2 19 30 29 8 18 14

3 12 18 17 19 12 6 7

4 14 21 25 16 13 19 7

4 12 16 15 26 8 25 3

3 9 5 16 11 6 16 2

2 1 3 1 1 4 3 7 4 8 9 12 5 8 1

19 70 95 113 87 78 92 20

130 92 119 111 67 27 37

573

It will be seen from this that even in a large city like Poona, the number of those parents or guardians who get between Ɍ200 and Ɍ300 per month is 20 only out of 573, or about 3 5 per cent. It thus becomes evident that the majority of those who send their boys to schools belong to the struggling middle or poor class, and that the richer or higher classes keep aloof from education. This is acknowledged in the Resolution of the Government of India which appointed this Commission “Hitherto those who have been most ready to take advantage of superior instruction have frequently belonged to families of comparatively limited private means, and there should, in the opinion of the Government of India, be no each sudden and general raising of fees as to carry high education beyond the reach of those classes who at present boná fide seek for it, 109

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or to convert the Government colleges into places to which the higher classes only procure admission” Those who, therefore, urge that Government might safely withdraw from a direct connection with colleges and secondary schools on the ground that the richer or wealthier classes who attend these institutions are able to pay the cost of their own education, do not appear, to me at least, to have made out a strong, nay, any case, in their favour In my opinion the wealthy classes are really the Sirdárs who have some jágirs, or big Shettias or Bháttias or Pársis of the position of Sir Jamsetji Jijibhái or Kawasji Jehángir Readimoney. It is only now that people of this class have begun to evince an interest in the cause of education, but some years must elapse before they can be induced to take an active and intelligent part in the noble cause of education When the number of those wealthy persons who avail themselves of collegiate or school education, is so insignificantly small as almost zero, it is an idle complaint to say that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education. Ques. 26.—Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information? Ques. 34.—How far do you consider the text-books in use in all schools suitable? Ques. 35.—Are the present arrangements of the Education Department in regard to examinations or text-books, or in any other way, such as unnecessarily interfere with the free development of private institutions? Do they in any way tend to check the development of natural character and ability, or to interfere with the production of a useful vernacular literature? Ans. 26, 34, & 35.—I shall first take the question of text-books and then come to the other questions. (a) The text-books used in primary (vernacular) schools that require any consideration are those relating to the vernacular, i e., the serial reading-books and the work on grammar. I believe I may say emphatically that the reading-books which form the chief part of a boy’s instruction in primary schools are exactly what they should not be. The book on grammar is abstruse and too scientific in its treatment, and is not a book which can be safely given into the hands of the teachers to teach their young pupils from, much less into the hands of the pupils themselves. A grammar written in a clear, easy, and less scientific manner, capable of being readily understood, if learnt by heart, would be the sort of book which will suit the wants of young boys learning in primary schools Again, the vernacular serial books are not suited to the wants of the sons of non-agriculturists even, far less suited are they to the requirements of the sons of ryots It is found that in primary schools, especially those situated in villages, the number of sons of cesspayers is about 60 or 61 per cent. In each schools, where boys are to be taught such subjects as would be practically useful to the sons of the ryots, it might be expected that the reading-books should contain lessons on subjects like the fall and distribution of rain, sowing, and harvest times, manures, their use, &c., and such other subjects a knowledge of which would be highly useful to the sons of ryots, who might thus 110

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be able to make a better use of their fields How necessary it is that this sort of practical knowledge should be imparted to the sons of ryots, may be seen from the following paragraph from the Despatch of 1854— “Para 41.—Our attention should now be directed to a consideration, if possible, still more important, and one which, we are bound to admit, has been hitherto too much neglacted, namely, how useful and practical knowledge suited to every station in life may be best convered to the great mass of the people, who are utterly incapable of obtaining any education worthy of the name of then own unaided efforts and we desire to see the active measures of Government more specially directed for the future to this object, for the attainment of which we are ready to sanction considerable increase of expenditure”

If the existing reading-book be carefully examined, it will be found that there is nothing in them that is calculated to give a useful and practical knowledge to the mass of the population such as was contemplated by the framers of the Despatch, and if this is not done, I do not know how a return may be said to be made to those ryots who pay a special educational cess to get their children taught at least the rudiments of useful knowledge In my opinion the knowledge to be imparted in village schools should be a good knowledge of reading and writing, casting account, and general information of subjects connected with agriculture. My belief is that there ought to be a separate set of subjects appointed for village schools These appear to me to be the prominent defects in the text-books used in primary schools, and when this fact is coupled with another, i e, that the teachers in those schools are not able, nor have they any inducements, to make the instruction practical, the defects become serious enough. (b) Passing on to secondary schools, I may say that the defects in text-books are not so serious and inexcusable, though the standards that are in use are open to many serious objections, in point of division and arrangement of subjects. The series in English used in middle-class schools is not so useful and instructive as some others that are now left to the option of teachers, i.e., the Royal Reader Series, Chambers Series, &c. The series now generally used deprives students of much of the useful and instructive knowledge that might be given to them compatible with their young and phant intellectual faculties, if other books were used I may say here that a progressive series for the lower standards of high schools, such as would exactly suit the wants of Native youths, ought to be prepared by Natives themselves, the higher books being borrowed from English works. Then the two reading-books in Maráthi are utterly unsuited to young boys, being full of lessons on chemical, astronomical, anatomical, and such other scientific subjects hardly capable of being understood by the teachers themselves of those classes, much less by young students not knowing anything of Sanskrit When a boy passes on to higher standards he learns text-books that are considerably easier than these two, both in point of style and choice of subjects, such as Bálamitra, Socrates’ Life, Elizabeth, &c. The defects in the text-books become serious, to a great degree, because the way in which boys are taught Maráthi grammar—the foundation of their knowledge—is simply mechanical, parrot-like, and quite unproductive of any 111

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substantial good to the pupils themselves. This I may say boldly from the frequent admissions made by me into the lower standards of the school I do not wish to go into details, but this much, I think, I must say, that the general way in which boys are taught in primary schools is defective, unproductive of any practical good, and seriously detrimental to their intellectual faculties and energies Then, as regards text-books in history, I must say here also there is much to be said against them, In the second standard is put into the hands of the students Morris’ History of India, than which, I may say, a more denationalising and partial book at will be difficult to find. Then the English history taught in the higher standards, in a shunting way, and at every time upon different sorts of rails, deserves to be considered. I strongly believe that no student can afford to read English classical books without a knowledge of the ancient histories of Greece and Rome— the ancient lands of classical celebrity—without at least a knowledge of the general facts in the two histories. But these two histories have been prescribed from the standards, and thus, probably, the means left to the students of having some enlarged ideas as to how nations rise, thrive, and fall, are removed, and the general feature of the dead-level system prominently brought to light. My charges with regard to secondary schools are not so much against the text-books as against the half-hearted and perfunctory way generally followed by teachers in teaching their pupils, and this, goes, I think, a great way in making the present textbooks so unsuitable Of this I have had some experience during the last two years whenever I had to admit boys from the local high schools or other high schools, and I found that seven out of ten boys had to be admitted into one standard lower into our school (c) To go now to the question whether the instruction imparted in secondary schools is calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information, I am constrained to answer the question in the negative. Even from the commencement of his English course, the student is deprived of useful and practical information such as may be found in the Royal Readers or Chambers Educational Course, &c. Then we see nothing like a knowledge of the histories of Greece and Rome, not to mention any general history. There are no subjects introduced into the standards such as would give him a general knowledge of the laws of political economy, the wonders of science (an instruction insisted upon by philosophical writers like Professors Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall), a general knowledge of, at least, what the duties and bindings of men are as the members of society, and as subjects of the State, and also what relations and obligations hold between men as between themselves and as towards others, such subjects as would serve to give a student some ideaof what the ways of the world practically are and how they can be usefully followed. Supposing the student does not wish to continue his studies after the Matriculation, he should be sent into the world with some useful practical knowledge. I think something of the kind suggested above ought to be done, besides making it obligatory on teachers to impart as much practical knowledge regarding subjects already set forth in the standards as it may be in their power to do. I believe text-books on the above 112

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subjects, written in an easy, lucid, and instructive manner, should be prepared by the Education Department and may be set for Standards V, VI, VII (d) As regards the first part of question 10, I have already answered it at sufficient length in my answer to question 3. I believe that, unless examinations, the selection of text-books, or the other tests examination, be so regulated that they do not interfere with the internal management and development of private schools, that they leave every scope for independence of action consistent with the requirements of the Department, and that they will look more to what is expected from such schools than to how or in what manner it is obtained, the free growth of private institutions, such as was contemplated by the framers the Despatch of 1854, will be greatly hampered As I have already said, if a private school undertakes to teach boys as far as the Matriculation with six, instead of seven, standards, the Department should not raise any objection on the ground that the system does not correspond with its own. The extent of knowledge to be tested may be fixed, but whether that is acquired by going through the usual grooves or different ones should not be inquired into. (e) The second part of the question deserves to be more carefully considered. Is there any tendency in the present arrangement of the Department to check the development of natural character and ability, or to interfere with the production of a useful vernacular literature? I should certainly say yes The monotonously uniform system of instruction conducted upon English models and English tastes, the removing of means by which students may be reminded of their nationality, even in innocent sports and games, the adoption of such text-books as Morris’s History, the tenour of which goes to magnify British influence and British power and to lower and degrade Indian men and manners, and the proscription of such as would keep awake the idea that students are but members of a great nation having certain duties towards it,—these and the like means tend, in my opinion, to check the unrestrained growth of natural (by which, I suppose, is meant national) character, and the remedies to make up the defects are not far to seek. But the latter clause of the question is more important still. The high school standards are so arranged that if a student takes up Sanskrit, Latin, or Persian for his second language in the fourth standard and continues it as far as his college course, he bids a good-bye to his vernacular, a farewell, a long farewell, to its grammar, its idiom, and even the slight favour of using it in his ordinary conversation. It is only at the time of translating from the vernacular into English that the hands of the student are allowed to be for a time defiled by a contact with that language. Explanations of passages, paraphrases, themes, letter-writing, all contribute to give English a very great importance which is considerably enhanced by the fact that all knowledge is to be shown viá English, and that if, therefore, he happens to be specially weak in English, he has no chance whatever of passing his examinations I do not know if translation from English into the student’s vernacular is carefully attended to or practised in all high schools At the time of the annual examination examiners hardly care to know whether the student knows how to translate any passage into his vernacular. In the Matriculation a passage is now given for translation from 113

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the candidate’s vernacular into English with the alternative of a paraphrase (a very just alternative indeed): but I do not know why a passage is not similarly given for translation from English into vernacular. If the candidate’s knowledge of his vernacular is to be tested, it must be by translation from English into the vernacular also Excepting this opportunity of coming into contact with his vernacular, the student, if he happens to join a college, severs all connection with his vernacular, he reads, talks, lectures, or gossips, in English or, at the most, hybrid English. The poor vernaculars are not allowed to cross the threshold of the seminaries of education, and students who pass with vernaculars for their second languages, are required to take up one of the classical languages recognised by the University. When the attitude of the Education Department and the University is so unfavourable to the vernaculars, it cannot but happen that the student, though he obtains a first class in his B A or M A, forgets all about his mother tongue. The aim of the whole educational system, as at present administered, appear to me to make the Natives speak and write good English, to make them Burkes, Addisons, or Macaulays in English, and not to enable them to be masters of their own mothertongue, as if the object of the University were to send forth into the world every year a lot of Anglicised graduates instead of graduated Natives! I do not impute the blame in any way to the students. The fault lies with “the system of education. The knowledge of his vernacular to be found in even the ablest graduate is all that he might have acquired when he threw off his Sixth Reading-book and Dádoba’s Grammar in the third standard. Under these circumstances it is scarcely possible that graduates should be able to produce a useful vernacular literature I think I shall not be making an over-statement if I say that 80 or 85 per cent. of the graduates now sent out by the University, are unable to write well and with ease in their vernaculars at one cast. My belief is that the chief object of education is to make the possessor able to use it himself and to communicate it to his ignorant poor countrymen, to diffuse, so to speak, the knowledge acquired by him of useful European arts, inventions, &c., among his countrymen through the vernaculars. That this was the chief object of the authors of the Despatch of 1854 may be seen from the following extracts—“We must emphatically declare that the education which we desire to see extended in India is that which has for its object the diffusion of the improved arts, science, philosophy, literature of Europe, in short, of European knowledge” “We look, therefore, to the English language and the vernacular languages of India together as the media for the diffusion of European knowledge, and it is our desire to see them cultivated in all schools in India of sufficiently high class to maintain a schoolmaster possessing the requisite qualifications” Those who possess this education were expected to be “more useful members of society in every condition of life.” Viewed from the standpoint of the Despatch, I do not think that the system of keeping the vernaculars out of the pale of the University is calculated to produce a useful vernacular literature To remedy this defect I would not go the length of proposing here new degrees to be founded in the vernaculars, but I would propose that the students should be compelled to learn their vernaculars at high schools more thoroughly than now Some general 114

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question, such as translation from English, and essay to be written in the vernacular, and some questions on idiom, should be asked in the general English paper, just as translation into English is now given, and in the University examinations every candidate should have to answer a paper containing questions from books appointed in his vernacular, along with questions on essay-writing, besides the paper he may have to answer in the second language chosen by him I think if something like this be done, a knowledge of the vernaculars will be preserved by students, and the production of a healthy and useful vernacular literature will be greatly facilitated How the scheme may be put into practice and worked I would leave the Syndicate to decide Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—I think there is a good deal of truth in the statement that the attention of pupils as well as teachers is unduly directed to the Matriculation examination When boys after learning the several lower standards reach the Matriculation standard, the chief care of the teacher or teachers appointed to that class is to see how many boys are capable of being made to “pass” the Entrance examination, for upon passing a smaller or greater number depends, to a great extent, the inefficiency or efficiency of the school. When teachers as well as students know that a good deal of their success in this world depends upon passing the examination, it is natural that both of them should concentrate their attention upon this important object They think that the best way to secure the desired object is to make the students go through the subjects set by the University somehow or other, which practice they are obliged to follow more because the tests applied by the University in passing candidates are extremely fluctuating and arbitrary. The standard of examination being liable to constant variations, teachers cannot generally keep to one course of instruction Every year new examiners with new ideas about the requirements of candidates step into the lists, and in order to accomplish the desired object teachers think of the ready means of getting up the various subjects by cramming and hammering them into the heads of students. Though I grant that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to this examination, I must say that the cause of this must be investigated, and so long as the cause remains, it cannot be expected that their attention should be otherwise directed. I mean the fact that English language is made the medium through which students are to show their knowledge of any subject learnt by them, goes a great way in strengthening this idea of teachers and pupils. Teachers find that they have to teach their boys a certain number of subjects and they begin them with their pupils If a teacher thinks of going beyond the stereotyped forms of teaching and gives his pupils some general useful extra knowledge regarding any subject, he would find that the greatest difficulty is to make them reproduce this information 115

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in English at the time of examinations If they be told to reproduce the same in their vernacular, they would do it very easily, supposing they have grasped what the teacher told them; but English being a foreign language, it goes hard with them to give in that language their ideas, not violating English idiom, grammar, usage, &c So, this difficulty deters teachers from imparting a useful, practical, or a comprehensive knowledge of any subject, if they wish that their pupils should be able to show that knowledge at the time of examinations. Thus, not only is the imparting of a useful practical knowledge greatly limited, but the intellectual energies are spent away in learning English first and then the subjects themselves, and I may say that more than three-fourths of the time of a student is taken up in mastering the peculiarities of a foreign language itself Whatever be the cause, the fact remains that the practical value of the instruction given in secondary schools, so far as the requirements of ordinary life are concerned, is considerably impaired by the circumstance that the attention of teachers and pupils, whether rightly or wrongly, is greatly directed to the Entrance examination Though it is not warranted by the question itself, I may say that the same or nearly the same result is perceivable in college examinations by reason of the triplicate system of examinations introduced into the University during the régime of Sir R. Temple It would be out of place to discuss here the propriety or otherwise of the step taken by the University under the Chancellorship of Sir Richard, but so much may, I think, be safely said, that the value of instruction given in colleges is now considerably impaired by the fact that a student has to pass three different examinations before he should be able to earn an honourable livelihood for himself I think it will be granted that the mind of a student is greatly disturbed when he finds that he has to pass one examination every year Having to learn different sets of books and different sets of subjects for each successive examination, he has hardly any time at his command to devote to other subjects than those actually prescribed, he is thus obliged to “get up” the anomalous subjects set for his examinations, to cram the books, and thus by pursuing the same course for three or four years, he manages to get through or pass the B A. examination (Happy is he if he gets through successfully within three years!) The mind of a student being thus engrossed with the care of “passing” one examination every year, he has no scope left to acquire a useful and practical knowledge of the subjects he studies, he comes out of the college as a man whose head is stuffed with a variety of subjects, but who is not able to give to the people practically the result of his knowledge. And in this manner what the country expects of him—that he should not merely be able to occupy a good place under Government, but to convey what he has acquired to the poor masses of the people, to “filter down,” as it were, the knowledge acquired by him through the various strata of the population of his country—is not realised in most cases. This is, in my opinion, the object, at any rate one of the chief objects, which a graduate is generally expected to be

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able to fulfil But his attention being taken up by examinations, his knowledge is not sound, comprehensive, and practical, and thus this circumstance also considerably impairs the practical value of the education given in institutions higher than secondary schools, for the requirements of ordinary life. I have alluded to this point, as it seemed to me to be of a nature analogous to that appearing in the question. Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? Ques. 38.—In the event of the Government withdrawing to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges, do you apprehend that the standard of instruction in any class of institutions would deteriorate? If you think so, what measures would you suggest in order to prevent this result? Ans. 37 & 38.—(a) The effect of a sudden withdrawal from the direct management of schools or colleges by Government would be fatal to the cause of education If Government withdraws all connection with schools or colleges, the only organised agency that can take up the work of education is the Missionary agency. There is no organised Native agency that can be expected to adequately supply the place of Government institutions. It is a curious fact that Missionary writers have now begun to pose as the warm sympathisers of Natives, and talk of the ability, energy, and spirit of self-reliance now-a-days evinced by them. The Reverend Johnston, who has been for some years past writing on this subject, says, if Government withdraw from direct education, “the Natives of India, who are capable of managing the higher education, if only they were encouraged to do it, the European residents and Missionary societies will keep up an educational system fully equal to the wants of the country, under the stimulus of the grants-in-aid, while it would call forth a spirit of liberality which is suppressed, and of independence which is crushed by the present system” The state of Native activity and readiness described above may be very well true in the case of the Madras or Bengal Presidency, but certainly not in the case of this Presidency. I, for myself, should have received with great delight the high opinion entertained of our abilities by others; I am as great a patriot as Missionary writers would show us to be; but it is simply a false patriotism which blinds one to his own real interests. I must candidly confess that, except in large towns like Bombay and Poona, which have far advanced in intellectual activity, the spirit of self-reliance and self-sacrifice, which is so essential to the maintenance of private institutions, is yet dormant. It is only now that people have begun to show some signs of independent activity and to throw off their languid torpor; and without being liable to the charge of being called unpatriotic, I may say that some years must elapse before that state ascribed to us by the Missionaries is really observable amongst us in almost all localities, and does not remain confined to places like Poona or Bombay, and before the educated Natives become

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able to maintain high education, if left by Government That educated Natives should take the work of educating their own countrymen in suitable ways, in their own hands, with a slight aid from the State, is a consummation devoutly to be wished for, and none will desire it more ardently than myself. But the time is not yet come when Government might withdraw from the work of education at once and leave it to private enterprise in all places, without serious damage to the cause of education so nobly pursued by it If, therefore, under these circumstances of Native activity and energy, Government should think of withdrawing from the work of education as persistently maintained by a considerable section of Missionary writers, then, I must say that Government will have simply “played into the hands of Missionary bodies,” will have fostered the belief among the people that it desires to force Christian teaching upon them, and thus given a good scope for those “benevolent” bodies to accomplish their object more easily. It needs no proof that the avowed object of Missionary “benevolence” in India is the subversion of the religions of the Natives. Aware of this very evil, prudent and foresighted men positively declined to take any steps that might be construed as identifying Government with the cause of these religious bodies. I might quote here a paragraph from a Despatch to the Government of India, dated 22nd July 1857— “We cannot approve of that part of the scheme which identifies the Government in measures prosecuted by the Missionaries, and so exposes the arrangement to the risk of perverted misconstruction We are well aware that the Church Missionary Society has been marked equally for zeal as for rectitude of intention and laborious devotion to benevolent intentions. But however entitled to our confidence such an institution may have proved itself, we adhere to the conviction that it would be altogether opposed to the rules, if you were to take any steps which might have the appearance of uniting the Government with such a society in measures having the aim of converting any class of the population to Christianity.”

(The italics are mine.) The Natives themselves would not like such a hasty transference of secondary schools to Missionary bodies. See what the Times of India says:— “At present Missionary schools create little alarm among the Native community, because, as it happens, they are mere media for conveying secular instruction. But if Government were to retire from higher education and the Missionary schools were to use their new-born strength for the purpose of conversion, the purpose for which they are supposed to exist, the cry raised against them by the Natives will be very loud, and it would be a cry that no Government could afford to ignore It was Admitted in the Despatch of 1854 that Government would undertake the charge of secondary education until they could hand it over to some other agency. But what agency? That is the rub. The Natives would strongly object to being thus handed over to the Missionary agency, and by withholding or withdrawing their schools, Government would not create those elements of society which are needed for the establishment of private schools.”

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For Government to give encouragement to such bodies by a sudden withdrawal from education, and thus to place the whole education in their hands, would be, in my opinion, an extremely impolitic and dangerous step Every one will freely acknowledge the great good done by these bodies to the cause of education, especially the primary one, and one cannot speak of them in connection with it without a feeling of gratitude, But if they, not being content with their lot and with the opportunities now afforded them of using their presence as means of converting our faith, desire to go beyond that and advocate the encouragement of private enterprise, knowing that it simply means their own encouragement, then surely Government may tell them to go about their own business, leaving that work to competent Native bodies when they are organised. They make education only a means to an end, and such bodies should not be allowed more facility of pushing forward their work of evangelisation. (b) Let us see what the effects of such a withdrawal will be upon the three sorts of education—primary, secondary, and higher. I am strongly of opinion that the State ought to keep in its hand the control of primary education and work it up by the grant-in-aid system It may encourage, wherever possible, indigenous schools by suitable grants-in-aid, but it ought not to sever its connection with it. Doing so would open a very wide door to the Missionary agency to carry forth its work of religious propagandism The ignorant people in villages will only look upon Missionaries as so many engines sent out by Government to convert them to Christianity, and it is possible that their minds will be dangerously prejudiced against Government. (c) As regards secondary schools, as I have already stated, it will be detrimental to the interests of education if Government closes or transfers high schools to private bodies in places like Ratnágiri, Belgaum, or Ahmedabad, where there are at present no Native organised agencies A gradual closing or transference of high schools in places where there are Native agencies to work, would be a prudent policy. A withdrawal may be effected in Poona, though with some caution, but it cannot for some years more be effected at all in any of the lees advanced cities of the Presidency. (d) As for colleges, I must say decidedly that the time has not yet come when higher education may be taken care of by private (Missionary) bodies. Higher education is an important branch of education, and it cannot be completely made over to proselytising bodies. If Government colleges be closed, Missionary colleges will be without any rival, the spirit of emulation, so necessary to the maintenance of efficiency, will be gone, and they being masters of the situation, laxity, irregularity, absence of models, and other deteriorating causes will come into play; and when all wholesome rivalry is taken away, there is no saying whether the present standard of efficiency will be properly kept up. I do not see what good can come out of the abolition of the Doccan College, which costs about Ɍ47,000 to the State. A saving: of Ɍ47,000 effected at the great sacrifice of the interests of those middle-class students who annually join it to effect a saving in expenditure by not going to Bombay, will be of no value. In the interests of higher education which, 119

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if left to Missionaries alone, would considerably deteriorate in point of efficiency of instruction, I suggest that Government should not be induced to make over colleges to Missionary bodies—the only existing private agency now available in the Presidency I think that if Government wishes to follow the principles of the Despatch of 1854 in a true spirit and wishes to stimulate local efforts under local management, it should do something like that suggested in my answer to question 2. That would be a wholesome step, and will serve to effect the desired object, without subjecting Government to the worst of obloquies, that of becoming the means of converting the religious faiths of its subject-population (e) As for the growth of reliance on local exertions and local combinations, I have great misgivings It is only now that people amongst us are becoming ready to make some endowments to the University (a Government institution) at the prospect of their name being connected with the endowments, but it is extremely doubtful whether any would be ready to endow private colleges of Natives even. They would never endow Missionary colleges I do not believe that if the Deccan College be closed, people will readily come forward to make up the necessary funds. Rich people, as will be seen from my answer to question 4, do not avail themselves of college education, and hence have not yet acquired any great interest in education Instead of abruptly withdrawing from all direct connection with school or college education, Government should take to the work of preparing Natives in the art of educating themselves by giving them facilities as mentioned before. For some years at least, say five or six years, the State cannot sever off its connection with education in secondary schools or colleges, without seriously affecting the cause of education. Ques. 55.—To what classes of institutions do you think that the system of assigning grants according to the results of periodical examinations should be applied? What do you regard as the chief conditions for making this system equitable and useful? Ques. 57.—To what proportion of the gross expense do you think that the grant-in-aid should amount under ordinary circumstances, in the case of colleges and schools of all grades? Ans. 55 & 57.—(a) I have already stated that the system of payment-by-results may be advantageously employed, where an undue attention paid to examinations will not be productive of bad effects, i. e., in the case of primary education, in developing and encouraging indigenous schools, wherever possible; but, as I have also stated, this system of payment by results will not be very useful for schools of a higher order and colleges if it be exclusively used (b) As regards the way in which the grants might be given, some would suggest these two ways—(1) That Government should give half the gross expense incurred in a private institution. This principle applying to private schools will be undesirable it takes away the only good feature of the system of payment by results, while it leaves a large scope for Government to interfere, or have something to do with the way in which the internal arrangements with regard to the expenses are made. I do not therefore prefer this way (2) Others would say that

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Government should allow a large sum for the Matriculation examination, should make that examination as the only final test of the school, and the grant should be such as to cover all the expenses to be incurred for a boy till he passes that examination, say Ɍ150 to Ɍ200 for every boy that the school may pass. This method, besides being open to the gravest objection that it would make the fate of the whole school, boys and teachers, depend upon the figure cut by some boys, would be quite inapplicable where a school may not be able to teach as far as the Matriculation standard. This way also I do not prefer as being generally useless and inapplicable. (c) The system of grants-in-aid I propose would be something like the following:— (I) The grants-in-aid of the salaries of teachers should be revived, and the scale, according to the degrees of test now fixed by the University, should be as follows (this would be the lowest scale)— For an M.A. ” ” ” of a teacher in college ” a B.A. . . . . . . . . . . . ” ” 1st B.A. . . . . . . . . . ” ” P.E. . . . . . . . . . . . ” ” Matriculate . . . . . . .

. . . . .

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. . . . .

. . . . .

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. . . . .

. . . . .

Ɍ 40 per mensem. 100 ” 30 ” 25 ” 20 ” 15 ”

. . . . .

(II) When the salaries of teachers are aided in this manner, the grants for the several standards need not be as large as those given by the present rules. They may be about half the sum now allotted for each standard, namely— Standard I . . . II . . III . . . . IV . . . . V . VI .

. . . . .

Ɍ 3 5 7 9 12 15

(The subdivisions for the several heads may be similarly arranged by halving the present grant for each head) (III) In the case of primary private schools, encouraged by the development of the indigenous school system, where a final examination to be held at the taluka or zilla town, once a year, may be made as the only test of vernacular schools, the teacher should be given Ɍ8 for every boy that might pass at such a central examination, if he gets a fixed pay and also a capitation allowance, Ɍ4 or 5.

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(IV) The grants for University examinations should be as follows— For passing Matriculation ” P Examination ” 1st B.A. . . . . ” 2nd B.A . . . . ” M.A. . . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

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Ɍ 50 100 125 150 200

These arrangements would ensure some sort of permanency and efficiency of teachers, and would remove the evils of payment by results exclusively used (V) Besides these grants and the grant for building as given by the present rules, adequate and reasonable grants for library and apparatus should be given. An institution sending up boys for University examinations can ill afford to be without these two necessary items of school furniture. (VI) The persons who examine suet high schools should not be connected with the Educational Department. The board of local management or the school-board that might be formed in pursuance of the orders of the Supreme Government, should include as ex-officio members the following officers of Government:— The District Judge, The Collector, and The Subordinate Judge. A board constituted in this manner should examine the school annually and report to Government as to efficiency, results, &c. I do not think that these officers being well trained and experienced will be considered as unable to examine schools in which six English standards may be taught. The board of ordinary members will exercise a general supervision over the school, acting as a body of visitors, advisers, or teachers (VII) If it be found by results that the teacher of a class has not worked properly during the year, the grant for results will of course not be paid, but the teacher’s grant should not be discontinued that very year; and if he fails to show better results for three years consecutively, then his grant as a teacher may be discontinued. (VIII) The three officers of Government and the permanent board should examine the school in the standards in which the students may be presented. The arrangement of subjects, &c, need not be necessarily according to the Government model standards. It will depend, to a very great extent, upon differing local circumstances, such as the aptitude of boys and the general intelligence of the population of any district The standards that might be taught to students in Poona, Sátára, or Shikárpur, will not be applicable to Dhárwár or to Ahmednagar, where an adjustment of subjects will have to be made according to the degree of capacities of the students. In this manner all interference with the internal arrangement 122

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of schools will be removed, and the free development of indigenous superior institutions will not be hampered (IX) Excepting these particulars, the general features of the present rules for grant-in-aid may be retained. (X) It will be seen that the changes proposed in the present system of grants-in-aid are expressly for those private Native institutions which, being under, a local management, will give a reasonable guarantee of permanency. Missionary institutions cannot, according to a strict interpretation of the principles of the Despatch of 1854, claim to be assisted by Government; but, as they are bodies benevolently devoted to the cause of education, and have done signal service to Government in the lowest class of education, they may be assisted by Government, till the Natives are able to do for themselves what they now do for them, according to the present rules for grantin-aid, with the addition of the Matriculation grant of Ɍ50, if desirable, on these conditions that the teaching of the Bible or any other scriptural book is strictly prohibited in the school, that a purely secular education is imparted to students, that the Bible may be taught, if necessary, out of school-hours or school-days, say on Sundays, and that it should not be compulsory on any student to attend such lectures. I believe that if, as His Excellency the Viceroy thinks, it be found that the imparting of a purely secular instruction in schools and colleges is attended with serious consequences, Government might sanction the appointment of a pandit or a shástri for each high school or college to give students general lectures on religious, ethical, and moral precepts, so as to direct their mind to a deep sense of duty, or the teachers themselves might be directed to devote an hour or two every week to this purpose Accordingly, Missionary institutions which go in for religious instruction should secure the services of a pandit or a shástri to lecture on general religious and moral precepts, in conformity with the general beliefs of the students themselves. This is the utmost that can be conceded to Missionary bodies, who complain of the want of religions instruction in schools or colleges I would object to Missionary institutions getting grants according to the system proposed above, on the ground that they are backed by large funds at home set apart for religious purposes, and consequently a small encouragement given to them, provided the above conditions are strictly observed, will enable them to assist Government in the cause of education The obvious difference in the two kinds of grants is based on the same principle that justifies the great difference between grants given to European and Eurasian schools and Anglovernacular schools, namely, that private efforts by Native bodies are to be encouraged, developed, and matured, and thus made fit to take charge of Government institutions in due course of time The principle of encouragement to those who deserve to be supported underlies the proposed arrangement If, after giving encouragement in the manner proposed above, educated Native gentlemen are found unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the opportunities given them of developing their own institutions, if they show themselves slack in assisting Government in the noble work of education and thus enabling it to promote the spread of primary education, then the fault will be solely with them Government will have done its duty in conformity with the principles of the Despatch of 1854, and if even then our people do not shake 123

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off their torpor, Government might fairly think of extending its aid to Missionary institutions on more favourable terms The experiment, therefore, ought to be tried by Government with an unflinching honesty of purpose, that it might not become liable to blame of a serious nature—neglect of duty conscientiously made (XI) If encouragement be given to Native efforts on the lines suggested above, Native bodies, for instance, the conductors of the New English School, Poona, would be willing to assist Government in some places at least. Let me, however, show that if Government gives grants, in the way mentioned above and in my answer to question 2, to Native bodies, for example, the new English school above referred to, and thus encourages them to gradually (alter some years) take charge of Government high schools in the districts that they may choose, Government will have saved on the whole one-half of the money that it spends from the Provincial revenues for education on those schools Let me illustrate by two or three examples how this will be I shall first take some towns which are not as advanced in intellectual activity as Bombay or Poona Take, for instance, Ratnágiri. Supposing there would be 200 boys in the school, there will be 7 classes at the rate of 30 or 35 boys for one class. Of the 7 teachers we shall suppose 2 are B.A.s, 2 having passed the 1st B.A. or P.E., and 3 Matriculates. Thus, the grants for teachers would be— Ɍ 2 × 30 = 2 × 22½ = 3 × 15 =

60 per mensem. 45 ” 45 ” 150

or Rs. 1,800 a year. Then, supposing that each class would get by payment by results on an average as much grant as 10 boys passing in all heads would get, and taking the average grant per boy for each standard to be Ɍ8, we get 10 × 7 × 8 = Ɍ560 Add to this library or apparatus grant, about Ɍ50 Supposing 10 boys matriculate, their grant will be Ɍ500. Thus, the total grant to be obtained from Government will be— Ɍ For salaries of teachers ” boys’ grants ” apparatus, &c ” Matriculation 10 (boys)

1,800 560 140 500 3,000

Thus, by the most liberal calculation the Ratnágiri High School being made an aided institution, will cost Government Ɍ3,000 for educating 200 boys, i.e., Ɍ15 per boy, whereas in 1880–81 Government spent Ɍ6,699 for about 160 boys, that is, Ɍ42-10-8 per boy Thus, if Government spent Ɍ42-10-8 for every boy taught in the Ratnágiri school in 1880–81, it would have to spend Ɍ15, or one-third only 124

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(considering the increase in boys), that is, it will have saved about 66 per cent. of its present expenditure, by making that high school an aided school Take Ahmednagar. Take the amount of grant obtained by this school to be as large as Ɍ3,000, as in the case of Ratnágiri. In 1880–81 that school cost Government Ɍ4,972, or Ɍ57-6-7 per boy (the number of boys being less than 100). By making this school aided it will cost Government Ɍ3,000 for 200 boys, i e., it will cost it about one-fourth of what it spent in 1880. Thus, its saving will be 75 per cent, in this case Similarly, taking Dhárwár and Sátáia, the saving to Government in each case will be 66 and 50 per cent respectively. Again, take Poona itself, which has made far greater progress in education than any other town in the mofussil In this city there are in all about 1,400 boys learning English (excluding the several schools in the camp) Supposing these boys were taught in one school, there would be about 40 classes, and, say, 10 graduates, 15 having passed 1st B.A. or PE, and 15 matriculates. Then the masters’ grant would be— Ɍ 10 × 30 = 300 15 × 20 = 330 15 × 15 = 225 855, or 10,260 a year.

Then, on the same calculation as before, the grant for boys would be Ɍ10 × 40 × 8 = Ɍ3,200. Supposing 40 boys pass the Matriculation, the grant for 40 boys would he Ɍ2,000, and the library and apparatus grant, say, Ɍ500. Thus, the total grant to be attained from Government would amount to Ɍ10,260 + 3,200 + 2500= Ɍ15,960. Government in 1880–81 spent Ɍ11,24,3 for about 440 boys, and according to this arrangement it would have to spend only Ɍ15,960 for 1,400, or about Ɍ4,000 more than what it spent for 440 boys, to educate 1,000 boys more This would, I think, be no small advantage. Spending Ɍ4,000 more would enable it to educate in all 1,400 boys; supposing that it does not mean to spend more than Ɍ12,000, even if it gives the local school in charge of a private institution and thus makes the number of learners about 1,400, such an arrangement would make it a loser by 20 per cent in the case of this high school Adding together the several savings and this loss we get— For Ratnágiri ” Ahmednagar ” Sátára ” Dhárwár . ” Poona .

.

66 per cent saving. 75 ” ” . 50 ” ” . 66 ” ” . 20 ” loss 47 per cent, for 5 schools

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In other words, Government will have saved on the average of five high schools nearly 47 per cent of its expenditure on those schools in 1880–81. The advantages to Government from the adoption of the proposed grant-in-aid system are thus significant, and they need no further amplification If Government, therefore, were to announce its determination to withdraw from the maintenance of high schools one by one, after a given term of years, private bodies, such as the conductors of the new English school, would be willing to maintain those high schools as aided institutions, according as they find themselves able to take charge of them, provided the arrangements for grants-in-aid proposed above be carried into effect. I must admit that Government will have to incur some additional expenditure at the commencement of this experiment, in order to train up one central institution, and before it becomes ready to take charge of the schools; but, looking to the great good to be derived from the adoption of the system, it should not, I think, be unwilling to incur that expenditure The question of the great saving to Government that will be effected in course of time being set apart, the very fact that it will have encouraged the Natives to take the education of their countrymen in their own hands and thus contributed to the slow but sure, rapid, onward progress of the nation, will amply redound to the glory of the British rule, and it will encourage a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combinations for local usefulness, which is of itself of no mean importance to the well-being of a nation. “It is to the wider extension of the system of the grants-in-aid, especially in connection with high and middle education, that the Government looks to set free funds which may then be made applicable to the promotion of the education of the masses,” and though the system I have proposed above will not give an immediate saving to Government, yet, if honestly and prudently followed, it will be able to accomplish the desired object within a few years from the time of its adoption To make, then, a definite proposal, the new English school will, within eight or ten years, be ready to take charge of Government high schools in the chief towns of the Maháráshtra, if it be properly encouraged according to the methods suggested and discussed above (XII) I would suggest that Government should maintain one institution of its own at the Presidency-town—the Elphinstone High School—in an efficient order, so as to serve, if necessary, as a model to other non-Government institutions It would be inadvisable to make such a largely endowed institution as the Elphinstone High School an aided one It might, however, be given under the control of the local municipal corporation, and the examination conducted as now by the professors of the Elpinstone College In Poona, Government might, if it be profitable, maintain its own institutions permanently, or hand it over to the new English school in the way above referred to. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard? Ans. 65.—As far as mathematics, natural science, and the oriental languages are concerned, I decidedly think that Natives will be quite as able and competent to teach these subjects in colleges as any European professors. The facts that 126

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Ráo Bahádurs K. L Chhatre and D. N. Nagarkar have occupied for a long time the mathematical chairs with complete satisfaction to their superiors, that Mr Naegámwála, a Master of Arts in science, is now made a professor of natural science in the Elphinstone College; Mr. Sanjána, a professor of mathematics in the Gujaráth College; and that Mr R. G Bhándárkar is permanently appointed professor of oriental languages in the Deccan College (though not without a good deal of hard fighting continued for some months), tell their own tale. But I believe that in mathematics and the oriental languages none but Native professors can, or ought to, fill the chairs, if the duties are to be ably and usefully discharged. Vivid examples are before us to illustrate the truth of what I say, and I do not think I should dilate upon this point, though the question of mathematics does not yet appear to be decided, as in the case of the oriental languages As regards history and philosophy, I must say much would depend upon the qualifications and individual propensities of the person to be appointed One who has to keep up his knowledge of history and philosophy will have to progress with the progress of the world, will have to read every little book that may be published on these subjects in any part of the world So the man must only continue his habit of reading and study, must continue to be a student himself in order to be a professor He must not allow his mind to stagnate into a muddy pool, but must ever keep it flowing by a constant course of reading If this is done, I do not think that Natives would not be able to fill a chair in this subject with credit. The chief want felt by him would be his ignorance of languages such as Latin, Greek, German, French, but he may have recourse to translations that are read nearly with the originals themselves. In this quarter I do not see a great difficulty. But the question raised is, how will Natives be able to teach English. This question has a good deal of weight in it, and must be carefully considered. It is said that, as Maráthi can be best taught by a Maráthi man, so English can be best taught by an Englishman There are in English works idioms, phrases, turns of expression, allusions to English domestic manners, scenes, incidents, and the pronunciation of words, which can be best attended to by an Englishman. Yes, it is so, no doubt, but we must inquire what the object of the educational system really is. If it be urged that more attention is to be paid to idioms, peculiarities of grammar, &c, than to the worth or substantial value of the instruction received, in other words, if it be intended that the object of education should be to enable Natives to compete with Englishmen in the accuracy of idiom, &c, of English, then I must say that this object, at least with the majority of students, has not been, and will not be, accomplished I do not think I shall be guilty of exaggeration if I say that even an able M.A. (unless he be an exceptionally well-read English scholar) will be liable to commit mistakes in idiom, &c, which an Under-graduate at Oxford or Cambridge would be easily able to correct; and this is not unnatural Even where there are European professors to teach English in colleges, I do not think the students under them are, as a matter of fact, able to write more idiomatically than those not receiving that instruction. Natives can never aspire to go and teach English to students in the 127

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Oxford or Cambridge Universities. The utmost they do, can do, and ought to do, is that they would be able to write upon any subject in English, not committing mistakes in grammar or gross violations of idiom; and I believe that intelligent Natives will by practice be able to write correct, though not quite idiomatic English I cannot say if, as a rule, boys in high schools under a European head are able to write more idiomatically, or even more correctly, than those in high schools under Native management, because the former have had the advantages of European correction and revision At least I did not perceive such a difference when I was myself a student in the Deccan College By listening for an hour or two to Europeans, or by having an English exercise corrected once a month or two, I do not think that boys will catch idiomatic English from their professors, since very few have any opportunities of freely mixing and talking with them for any number of years. If Natives who have made English their special study, be appointed to teach English an colleges, they will be able to give all the knowledge required to be given to the students by taking proper precautions to read the books appointed carefully and critically They will impart knowledge and information just as European professors would do. The only difference will be that the former will not, in all cases, be able to teach idiomatic English, while the latter can I, for myself, can say, without being ungrateful to the worthy professors under whom I learnt, that I derived no very substantial advantages from being taught by European professors. My opinion, therefore, is that to teach the English books and to give special and extra knowledge with reference to the books appointed, Native professors may be appointed in order to effect a large saving, and an Englishman may be appointed to teach composition to students, say, once a week, on a small salary Such an arrangement; would be more desirable if Natives think of opening colleges. They cannot afford to employ highsalaried Europeans to teach English. What they should do would be to employ the services of a competent Englishman to take care of composition for an hour or two during the week, and take the rest upon themselves If the object of education be to make a graduate serve the purposes aimed at by the Despatch,— to be a useful member of society by communicating his knowledge of others through the vernaculars,—then, I fear, even for composition an Englishman will not be deemed necessary. But, according to the present state of education, such an appointment will, I think, be necessary to do so. I believe that the special subjects taught in indigenous school and mentioned in answer 4 are better taught in the Government schools. At present we have 13 added and 11 unaided primary schools, with 1,344 scholars in them We follow the Government system and standards as far as possible for all these boys: the unaided schools are for low caste boys and in a backward state, and not yet developed up to the Government standard. Q. 2. —In reference to your answer 48 I understand that you wish to alter the third line. A. 2—Yes. The school at Ahmedabad was a boys school and at Rájkot a girls’ school. These were opened alongside the mission school. 128

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Evidence of MR. SORABJEE SHAPURJEE BENGALI, J. P. of Bombay. Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained. Ans. 1.—My experience on the subject of education is confined chiefly to the city of Bombay, of which I am a native. I have taken part in the founding of several schools for girls, and have been connected with the management of others for the last 25 years. I have, moreover, interested myself in educational matters generally for a long time past. Ques. 2.—Do you think that in your province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration or in the course of instruction? Ans. 2.—A good deal has been done of late years in the matter of primary education in Bombay, and I believe throughout the Presidency. I think that the system is capable of further development, both as to improvement in administration and as to the course of instruction, regarding which I shall speak in my reply to question 12. Ques. 3.—In your province is primary instruction sought for by the people in general, or by particular classes only? Do any classes specially hold aloof from it; and if so, why? Are any classes practically excluded from it; and if so, from what causes? What is the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society? Ans. 3.—The desire for primary education for boys is general in nearly all sections of the people in Bombay City, but the fulfilment of their wish is hindered only by want of means, or the necessity which compels the poorer classes to send their children to work for their living. If schools were provided for the large number of children working in the cotton factories of Bombay, I believe that they would be largely attended in the hours during which respite from work is now happily secured to them by the Factory Act. Ques. 8.—What classes of schools should, in your opinion, be entrusted to Municipal committees for support and management? Assuming that the provision of elementary instruction in towns is to be a charge against Municipal funds, what security would you suggest against the possibility of Municipal committees failing to make sufficient provision? Ans. 8.—I would refer to my answer to question 36. Ques. 10.—What subjects of instruction, if introduced into primary schools, would make them more acceptable to the community at large, and especially to the agricultural classes? Should any special means be adopted for making the instruction in such subjects efficient? Ans. 10.—In addition to reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and elementary science in the vernacular, I think that more complete instruction than at 129

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present should be given in the Native system of book-keeping and accounts in all primary schools for boys. Ques. 13.—Have you any suggestions to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? Ans. 13.—In order to bring primary education within the reach of all classes of people, the amount of school fees should never exceed what may be necessary to pay the rent and contingent charges of a school,—the salaries of teachers being provided in all cases by the State, the Municipality, or from other sources. Ques. 21.—What classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children? How far is the complaint well founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? What is the rate of fees payable for higher education in your province, and do you consider it adequate? Ans. 21.—Government schools and colleges are availed of for the education of their children mainly by the middle classes, and less frequently by the poor, but respectable classes of the people. The aristocratic and wealthy classes in India, as a body, are not keen about giving superior education to their children, from the unfortunate fact that learning has been looked upon as only a means for obtaining a livelihood. There is no basis, therefore, to support the complaint that the wealthy classes in this country do not pay enough for the higher education provided for their children by the Government Since the prospective good of the country depends so much on the higher education of its people, and since its wealthier classes do not correctly appreciate the value of higher education, it becomes the duty of Government to foster its growth as much as possible, and to place it within the reach of people of limited means I therefore think that the present rate of fees charged in all the Arts colleges as well as professional colleges of Government ought to be reduced by at least one-half, in order to enable more students to join them. I have known instances of promising boys being prevented from prosecuting their studies in colleges by reason of the heavy rates of fees, and of some being able to remain there only as holders of scholarships, or by means of eleemosynary aid from private individuals. Ques. 22.—Can you adduce any instance of a proprietary school or college supported entirely by fees? Ans. 22.—There are in the city of Bombay a number of primary, Anglovernacular, and high schools owned by one or more Native proprietors and supported entirely by fees. The teaching in the bulk of them is fairly good, but in point of discipline and training they do not, particularly the high schools, equal in efficiency either the Elphinstone or the St Xavier’s High Schools. Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—I agree with those who state that the attention of teachers and pupils is generally unduly directed to the Entrance examination of the University This 130

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leads to cramming to an unwholesome extent in the proprietary schools more than in other schools. The remedy lies in some change being made in the University Entrance examination by which the pupils may be compelled to study, more than they do now, such subjects as may be of use to them in the requirements of ordinary life. Ques. 34.—How far do you consider the text-books in use in all schools suitable? Ans. 34.—I am well acquainted with the Gujaráthi text-books known as Hope’s Series. They appear to me well adapted for primary schools, but they might be better printed and more fully illustrated than they are at present. Ques. 35.—Are the present arrangements of the Education Department in regard to examinations or text-books, or in any other way, such as unnecessarily interfere with the free development of private institutions? Do they in any wise tend to check the development of natural character and ability, or to interfere with the production of a useful vernacular literature? Ans. 35.—I do not consider that the Government Education Department in any way unnecessarily interferes with the free development of private institutions, nor with the production of useful vernacular literature, nor the development of natural character and ability. On the contrary, I am of opinion that the Education Department, directly and indirectly, greatly helps the progress of many outside efforts in these directions. Ques. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India, what parts can, in your opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? Ans. 36.—On this important question I am of opinion that the duties pertaining to the establishment, management, and maintenance of primary schools for boys throughout the country should devolve upon Municipalities, local fund committees, and other similar bodies. A certain portion (say, 2 to 3 per cent.) of their gross annual income should he devoted, as a matter of obligation, to the primary education of boys in each city or district, the duties of Government being restricted to the inspection of these schools, to seeing that schools are established wherever needed, and generally to watching that the requirements of the law regarding them are complied with. In Bombay City, if the Municipal corporation is compelled to set aside annually 2 per cent. of its gross income for the purpose of primary schools, the amount will be sufficient to give instruction to 12,000 or 13,000 boys. I calculate that, the rent and contingent charges being arranged as payable from the fees, an expenditure of Ɍ5 per annum for each pupil on the average would be sufficient to provide for the salaries of teachers competent for their work. The matter of primary schools for girls should be reserved for consideration to a future time so far as the Municipalities and local fund committees are concerned. These bodies cannot be fairly charged with the work until the people generally are able to appreciate the advantages of female education in the same way as they now appreciate the benefits of education for their male children Until then, the schools of all grades for female children should be managed and maintained either by Government or by the grant-in-aid system, or by the voluntary efforts 131

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of sections of the Native community who understand the value of educating their female children. The funds that may be saved to the State by transferring the burden of maintaining primary schools for boys in the manner above suggested, together with such additional grants as may be possible out of the Imperial exchequer, should be devoted to the maintenance and extension of secondary, higher, and technical education, and of female education. At present the contribution by the State to all the colleges and high schools put together in this Presidency amounts annually to about 2¾ lakhs of rupees. People in England who complain that primary education in this country is neglected in favour of higher education, cannot be aware of the fact that in this important Presidency the total grant from Government for colleges of every kind barely amounts to £15,000, and for high schools less than £9,000, in sterling money per annum On behalf of technical education throughout the Presidency the contributions of the State amount to just £2,000, and for Native girls’ schools to about the same sum. Educational progress in India is needed all along the line; that is to say, much more requires to be done in higher and secondary as well as primary education than has been accomplished hitherto. People who recommend Government connection with primary education only, mechanically follow the system adopted in England, without taking into account that the higher and upper middle classes of the population in England are composed of enlightened men and women. In India the same classes of men, with rare exceptions, do not appreciate education at its true worth, and the women know nothing about it. The time is yet very distant when the higher education of the people of India can progress, or even be kept on its present footing, without direct Government aid, management, and control. High education would be nowhere here but for the countenance and aid of Government. There are a few Arts colleges in the country conducted by Christian Missionaries, but they cannot be put on a par in point of efficiency with Government institutions of the same kind. Besides, these Missionary colleges, supported as they are by the inclinations of religious congregations, can only be conducted with the narrow object of changing the religious faith of the people, and would not therefore be availed of by considerable sections of them. Government will be failing in the performance of one of its most sacred duties if it tries to leave the higher education of the people, on which depends so much of the regeneration, of India, to hands which cannot freely develop its progress, and which may possibly strangle it altogether. The immense benefits conferred upon the people of this country even by the small number of educational institutions of the higher order established by Government up to the present time, is a matter on which there can be no two opinions. By Government the benefits must have been felt in the vastly improved character and abilities of the men employed in the upper ranks of its Native Services and in the management of Native States. The material advances that have taken place of recent years in every branch of administration would not have been practicable, had Government made no efforts in the direction of supplying higher education 132

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to the people In the progress of commerce and industry these benefits have been equally great, although they have hitherto been only partially utilised. In my humble opinion, higher education has, in an indirect way, uncovered the moral teachings which for many centuries had remained smothered by the superstitions and ceremonials of the religious faiths prevailing in this country. In proof of this, and also as an answer to the charge of irreligiousness sometimes urged against the Government system of education, I would point to the labours and publications of the religious associations of Samajs which under various names, within the last twenty years, have sprung up in many of the large towns and cities of India. The members of these bodies are generally English-speaking Natives, whose aim is to worship God free from idolatry and degrading superstition. The character of their numerous publications can be judged with correctness from the book of prayers of the Ahmedabad Prarthana Samaj, a copy of which work I beg to tender herewith for the information of the Education Commission. This book, as well as the Samaj, are typical of one of the many happy results attained through higher education in India. What little progress has already been made in female education, and in the emancipation of women, must be rightly attributed to this higher education. For further gain in all these matters the same course should be followed and extended by the multiplication of Government colleges and schools where European learning up to the highest degree can be imparted on easy terms to the youths of this country through the medium of European languages. If I were to find any fault with the Government system of education in this country, it would be with reference to the very little that has hither to been done as regards technical education. The need of this to India is very great, in view of its agricultural and manufacturing competition with highly civilised countries of Europe and America; and yet scarcely anything has been done by the State in this direction. I am unable to speak with confidence, but I believe that no systematic and sustained efforts have been made for giving the country agricultural schools, which might become practically successful institutions afterwards. These schools in the early stages of their existence ought to be treated in the same way as the Grant Medical College was, when first started in this Presidency, namely, that the students should be stipendiary and men of education, and that, until a public demand has been created, the promise of employment at remunerative salaries should be given by Government to induce men of ability to come forward to prosecute studies which are somewhat novel in this country. The difficulty of finding students, and afterwards suitable employment for them, will not, however, occur in the case of other schools, such as technical schools for spinning and weaving, in aid of our newly developed cotton mills industry, on the model of similar schools now existing in Germany. A large technical school divided into several departments, established in Bombay, from which Native lads, trained and fitted for higher posts than they now occupy, could be supplied to the locomotive and other railway workshops, would not only greatly benefit the people, but in time would be of financial advantage to the railway companies in the matter of 133

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obtaining cheap skilled labour and supervision, which continue to be still largely imported from England. Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? Ans. 37.—My answer to this question may be inferred by the reply given to the previous one. The effect of the withdrawal of Government from the management of high schools and colleges would be most disastrous to the cause of education. Local exertions cannot adequately supply, under present circumstances, the loss that must be caused by Government adopting any such step. Ques. 42.—What progress has been made by the Department in instituting schools for girls, and what is the character of the instruction imparted in them? What improvements can you suggest? Ans. 42.—As far as my experience goes, the Education Department of Government has not been backward in supporting the cause of female education. Primary schools for girls have increased rapidly throughout the Presidency, and are likely to increase further. In Bombay City nearly all Parsi female children receive primary education without Government assistance, and their example is being followed by other portions of the Native community steadily, though slowly For the improvement of these girls’ schools, I would suggest that the larger ones among them should have two divisions, one of which, for children under seven years, should be conducted on the infant school system of making attendance pleasant for the pupils, and in the other or upper division, the instruction should include the Native system of accounts, geography, elementary science, singing, and needlework, besides reading, writing, and arithmetic. Female teachers should be employed, whenever possible, in all girls’ schools. It would be of great help to the education of girls here if two or three certificated lady-teachers brought out from England were attached to the Education Department, whose business should be to guide the Native female teachers in conducting their schools after the model of similar schools in England, and specially the infant schools there. A school established by Government for the higher education of Native girls in Bombay City, like the Bethune School at Calcutta, would be sure to be largely attended, and would prove to be of much advantage to the cause of female education generally. Ques. 44.—What is the best method of providing teachers for girls? Ans. 44.—There are at present two training schools for vernacular female teachers, one at Ahmedabad and the other at Poona. A similar school at Bombay would be even more appreciated and useful. In the absence of it, the necessity may be provided for to some extent by the Education Department establishing evening classes for the purpose of training and further educating teachers of female schools. These teachers in Bombay consist for the most part of girls who have been selected from among the advanced pupils of existing schools, and who have received no regular training to fit them thoroughly for the duties of their profession. 134

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Ques. 45.—Are the grants to girls’ schools larger in amount and given on less onerous terms than those to boys’ schools, and is the distinction sufficiently marked? Ans. 45.—The Education Department is, rightly I think, less exacting in examination, and sufficiently more liberal in the matter of grants-in-aid, to girls’ schools than to boys’ schools. A primary school for girls in this city giving instruction in subjects I have already mentioned, through a staff of fairly good female teachers, should cost on the average Ɍ10 to 12 per annum fur each pupil. Ques. 46.—In the promotion of female education, what share has already been taken by European ladies; and how fur would it be possible to increase the interest which ladies might take in this cause? Ans. 46.—Within the last twenty-five years, barring one or two individuals, I have not known European ladies, excepting those connected with mission work, take any earnest or active part in the promotion of Native female education. Ques. 53.—Should the rate of fees in any class of schools or colleges vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil? Ans. 53.—The lowest rates of fees practicable should be charged in every school for all pupils alike, but option may be given to the Inspectors to allow a certain number of very poor but deserving pupils to attend school without paying fees. Ques. 54.—Has the demand for high education in your province reached such a stage as to make the profession of teaching a profitable one? Have schools been opened by men of good position as a means of maintaining themselves? Ans. 54.—The demand for higher education has considerably increased within the last twelve or fifteen years. In Bombay City the Education Department having failed to meet this growing demand by omitting to provide two or three new high schools on behalf of Government, encouraged the establishment of a number of schools owned by one or more Native proprietors with an exclusively native staff of teachers. Instruction is given in these schools up to the Matriculation standard, but, as a rule, there is more cramming and less intellectual training in these proprietary schools than in the Elphinstone or other public high schools, and they are decidedly hurtful in their influence on the character of the boys in point of discipline and good behaviour. I believe that some harm has been done to the youths of this city by this neglect of Government, which has passively permitted such inferior establishments to grow up, where the proprietors are naturally mindful at least as much of their pecuniary gains as of the cause of education. Ques. 60.—Does a strict interpretation of the principle of religions neutrality require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools? Ans. 60.—There is no reason to think that the principle of religious neutrality has ever been infringed, even by a strict interpretation, by the direct management by Government of schools and colleges, and the Native community has never complained about it to my knowledge. It is in consequence of this principle of religious neutrality in Government schools that well-to-do Natives prefer to pay 135

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their children’s school-fees and send them to Government institutions, rather than keep them in mission schools and colleges, where no fees or smaller fees are charged. Ques. 63.—Are there any arrangements between the colleges and schools of your province to prevent boys who are expelled from one institution, or who leave it improperly, from being received into another? What are the arrangements which you would suggest? Ans. 63.—I am aware of no such arrangement as mentioned in this question, although such an understanding has long been needed within my own knowledge, and was at one time proposed unsuccessfully by myself in connection with the Bombay proprietary schools already referred to. Ques. 64.—In the event of the Government withdrawing from the direct management of higher institutions generally, do you think it desirable that it should retain under direct management one college in each province as a model to other colleges; and if so, under what limitations or conditions? Ans. 64.—I am decidedly against the withdrawal of Government from the direct management of higher institutions, by which I mean colleges and higher schools. The time is not for withdrawal, but for Government to take a still more active part in pushing forward higher education, which would suffer greatly if Government withdrew, leaving only one college in each province under its direct management. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard? Ans. 65.—I think that European professors should be employed exclusively in all colleges, and I am further of opinion that every high school should have at least one European teacher If the intellectual development of the pupils were the only object, Native professors could perform the duties fairly as regards most of the subjects of study in the schools and colleges of India; but there are other considerations involved, and association with European teachers of superior culture would give the pupils an advantage in general training which could not be obtained through Native professors. There is no doubt that some of the defects in character complained of by Europeans in educated Natives arise from the latter not having the benefit in most cases of European tutors, and of association with Europeans at the earlier period of their education. As European teachers of standing can be brought out more easily now than before, I think it very advisable that the European teaching staff under the Education Department should be largely augmented, and that all college professors should be Europeans, and that in cases of large high schools there should be more than one European master. Ques. 68.—How far would Government be justified in withdrawing from any existing school or college in places where any class of the population objects to attend the only alternative institution on the ground of its religions teaching? Ans. 68.—I do not think that Government would be at all justified in acting as suggested in this question. It would be considered an indirect method of compelling pupils to receive religious education foreign to the creeds of their parents, or 136

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it might be taken as an attempt to check the spread of education among the middle or better sections of the Native community. Ques. 69.—Can schools and colleges under native management compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management? Ans. 69.—I do not believe that for a long time to come schools and colleges under Native management, as a rule, will be able to compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management. Evidence of PROFESSOR R. G. BHANDARKAR, M.A. Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained. Ans. 1.—In my boyhood I attended two indigenous schools at different times at my native town Málvan, in the southern part of the Ratnágiri Zilla. In 1847, while I was in my tenth year, I attended for some months a Government Maráthi school at Rájápur in the same zilla, and afterwards at Ratnágiri for about three months From October 1847 to January 1853, I was a pupil in the Ratnágiri Government English School, and afterwards for one year in the first, or candidate class as it was called, of the school department of the Elphinstone Institution at Bombay. From January 1854 to April 1858 I was a student in the Elphinstone College, and for the last three months of 1858 an assistant master in the Elphinstone High School From January 1859 to May 1860, and from January 1861 to May 1861, I was a Dakshiná Fellow in the Elphinstone College, and a Dakshiná Fellow in the Poona (now Deccan) College from June 1860 to December 1860, and from June 1861 to July 1864. From the 15th of August 1864 to about the end of April 1865 I was Head Master of the High School at Hyderabad in Sind, and of the Ratnágiri High School from June 1865 to December 1868. From January 1869 I have been Acting Professor or Assistant Professor of Sanskrit, mostly in the Elphinstone College. I have also been University Examiner in Sanskrit since 1866, and was a member of the University Syndicate for about eight years. Ques. 2.—Do you think that in your province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration or in the course of instruction? Ans. 2.—The system of primary education in the Bombay Presidency does not seem to me to be capable of development up to the requirements of the community, for the Educational authorities are obliged to reject applications for the establishment of schools for want of funds It has thus not been placed on a sound basis. Improvements I will suggest in connection with my answer to question 4. Ques. 3.—In your province is primary instruction sought for by the people in general, or by particular classes only? Do any classes specially hold aloof from it, and if so, why? Are any classes practically excluded from it; and if so, from 137

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what causes? What is the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society? Ans. 3.—Primary instruction is sought for by all people except, speaking generally, the Sudra cultivators and bodily labourers; and also the lowest castes, such as Mahárs and Mángs, and Chámbhárs or shoe-makers One reason why these classes hold aloof is ancient tradition, and another is that in the pursuit of their occupation they do not feel any great necessity for it I do not know of any classes which are practically excluded from it. Even Mahárs and Mángs are admitted into the schools, and in a few cases special schools have been opened for them The attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society is that of indifference; they would neither actively oppose nor promote elementary instruction. In the case of the Mahárs, Manga, and Chámbhárs, they do not insist that these classes should not be instructed; but that they should not by their too close vicinity contaminate their boys. I see from the Report of Public Instruction for 1880–81 that the number of boys and girls belonging to the caste of cultivators under instruction in Government Schools and Colleges is stated to be 47,342. But I believe the number includes cultivators of the Bráhman and other higher castes. The number of Súdra cultivators will, I expect, be found on careful examination to be very small. The number of sons of cultivators attending the Government colleges is given as eight. But I do not remember having seen many or any Súdra cultivator among the students of the Elphinstone College Ques. 4.—To what extent do indigenous schools exist in your province? How far are they a relic of an ancient village system? Can you describe the subjects and character of the instruction given in them, and the system of discipline in vogue? What fees are taken from the scholars? From what classes are the masters of such schools generally selected, and what are their qualifications? Have any arrangements been made for training or providing masters in each schools? Under what circumstances do you consider that indigenous schools can be turned to good account as part of a system of national education, and what is the best method to adopt for this purpose? Are the masters willing to accept State aid and to conform to the rules under which such aid is given? How far has the grant-in-aid system been extended to indigenous schools, and can it be further extended? Ans. 4.—Nearly every large village which has not a Government school has an indigenous school; and there are some in towns also. Indigenous schools are not, in my opinion, a relic of any ancient village system. They simply depend for their existence on the law of demand and supply Some sort of instruction for their boys is required by members of the Bráhman and other higher castes; and there are men with no better means of livelihood who can meet the demand. These, therefore, open schools and keep them going so long as it is convenient to them. When one man who has conducted such, a school for some time gives it up, it is by no means always the case that another immediately takes his place Often the village has to do without a school for some time. The subjects of instruction are, reading Modí letters, writing Modí, and menial arithmetic. The boys are also taught to sing Native songs. Bálabodha reading or 138

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reading printed books is not attended to, except in cases when the master happens to be one who has himself been taught in a Government school. Writing or speaking correct Maráthi is not taught. Punctual attendance, diligence, and good conduct are enforced by means of punishments. Bad conduct even at home is noticed by the schoolmaster. But the schoolmaster himself does not often possess regular business habits. He works when it is convenient to him, and does not when he is disposed to enjoy ease or has got something else to attend to. The school is his private speculation, and he is responsible to none. For this reason his pupils take a long time to learn the little that is taught. The ordinary rate of fees is 4 annas per month. The master generally belongs to one of the several divisions of the Brahman caste, including the Senvís. Sometimes an individual of a lower caste also opens a school. I know of a barber who conducted a school at Ratnágiri. Reading and writing Modí letters and casting accounts form the schoolmaster’s qualification generally. In some cases he is able to read and explain indigenous Maráthi literature. Since, as stated above, these schools do not owe their origin to any organised system, there exist no arrangements for training or providing masters for them. The principal drawbacks in the case of these schools are, it will thus be seen, these: 1—Though they supply a real want and consequently must as a body always exist, there is no guarantee that any particular school will continue to exist for a given period. 2—There is no arrangement for training or providing masters. 3.—The schoolmaster is responsible to none, and consequently often irregular in his work. 4.—The standard of instruction is too low. The last two defects only can in some cases be remedied by giving a grant-in-aid to these schools, but not in all; for many masters will not be found willing for the sake of a few rupees to impose an additional burden upon themselves, or to sacrifice the liberty they enjoy. But to remove all these defects and reduce schools of this nature to a regular system, more radical measures should be adopted. There is no efficient local agency that can undertake the task. It must therefore be assumed by the Department of Public Instruction. Every large Government vernacular school should have a Normal class attached to it composed of young men intending to make teaching their profession. These should be examined by the Deputy Educational Inspector and certificates given to such as pass the examination. The holders of these certificates should be promised rupees 4 per mensem as a grant-in-aid if they opened schools, and procured 15 pupils at least. They should be at liberty to charge any fee they may consider advisable, and the proceeds should be theirs. The grant should be withdrawn if the number of pupils falls below 15, or if the school is found to be exceptionally inefficient. These schools should be registered by the department, and appointments to vacancies made by the educational authorities. I believe that in course of time these trained masters will supplant the present masters of indigenous schools and the number of these schools will increase. In this way the demand that gives rise to indigenous schools will be supplied by the department in a more systematic and efficient manner by using the existing material. And some time hence, when this system develops, it will be found practicable to convert the 139

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schools that are at present wholly conducted by Government into aided schools of this nature, and with the same amount of money that is at present spent on primary schools for boys it will be possible to maintain a far larger number than we have at present. Thus, in the year 1881 the amount spent on these, exclusive of fees which under the system I propose will be appropriated by the schoolmasters, was Ɍ9,00,098, while the number of schools in the last month of the year was 4,001. The average annual expense of each school is thus about Ɍ225, while under the proposed system it will be 48. For one school now maintained, therefore, we shall have at least four and a half, that is, in the place of the four thousand schools we have now got we shall have about eighteen thousand, But it will not be advisable to convert all our present schools into aided schools of this nature. Supposing three-fourths were so converted, we should still have thirteen thousand five hundred Of course the plan must be worked slowly, and it will be many years before the ideal I sketch is realised. Ques. 6.—How far can the Government depend on private effort, aided or unaided, for the supply of elementary instruction in rural districts? Can you enumerate the private agencies which exist for promoting primary instruction? Ans. 6.—My answer to this question is involved in that to question 4. Government, in my opinion, cannot at present depend on anybody for the supply of elementary instruction in rural districts, except on the natural operation of the law of demand and supply spoken of in my answer to question 4. Ques. 7.—How far, in your opinion, can funds assigned for primary education in rural districts be advantageously administered by district committees or local boards? What are the proper limits of the control to be exercised by such bodies? Ans. 7.—I think the funds will be better administered by local boards and district committees, if they are so constituted as to combine the popular element with so much of the official as will simply direct and watch. The primary education of the district might be wholly entrusted to such bodies, but the Department of Public Instruction should lay down the standards and arrange for inspection Ques. 8.—What classes of schools should, in your opinion, be entrusted to Municipal committees for support and management? Assuming that the provision of elementary instruction in towns is to be a charge against Municipal funds, what security would you suggest against the possibility of Municipal committees failing to make sufficient provision? Ans. 8.—Primary schools only, as a general rule, should be made over to such Municipalities as can support them. If the intelligence and public spirit of a Municipal committee are not so great as to ensure its making adequate provision for the primary education of the town, the schools should not be entrusted to it, but some annual contribution exacted from it. Ques. 9.—Have you any suggestions to make on the system in force for providing teachers in primary schools? What is the present social status of village schoolmasters? Do they exert a beneficial influence among the villagers? Can you suggest measures, other than increase of pay, for improving their position? 140

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Ans. 9.—If the system of primary instruction is to develop in the manner I have described in my answer to question 4, one Normal school for one division will not be sufficient. As I have already stated, each of the larger vernacular schools should have a Normal class. The master of a Government school in a village enjoys the respect of the villagers The position of the master of an indigenous school is not so high; but he too possesses some influence with the people, and often is the public scribe or notary of the place. Ques. 10.—What subjects of instruction, if introduced into primary schools, would make them more acceptable to the community at large, and especially to the agricultural classes? Should any special means be adopted for making the instruction in such subjects efficient? Ans. 10.—Modí writing and mental arithmetic, as well as the method of keeping accounts, would, if greater attention were paid to them in primary schools, render them more acceptable to the people. No special means are necessary, strict orders to the schoolmasters are, I think, enough. Ques. 12.—Is the system of payment by results suitable, in your opinion, for the promotion of education amongst a poor and ignorant people? Ans. 12.—If the conductors of an institution are highly educated men and possess some means already, the system of payment by results is the fairest and most suitable. If, however, they are men of little or no culture, and are poor like the masters of our indigenous schools, the system is not suitable. Ques. 13.—Have you any suggestions to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? Ans. 13.—The sons of persons belonging to the classes that seek instruction should be charged fees, but those of Súdra cultivators and of persons belonging to the lowest castes should be admitted free. And to attract these classes even small scholarships should be given. Ques. 14.—Will you favour the Commission with your views, first, as to how the number of primary schools can be increased; and, secondly, how they can be gradually rendered more efficient? Ans. 14.—My answer to this question is contained in my answer to question 4. Ques. 15.—Do you know of any instances in which Government educational institutions of the higher order have been closed or transferred to the management of local bodies, as contemplated in paragraph 62 of the despatch of 1854? And what do you regard as the chief reasons why more effect has not been given to that provision? Ans. 15.—No the reason is there have been no local bodies capable of conducting such institutions. Ques. 16.—Be you know of any cases in which Government institutions of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, with or without aid, without injury to education or to any interest which it is the duty of Government to protect? Ques. 17.—In the province with which you are acquainted, are any gentlemen able and ready to come forward and aid, even more extensively than heretofore, in the establishment of schools and colleges upon the grant-in-aid system? 141

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Ques. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India, what parts can, in your opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? Ques. 54.—Has the demand for high education in your province reached such a stage as to make the profession of teaching a profitable one? Have schools been opened by men of good position as a means of maintaining themselves? Ques. 58.—What do you consider to be the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught as a class by one instructor in the case of colleges and schools respectively? Ans. 16, 17, 36, 37, 54, & 58.—I will answer these questions together. It is plain that Government desires that education of all grades—higher, secondary, and primary—should not only continue to be in the condition in which it is at present, but should extend Often, however, the idea has been put forth that the duty of Government is only to give primary instruction to the masses, leaving education of the higher and secondary grades to take care of itself. The idea, I suppose, is based on the relation of the Government to national education in European countries such as England. The state of circumstances here is, however, different, and the analogy is not applicable. Our Government belongs to a more civilised and progressive race, and its civilisation in many respects is better than that of the people it governs. As an enlightened Government, it is desirous that its own higher and better civilisation and progressive spirit should be communicated to the people of this country. One of the most effective means for the purpose is a system of education. It will be admitted that primary education is not at all suited for the purpose; for a mere knowledge of reading, writing, and casting accounts is not calculated to awaken the mind and improve and elevate the spirit Instruction in the literature, the history, the philosophy, and science of Europe is indispensable To give superior education to the people is therefore a higher and prior duty of the British Government in India than to give primary education. Where the people and the Government stand on the same level, as in the countries of Europe, the case is different. This fact was recognised by the pioneers of education on this side of the country, when they established the Elphinstone College and gave a Government English school nearly to every zilla town before there were any or many vernacular schools. Even in 1851, when the Poona College was elevated to its present status, primary education was in a state of infancy; for I remember there were then about 20 vernacular schools in the Ratnágiri zilla, while at present the number is a 130. It appears to me, then, that if the question of the withdrawal of Government from any branch of education were raised it should rather be with reference to withdrawal from primary than from higher education. The effects of the withdrawal of Government from higher education cannot but be injurious to its interests. The people themselves are not yet qualified to undertake the work; for the generality do not understand and appreciate the value of 142

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higher education; and even if they did, they are not capable of organised and united action. Instruction in the Vedas and in the Sanskrit Shástras the people at large do appreciate. They see that the study of these is gradually dying out; but the only efforts hitherto made for promoting it that I have heard of, are the establishment of a school for the Shástras of an inferior sort at Nasik, to which the Educational Department gives a small grant-in-aid, and of another at Poona, the expenses of which are defrayed by one of the Gujaráthi Mahárájás, as well as of a school for the Vedas at Ratnágiri, the income of which is very trifling There is no guarantee that any of the last two will continue to exist even for the next two years. Just as indigenous primary education depends upon individual effort, so does education of this sort. A Shástri, or an áchárya, in a town or village considers it a point of honour to take pupils and instruct them in the Shastra or Shástras which he has specially studied. The pupils in return do what bodily service they can to their master, and do not, and often cannot, make money payments The Shástri lives on the presents made to him out of religious motives by the rich people about him, if he has got no hereditary income of his own. Generally, kings and princes in former times had, as Native chiefs now have, several Shástris in their service who, like the rest, took pupils Often lands were given as ináms to Shástris of distinction, and they were thus put in a condition to transmit Sanskrit learning for many generations It will thus be seen that higher Sanskrit education depends on the isolated efforts of individual Shástns assisted by the bounty of kings, prince, and merchants, whose grants, however, are made, as presents to the Shástns themselves, out of a religious motive, and not directly for the promotion of education There were, however, some institutions which can be compared to the colleges of Europe. These were mathas, or establishments for samnyásins, or recluses belonging to the many sects that sprang up at different times in the country There a great many pupils were taught and by more than one samnyásin. Sometimes lands were given for the support of such mathas by princes and chiefs, and they were also maintained by contributions made by the lay followers of the Samnyásins The Buddhist monasteries, or viháras, were often colleges of this nature, as were also the hermitages of the rishis in pre-historic times. Relics of these mathas are still to be met with. But these are exceptional cases, and in them the great motive force was the desire to propagate particular religions tenets, which is powerful in the infancy of a sect. The general truth, therefore, stated above remains unaffected, that higher, as well as primary, education depends on the efforts of individuals, and not of organised bodies, while in the first case religions motives are present But higher English education is, as I have already observed, not even appreciated and valued by the people generally, while, as regards religious motives, they are, of course, absent. It is impossible, therefore, that even individual effort should be available in this case I therefore apprehend that if Government withdraws from higher education, there will be none from amongst the Natives to take its place. Hitherto I have considered whether people of the old school, or those who have not been influenced by English education, are likely to step into the place vacated 143

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by Government. Let us now see if the educated men themselves will do it. These no doubt value the education they have themselves received, but their number is yet small and their means extremely limited Besides, it is still a question with me whether organising powers and public spirit or the capacity of uniting for common purposes are sufficiently developed in them to enable them to undertake the task of giving higher education to the people of the Presidency, even supposing they had adequate means, which certainly they do not possess Now here the fact of some young graduates of the University having opened a school at Poona may be brought forward as opposed to the view I maintain These young men have voluntarily sacrificed all their prospects in life, and, contenting themselves with an income of Rs. 30 or 40 per mensem in the place of Ɍ100 or 150, which elsewhere most of them would have got, have undertaken a work which they believe to be calculated to do good to their country. Such a self-sacrificing spirit is not to be found in many persons, and perhaps does not often continue to characterise the same individual throughout his life. A school, however, such as theirs can only be kept up by men who are actuated by that spirit. I have, therefore, great doubts whether for the next ten or fifteen years it will continue to exist. But whether it does or not, it is, I think, vain to expect that the whole education of a Presidency should be carried on by men influenced by such exceptional motives Education so conducted can hardly be said to be placed on a firm basis. If the occupation of teaching were remunerative, then only would there be some chance of its attracting men fitted for it. But, as a matter of fact, it is not so. The best guarantees for the permanence of a school are an organised body to conduct it, and endowments, and no school has yet been established on that basis in the mofussil. As regards this last point, it may be said that endowments will come in in the course of time, such as the Elphinstone College and the University of Bombay have got. On an examination, however, of the nature of the endowments and benefactions that these institutions possess, and the circumstances under which they were made, it will appear that the expectation that a private college or a high school can be conducted by means of such endowments and benefactions, is not well founded The personal influence of men in office had to be exerted before the largest of them were obtained; and it will be seen that in a great many cases the amounts were first offered to Government, and in some to Sir A. Grant, ViceChancellor of the University, who was believed to possess great influence with men in authority. The donors in most cases expected some sort of acknowledgment from Government. It is not likely, therefore, that an institution conducted by private individuals, and not backed by the overwhelming influence of Government, will be similarly favoured And the object of all such endowments, whether large or small, is to perpetuate the memory of some individual; and therefore each must be devoted to some specific object. They cannot all be combined, and a school or college supported out of the proceeds, for a school or college can perpetuate one or two names only and not many And it has not been found possible for a single individual to contribute such a sum as will permanently maintain a college such as the Elphinstone or Deccan College, But, after all, in these respects 144

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Bombay must be considered an exceptional place, for the wealth of the city is no indication whatever of the economical condition of the districts, especially the Maratha districts, which are poor, and from which no considerable grant can be expected for educational purposes. It will thus be seen that in my opinion there are no individuals or bodies in the Presidency generally that will come forward and aid in the establishment of schools and colleges The effect of the withdrawal of Government must be to throw higher education into the hands of Christian religious societies. This will be injurious to the cause of higher education; for institutions conducted by religious societies in this Presidency have been far less successful than those under Government management And of the two colleges of this description that have been affiliated to the University, the Free General Assembly’s has shown but very poor results. To prove this point I will compare the results produced by the Deccan College and by the two aided institutions, leaving the other Government college out of consideration, since it may be objected to as being in exceptionally favourable circumstances. Graduates from the Deccan College and the Free General Assembly’s Institution appear on the University records for the first time in 1864 and from St Xavier’s in 1872 From the University Calendar for 1881-82

College

Deccan St. Xavier’s Free General Assembly’s

Bachelors of Arts

114 27 20 5

Number of Years which the Institution has been training Candidates for B.A.

Average per Year

17 9 17

67 8 12

Thus, the Deccan College is more than thrice as efficient as St Xavier’s, and more than five times as successful as the Free General Assembly’s; and yet the total expenditure of the last college in 1880–81 was Ɍ18,000; that of the Deccan College, Ɍ54,002, that is, for a sum of money three times as large, the Deccan College graduates more than five times as many men It must also be borne in mind that money is not the sole agency available to Missionary societies. Religious zeal forms a very important part of the resources at their disposal, and its place must be supplied by additional money in the case of Government educational institutions. But another and a more serious objection against Government withdrawing from higher education and assisting Missionaries by grants of money to do its work, is the violation, that it involves, of the cardinal principle of British Indian Government, viz., religious neutrality. This action of Government will have the appearance of its having abandoned its function of civilising the races under its rule and assumed that of proselytising them. He who makes large annual 145

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contributions towards the expenses of schools the purpose of which is to proselytise, can in no way be distinguished, in practice, from him who puts his name down in the subscription list of the societies that have established those schools. Even the grants that are at present given to such schools and colleges involve a violation of religious neutrality in principle. But since excellent Government institutions of the kind are available to satisfy the educational wants of the people, this matter attracts little notice, and is not felt as a grievance If, however, these Government institutions made room for others, established by proselytising societies, the people would be reduced to the necessity or either sending their children to them and risking the chance of their being cut off from themselves by becoming converts, or of keeping them without the benefits of higher education and then this new departure on the part of Government would form the subject of bitter complaints, and I have little doubt the views of Government would be misunderstood, and it would be regarded as desirous of Christianising the country It will be seen from the foregoing remarks that in my opinion the Natives themselves are not in a condition to conduct higher education, while primary instruction is sought for and given by spontaneous Native agency In answer to question 16, therefore, I would say that this should be utilised in the manner indicated in my answer to question 4, and three-fourths of the Government primary schools converted into grant-in-aid schools, and Municipal agency used wherever available, while Government should take higher education under its own management I would answer question 16 by saying that no institution for higher education should be made over to a private body; neither do I think that any such existing institution should be closed. Since the Department of Public Instruction was organised in 1855, primary education has very greatly developed, and we have now about ten times as many schools as we had before, but the number of colleges continue to be the same. We had two before and have those two now. It is only within the last two or three years that a college teaching up to the standard of the previous examination has been established at Ahmedabad, one-fourth only of the expenses of which are paid by Government, and another at Kolhapur, supported by the State. But colleges teaching up to that standard and having but the sort of establishment that these have, deserve to be considered only as superior high schools So that it may even now be truly said that the institutions for higher collegiate education continue to be only as many as we had before the Despatch of 1854. Higher education should, I think, be fostered by Government, not only for its civilising influence, but because it is the only means of improving its own administration of the country, if it must employ Native agency. The administration of justice throughout the Preisdency has admittedly vastly improved within the last twenty years; and this is solely due to the fact that highly educated Natives have been employed as subordinate judges, and have become vakils or pleaders. Educated Natives alone are qualified to understand the views and motives of the British Government and its powers, and thus to act as interpreters between the rulers and the ruled. Natives of the old school and those who have had the benefits of primary and secondary education only do not possess that capacity. I therefore 146

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think it would, in every way, be a backward step to close any institution of the higher order. It has been suggested that the Deccan College might be reduced to the standard of an institution teaching up to the previous examination. This, in effect, means that as a college it might be closed. But the only justifiable ground for closing a college is its having very few students, or its not producing satisfactory results. But, as I have shown, the Deccan College graduates have as many students again as the two aided colleges put together every year on an average; while the average daily attendance in 1880–81 was 113, which is equal to that of the two colleges together. The closing of such an institution, therefore, cannot but deal, in my opinion, a serious blow to higher education in this Presidency. If the Deccan College is reduced to a lower grade, the candidate passed by it will have to go to the Elphinstone College to read for the higher examinations The number of students at present in the two higher classes is 18 and 28 The corresponding classes in the Elphinstone College have 20 and 47; so that, if the proposed reduction be effected, the two classes in that college will come to have at least 38 and 75 students, since our number have been rising and not falling. Now, in my opinion, 25 or 30 is the highest number of students forming a class that can be taught efficiently. The effect, therefore, will be that the classes in the Elphinstone College will become so unwieldy that it will be impossible to teach them properly, and the efficiency of that college will be greatly impaired. The Elphinstone College will be the only institution for preparing men for the first and second B.A. examinations in the Presidency; and it will have to take up the work of teaching all the students passed by the Deccan, the Kolhapur, the Ahmedabad, and the Baroda Colleges, that is, its establishment will have to be increased, or, in other words, two colleges will have to be opened within the same walls But the present arrangement, in virtue of which the passed students are distributed between the two colleges, is preferable to closing one college and giving a double establishment to another Ques. 21.—What classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children? How far is the complaint well founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? What is the rate of fees payable for higher education in your province, and do you consider it adequate? Ques. 53.—Should the rate of fees in any class of schools or colleges vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil? Ans. 21 & 53.—The classes whose occupation under the old regime was writing, avail themselves of the Government and sided schools and colleges But education has made some progress with the mercantile classes also, especially in Bombay Sardars and other rich tamilies of by-gone times do not, as a general rule, care for this kind of education. The complaint that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education is groundless In support of my view I give the following table showing the monthly income of the guardians of 105 of the students at present in the Deccan College:— 147

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I

From Rs. 250 to Rs. 500 II

More than Rs. 100 and less than Rs. 250 III

From Rs. 50 to Rs. 100 inclusive. IV

5

11

19

31

Rs. 500 and upwards

Less than Rs. 50

Total.

V 39

105

The expenses of each student including fees vary from Ɍ15 to 20 per mensem This amount is certainly beyond the reach of 39 of the students. They, therefore, maintain themselves on the scholarships they get, and in some cases borrow money Those in Class IV (31 in all) can just afford to spend the required amount. So that the complaint referred to is certainly not true in the case of 70 out of 105 students, and an increase of fees in their case would be a hardship. The present rate is Ɍ5 per mensem; and it may be raised to Ɍ7½ in the case of 19 students forming the third class, while the 16 in the first and second classes may be paid to Ɍ10 even. But the parents of these 35 students are by no means to be called wealthy. And this income test is sometimes fallacious; for a man, though in receipt of Ɍ250, has perhaps got a large family to support, or Ɍ250 represents the ancestral income of a family composed of 25 members. A man in these circumstances can hardly afford to spend Ɍ15 to 20 per mensem on his son. But the principal objections to a varied rate of fees is the difficulty of ascertaining a man’s exact income and the temptation to which it exposes him to conceal it. The rate of fees payable at Elphinstone College is Ɍ10 per mensem. I do not think it can bear being raised except by the introduction of varied rates, which, however, are objectionable on other grounds. Ques. 23.—Is it in your opinion possible for a non-Government institution of the higher order to become influential and stable when in direct competition with a similar Government institution? If so, under what conditions do you consider that it might become so? Ans. 23.—It is perfectly possible for a non-Government institution of the higher order to become influential and stable when in direct competition with a similar Government institution, provided it has got funds, and, above all, good teachers who will zealously devote themselves to their duties. If, however, a foreign religion is taught in that school, that will be so much against it in its way to influence and popularity. But if the teachers are good, and the students not compelled to attend the religious classes, the school is under no disadvantage. St. Xavier’s College in Bombay is an instance in point Ques. 24.—Is the cause of higher education in your province injured by any unhealthy competition; and if so, what remedy, if any, would you apply? Ans. 24.—No, so far as I am aware. Ques. 25.—Do educated Natives in your province readily find remunerative employment? Ans. 25.—Not very readily. Still there are no complaints. They do find employment eventually in the Educational, Revenue, Customs and Judicial Departments, 148

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and sometimes in Native States. There are a few instances of Bombay mercantile firms having taken our graduates. The practice of the law is also open to them. Ques. 26.—Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further, with useful and practical information? Ans. 26.—One who has gone through the high school course successfully, and has passed the Matriculation examination, possesses, I believe, useful information. I do not know what is exactly meant by “practical information.” But a good many of the boys who matriculated from the Ratnagiri High School, during the time I was Head Master there, were taken into the Collector’s office and the Bombay Customs, as as well as other departments, and several were employed as assistant masters in my own school. They have all been doing well. Two have become mámlatdárs. One is a senstadár to a Judge, and another holds a similarly important post at Ratnagiri. Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—The attention of teachers and pupils is almost exclusively devoted to the requirements of the Matriculation examination of our University, but not unduly so, for the standard of that examination is, I think, a good standard for general education, and those who pass that examination are, I believe, generally well fitted for the ordinary occupations of life. Knowledge of a classical language is necessary for those who wish to continue their studies in an affiliated college, but not for those who do not. The last, therefore, as a general rule, do not devote their time to it, but take up their vernacular as their second language for Matriculation. The Matriculation examination thus serves two purposes: that of testing a young man’s general education as well as fitness for entering upon higher studies. Objections have been taken to this double character of the examination, but I do not see what harm is done by it. The standard is well fitted to serve both ends. It is not undesirable to allow room for the development of peculiar aptitudes in boys, and in schools generally. But our standard, by allowing an option as regards the second language, and requiring only a small minimum in each of the subjects, renders it possible for a boy or a school to devote particular attention to any one of the subjects, whether English, Sanskrit, Latin, Arabic, Persian, a vernacular, mathematics, or general knowledge. But if no such standard were imposed on the high schools, and the masters were allowed to teach what they chose, the result in my opinion would be that they will teach very little, and that too carelessly, and thus the standard of education would deteriorate. The influences which in the absence of such a standard are calculated to keep masters and boys duly and usefully employed, are wanting in the present circumstances of our country. Ques. 28.—Do you think that the number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the University Entrance examination is unduly large when compared with the requirements of the country? If you think so, what do you 149

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regard as the causes of this state of things, and what remedies would you suggest? Ans. 28.—The number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the Matriculation Examination of our University is not unduly large. Ques. 29.—What system prevails in your province with reference to scholarships; and have you any remarks to make on the subject? Is the scholarship system impartially administered as between Government and aided schools? Ans. 29.—Before the University was established, the Elphinstone College had two private scholarship endowments, and two scholarships endowed by the Gáikawád of Baroda, while it had six of Ɍ20 each and three of Ɍ30 per mensem paid out of Government funds. The last nine scholarships were called Normal scholarships, and the original idea was that the holders of them should, after the close of their studies, take service as masters of English schools But the idea was soon given up. Under the administration of the Director of Public Instruction, the scholarships of Ɍ30 were reduced to Ɍ20 and placed on the same level with the other Government scholarships. The Deccan College also had its scholarships before the Department of Public Instruction was organised, though they were rearranged afterwards. In those days Government did not connect itself in any way with Missionary schools, and consequently no claim for the scholarships could be set up on their behalf. No new Government scholarships have been instituted in this Presidency since the University began its operations as in Bengal. Hence, there are none which the students of all colleges, whether managed by Government or aided by it, can compete for. The old Government scholarships belonging to the Government colleges have grown with them, and cannot be taken away from them without doing them serious injury. They have become as much theirs as the private scholarships which they have and which the aided colleges have. Separate examinations are held for them every year in these colleges. The scholarships that have been founded by private individuals in connection with the University are of course open to all affiliated institutions. The high schools have Government scholarships; but their number and monthly value are so small that they hardly deserve to be considered. My answer to question 29, therefore, is that no scholarship system common to the Government and aided colleges, or in connection with the University, has yet been founded by Government. Ques. 31.—Does the University curriculum afford a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools, or are special Normal schools needed for the purpose? Ans. 31.—My experience is that the University curriculum affords a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools, and no special Normal schools are wanted. Ques. 32.—What is the system of school inspection pursued in your province? In what respect is it capable of improvement? Ans. 32.—For aided primary schools, such as those as I have spoken of in my answer to question 4, the elaborate system of examining and assigning marks in each subject is not necessary. A general inspection such as prevailed under the late 150

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Board of Education and before the grant-in-aid rules were framed, will be quite enough. When the system of primary schools develops, each Deputy Educational Inspector should have under him two or three Sub-Deputies on a salary of about Rs. 30 or 35 per mensem, and these should be charged with the duty of examining the primary schools. Ques. 39.—Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestion to make on this subject? Ans. 39.—The vernacular and English text-books used in the schools contain some moral lessons; but original prose and poetic works are taught in colleges, and there can, of course, be nothing of the kind in them. But it appears to me that, placing dry moral receipts before young men is not a very efficacious method of making them virtuous or instilling moral principles into their minds. The teacher’s effort should be directed to the cultivation of the emotional side of the pupil’s nature, wherein lies the root of morality, and to the formation of tastes. For this purpose nothing, I believe, is better suited than the best prose and poetic literature of such a great country as England. History too, if properly taught, is calculated to promote the same end These means are availed of in Government colleges and also in high schools. The study of ethical philosophy which has been recommended by some is, I apprehend, not always efficacious. Butler’s Sermons on Human Nature, his Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue, and the first part of his Analogy, produced, I know, a very wholesome effect on the minds of a good many of my friends and of myself, when we were at college, and the impression then received was deep, and will never be effaced. But other systems of moral philosophy opposed to that of Butler are, in the hands of certain teachers, apt to deprive the moral law of its grandeur and awe, and become the means of unsettling one’s notions of morality and religion. Besides the effect that such studies naturally produce, the discipline under which a student has to be for about eight years in a high school and a college, cannot but induce habits of regular work and self-restraint. The imputations cast upon the morality of educated Natives are groundless. The general moral tone is healthy, though there may be exceptions. Many years ago, in my native district, stories of corruption in the Native judicial service were very common; but now they have almost disappeared, and the people have confidence in their subordinate judges as regards this point. The Revenue Department has not yet taken many of them, but those that are employed there also maintain a character for integrity There are, I believe, some atheists and sceptics among the educated Natives, but that is by no means due to the instruction imparted in Government colleges In English thought, the agnostic and atheistic side has at present acquired prominence, and India being now intellectually affiliated to England, as well as politically, it must be expected that all phases of thought in that country should cast their reflections here. But to this influence the students of Missionary, as well as Government, colleges are equally open, and the result in both cases is the same. 151

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With reference to the points involved in this question, I have to observe that the tendency to specialise the studies of students has lately become too strong, in my opinion. At present, the general education of a young man, for the most part, stops at the previous examination. History and philosopy, which, I believe, are of great value to the Indian student, are put down as optional subjects for the B.A. degree, while the quantity prescribed for the previous examination, which is compulsory on all, is insignificant, I have also to suggest that in order that the means available may produce the best possible results, it is necessary that the selection of professors for our colleges should he carefully made. Latterly the evil of acting appointments has greatly increased. One or other of the permanent professors in the Elphinstone or Deecan College is always absent, and it is by no means an easy matter to procure a fit person to act for him. Some arrangement should be made by the Department, in virtue of which the European gentlemen in the Department below the rank of professors should be men possessing the same qualifications as the professors themselves, and be fit to take their places in their absence. Another way of remedying this evil I shall suggest in connection with my answer to question 34. The relations between the professors and the pupils should be more intimate than they are It is in this way alone that the professor will be able to influence the character of his pupils, and to give a proper direction to their thoughts and feelings There should be conversational parties or social gatherings at which the professor and his pupils may meet on more familiar terms than are possible in the class-room. Ques. 41.—Is there indigenous instruction for girls in the province with which you are acquainted; and if so, what is its character? Ans. 41.—There is no indigenous instruction for girls in the province with which I am acquainted Female education in this Presidency was begun, about the year 1848 by educated Natives, especially the students and ex-students of the Elphinstone College, under the guidance and encouragement of their professors, the late Mr Patton and Dr. R. T. Reid. They established Marathi, Hindu, Gujaráthi-Hindu, and Gujaráthi-Parsi schools at Bombay, Since there were no funds in the beginning, they volunteered themselves as teachers. In the course of time, after indefatigable exertions, they succeeded in collecting a sufficient amount of money. A good many Parsi gentlemen came forward with contributions for the education of girls of their own race, and a committee was formed which took away the Gujaráthi-Parsi girls’ schools from the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society, and managed them themselves. The Gujaráthi Hindus did likewise after the lapse of a good many years more; and now the society has got the Maráthi schools only under its management. From Bombay the movement spread to the mofussil. Orthodox opinion was strongly opposed to female education. Educated Natives published pamphlets and delivered lectures, advocating the cause and meeting the arguments of the orthodox Subscriptions were collected and schools opened in some of the principal towns. 152

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Ques. 42.—What progress has been made by the Department in instituting schools for girls; and what is the character of the instruction imparted in them? What improvements can you suggest? Ques. 44.—What is the best method of providing teachers for girls? Ans. 42 & 44.—The late Board of Education had sufficient employment in the education of boys, and did not turn its attention to the education of girls. The Department of Public Instruction followed for a long time the traditional policy of the Board, but has established a good many schools latterly. Still, proportionately little has been done. It must be admitted that there are peculiar difficulties in connection with female education arising from the social customs of the Hindus. The orthodox prejudice against it, though considerably weakened, has not yet disappeared. But things would be in a much more satisfactory condition if trained female teachers were available. There is, however, a very great difficulty as regards this point Girls are married at a comparatively young age and soon enter on the duties of a married life. They are therefore mostly not available as pupils for our Normal schools. Trained young widows and wives of uneducated men are not exactly the persons we should employ as schoolmistresses. I should therefore think that so far as possible the wives of young men attending the Training College should be attracted to the Female Normal School by the offer of liberal terms; and, as a general rule, after their education is complete, the husband and the wife should be employed at the same place Ques. 43.—Have you any remarks to make on the subject of mixed schools? Ans. 43.—I do not think we should have mixed schools. Ques. 59.—In your opinion should fees in colleges be paid by the term or by the month? Ans. 59.—The fees in the Elphinstone College are paid by the term, and in the Deccan by the quarter. This rule does not cause much inconvenience. Ques. 60.—Does a strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools? Ans. 60.—Decidedly not, for in Government institutions nobody’s religious belief is tampered with. But the principle of religions neutrality requires, as I have indicated in my remarks on higher education, that Government should cease to aid institutions the ultimate object of which is to proselytise, while the withdrawal of Government from the direct management of schools and colleges must lead to such institutions being assisted on a larger scale, that is, to a more systematic interference with the religious beliefs of the people than is involved in the present educational policy. Ques. 61.—Do you think that the institution of University professorships would have an important effect in improving the quality of high education? Ans. 61.—University professorships, instead of those we have at present in connection with the colleges, will do more harm than good. In our present circumstances we want tutors, and not mere lecturers, and the professors in our colleges are in effect tutors. But for another purpose, University professorships 153

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to be held by the Natives of the country, with small salaries attached to them, are very desirable. At present there is no provision for promoting the growth of learning and raising a class of learned men. All educated Natives, after they leave college, have to follow an occupation that takes up the greater portion of their time, and leaves them very little leisure for the pursuit of their favourite studies. Mr Howard, one of our early Directors of Public Instruction, perceived the want, and, with a view to supply it in some measure, used the amount of the dakshiná fund at his disposal, and instituted Fellowships in connection with the Government colleges. During his administration and some time after it, they were tenable for any length of time, but gradually the original idea was forgotten and the tenure shortened, and now they are held for one year, and in a few cases for two. What permanent good they do with such a short tenure it is difficult to perceive. I would, therefore, propose that out of the sum available from the dakshiná fund, University professorships should be founded. Five senior professorships of Ɍ200 each per mensem, and five junior of Ɍ100, will be enough to begin with. Whenever a senior professorship falls vacant, a junior professor alone should be appointed to it. The senior professors should deliver a course of ten lectures at least every year in connection with the University, and they, as well as junior professors, should be attached to the Government colleges, where they should assist the college professors. The senior professors will be available for doing the work of the professors in the Government colleges during the time they may be absent on leave, and thus the evil I have spoken of in my answer to question 31 will, to a great extent, be mitigated The amount at present spent on the Dakshiná Fellowships in the two colleges is, I believe, Ɍ675 per mensem. It will not be difficult to raise it to Ɍ1,500 per mensem, which is the amount required for the professorships I propose; for the daksinuá fund at the disposal of the Director of Public Instruction is pretty large, and it will go on increasing as the dakshiná now enjoyed by the old Biahmans lapses in consequence of death. The purpose which the dakshiná originally given by the Peshwas to learned Brahmans served, was the promotion of learning, and it will be in keeping with this purpose to devote it now to the creation of a learned class. Ques. 63.—Are there any arrangements between the colleges and schools of your province to prevent boys who are expelled from one institution, or who leave it improperly, from being received into another? What are the arrangements which you would suggest? Ans. 63.—There is a tacit understanding among the heads of Government and aided colleges that a student belonging to one is not to be admitted into another without the permission of the principal of his first college. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard? Ans. 65.—Two European professors to teach English literature and history, political economy or philosophy, are necessary for every college teaching up to the B.A. standard. 154

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Ques. 66.—Are European professors employed, or likely to be employed, in colleges under Native management? Ans. 66.—One or two European professors are likely to be employed in colleges conducted by Natives. Ques. 68.—How far would Government be justified in withdrawing from any existing school or college, in places where any class of the population objects to attend the only alternative institution on the ground of its religious teaching? Ans. 68.—On the principles I have laid down Government will not be justified in withdrawing from an existing school or college in order that an institution in which a religion objected to by the people as antagonistic to theirs is taught may flourish. Such action on the part of the Government will not unjustly be construed as springing from a desire that the people should be taught that religion, and, if possible, become converts to it.

Supplementary Question. Ques. 71.—Please state what opportunities yon have had of forming an opinion on the subject of female education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained. Ans. 71.—I was Maráthi Secretary to the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society in Bombay for several years, and as such had charge of the girls’ schools established by that society. I was also a member of the managing committee of that body up to December last. Evidence of MR. NOWROZJEE FURDOONJEE. Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained. Ans. 1.—I have had the opportunities of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India during my connection with the Government Educational Department up to 1845 and with the Parsi Girls’ School Association and other educational institutions from 1853 to the present time. For some time I acted as a member of the Bombay Female Normal School Committee appointed by Government, and also as a member of the subcommittee appointed by the Town Council of Bombay to visit the primary schools supported and maintained partly by the Municipal Corporation and partly by Government, and Honorary Secretary to the Parsi Girls’ School Association of Bombay. My experience has been gained exclusively in the Bombay Presidency. Ques. 2.—Do you think that in your province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration or in the course of instruction? 155

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Ans. 2.—The scope of primary education is thus defined in the first clause of the Act passed this year by the French Legislature:— “Primary education comprises moral and civil instruction, reading, writing, geography, particularly that of France, history, especially that of France up to the present day, some notions of law and political economy, the elements of natural, physical, and mathematical science, their applications to agriculture, health, industrial arts, manual labour, and uses of the tools of the principal crafts, the elements of drawing, modelling, and music, gymnastics, for boys military drill, for girls needlework.”

This provision might be modified and adapted to the circumstances of India, and should, I submit, form the basis on which primary education should be conducted by the state of this country. I think that in Bombay the system of primary education has, with notable exceptions, been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirments of the community. The improvements which I venture to suggest in the system of administration and course of instruction are the following— (a) Readiness and rapidity of calculation, proficiency in mental arithmetic and Native method of book-keeping and accounts, subjects to which great attention had been paid in the indigenous schools, but they have been displaced by the course of instruction prescribed in Government schools and imparted from textbooks which are not quite adapted to the capacity of the pupils. (b) The introduction of a systematic course to instruction in the principles of morality and ethics. I am of opinion that this is a great desideratum which, if supplied, will be attended with beneficial results (c) The impartment of technical education for qualifying the people for acquiring the practice of useful trades, industrial arts, and professions. But I am sorry to learn that this important question does not come within the scope of the enquiries entrusted to the Commission (d) The necessity of establishing Normal schools in Bombay for qualifying and training male and female teachers in English and in the vernacular languages. (e) The existing number of primary schools for boys and girls being utterly inadequate, it is necessary for Government to make a larger grant According to the recent census, there are 140,250 children of school-going age (between 6 and 15 years) in the town and island of Bombay, of whom 31,417 only are under instruction and 108,833 children are not under instruction. Of the latter, 11,405 are just able to read and write, whilst 97,428 are totally illiterate. It appears, from the following statistics given in the latest report of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, that the number of schools established by Government throughout the entire Presidency is inadequate to supply the educational wants of the people, and the amount contributed thereto by the State greatly falls short of the needs of the people, numbering 16,454,414 souls:— 156

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Expenditure. No. of No. of By the Schools Scholars State

3,960

From Local Rate of Cessea

From From From School Municipal Native Fees Grants States

Ɍ Ɍ Ɍ 440,069 2,49,714 5,01,603 1,18,272

Ɍ 35,692

Other Sources

Total

Ɍ Ɍ Ɍ 1,18,673 48,684 10,72,578

The ratio of persons under instruction to the entire population is 1.54 per cent The inadequacy of the above expenditure will appear most glaring if contrasted with the large sum, Ɍ2,19,98,630, granted by Parliament in April last for primary education and for the expense of the Education Department in England and Wales Ques. 3.—In your province is primary instruction sought for by the people in general, or by particular classes only? Do any classes specially hold aloof from it, and, if so, why? Are any classes practically excluded from it; and if so, from what causes? What is the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society. Ans. 3.—Primary instruction is sought for by the people in general, except by the poorest class, who are unable to pay the fees. Hitherto Muhammadans have to a large extent stood aloof from it, chiefly because the Koran is not taught in the Government schools. I am glad to find that an organised effort has recently been made in the city of Bombay, by several intelligent and public spirited Muhammadans, to overcome the repugnance of their co-religionists, and Government, as well as the Municipal Corporation, have made large grants in aid of the schools established by the Anjuman-Islam. Recently there has been an increase in the number of schools and in the attendance of Muhammadan scholars. The attitude of the influential and enlightened classes of Natives towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society is all that can be wished for. Ques. 4.—To what extent do indigenous schools exist in your province? How far are they a relic of an ancient village system? Can you describe the subjects and character of the instruction given in them, and the system of discipline in vogue? What fees are taken from the scholars? From what classes are the masters of such schools generally selected, and what are their qualifications? Have any arrangements been made for training or providing masters in such schools? Under what circumstances do you consider that indigenous schools can be turned to good account as part of a system of national education, and what is the best method to adopt for this purpose? Are the masters willing to accept State aid and to conform to the rules under which such aid is given? How far has the grant-in-aid system been extended to indi genous schools, and can it be further extended? Ans. 4.—According to the last report of the Director of Public Instruction (pages 61, 62) there are 1,305 indigenous schools throughout this Presidency attended by 36,054 pupils. Of these there are 143 schools attended by 9,405 pupils in the island of Bombay. These statistics do not appear to be complete 157

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and accurate. Aid is given by the Department to a very small number of these schools. Numerous schoolmasters have declined to receive aid on account of their inability to conform to the rules of the Educational Department These institutions are a relic of the ancient indigenous system, of which the chief peculiarity consist of teaching lessons and arithmetical tables, &c, by heart, readiness of calculation and useful mental arithmetic. Simple elementary instruction is communicated in reading, writing, and mental arithmetic, often without any organised plan. The fees levied range from two to eight annas per month, in addition to presents on birth-days, marriage, and other festive occasions and holidays. They are conducted chiefly by hereditary schoolmasters who do not generally possess the requisite qualifications. Several of these schools are pretty [Illegible Text] conducted, whilst many are badly managed. In the island of Bombay many of these schools are located in exposed verandas and dark over-crowded rooms situated on the basement in different parts of the fort and native town. The discipline is seldom good. No arrangements have been made for training or providing masters for such schools. In Gujaiath the indigenous schools are, I am informed, generally of a better class, and deserve encouragement. The sister Presidency of Bengal, which, I am informed, possesses 700,000 indigenous schools, of which 600,000 are partially aided by Government, carries off the palm of superiority in this matter. In the absence of extensive efforts by Government to make adequate provision for primary education, I think it is necessary to turn the existing indigenous schools to good account, and to use every endeavour to encourage, extend, and improve them. With this view I would suggest to the Commission to recommend the Department to modify and relax the rules for giving grants-in-aid to indigenous schools so as to remove the difficulties and place it within the means of the conductors to avail themselves of the assistance of the State. Ques. 5.—What opinion does your experience lead you to hold of the extent and value of home instruction? How far is a boy educated at home able to compete on equal terms, at examinations qualifying for the public service, with boys educated at school? Ans. 5.—There is scarcely any home instruction in this Presidency, because the mothers are, for the most part, uneducated, and the male parents are too much engaged in their work and calling to spare any time or attention to the education of their children, Parents who can afford the means, in some cases employ private teachers out of school-hours to give instruction to their children at home in the morning or evening to assist the progress of the latter at school. Instances of children being educated at home are rare Ques. 6.—How far can the Government depend on private effort, aided or unaided, for the supply of elementary instruction in rural districts? Can you enumerate the private agencies which exist for promoting primary instruction? Ans. 6.—Government cannot, I think, depend on private effort, aided or unaided, for the supply of elementary instruction in rural or other districts in the mofussil, unless they rely on the schools that are established by Christian Missionaries with the avowed object of converting the Natives. These schools are attended chiefly 158

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by children of the lowest class, with whom the generality of Hindus do not hold any social intercourse, and by the children of the poorest class, who are unable to pay the higher rate of fees charged in Government schools. Ques. 7.—How far, in your opinion, can funds assigned for primary education in rural districts be advantageously administered by district committees or local boards? What are the proper limits of the control to be exercised by such bodies? Ans. 7.—Funds assigned for primary education in the rural districts can, in my opinion, be advantageously administered by district committees or local boards, subject to such rules and limitations as it may be deemed necessary to prescribe. Ques. 8.—What classes of schools should, in your opinion, be entrusted to Municipal committees for support and management? Assuming that the provision of elementary instruction in towns is to be a charge against Municipal funds, what security would you suggest against the possibility of Municipal committees failing to make sufficient provision? Ans. 8.—I am of opinion that primary schools should be entrusted to properly constituted school boards or Municipal committees for support and management in large towns and cities if such Committees possess surplus funds adequate for the purpose. With some exceptions their resources are so inadequate that after spending their funds on the primary and legitimate objects of conservancy and sanitation they can spare very little money for promotion of primary education but in any case they should not be compelled to have recourse to additional taxation, which might press heavily on the people. Primary education is a fair charge on the general revenues of the country. The Imperial Parliament has recognised the charge and has made adequate provision for primary education from the public revenues as shown in my answer to question 2. Ques. 9.—Have you any suggestions to make on the system in force for providing teachers in primary schools? What is the present social status of village schoolmasters? Do they exert a beneficial influence among the villagers? Can you suggest measures, other than increase of pay, for improving their position? Ans. 9.—I think it is necessary that trained teachers should be provided for primary and secondary boys’ and girls’ schools. There are several training schools and colleges and Normal schools in the Deccan, Dhárwár, Gujaráth and Sind, but no such institution exists in Bombay, where the large majority of masters employed in the vernacular and Anglo-vernacular schools are untrained. In the Normal Schools none but scholars of the higher class, studying in secondary schools, and matriculated students, should be admitted. After being duly trained and qualified, they should be taught the art of teaching in practising schools, and when their training is finished, they should receive certificates of competency as teachers from the heads of the Normal schools. The status and emoluments of the vernacular schoolmasters should, I think, be improved so as to keep pace with improvements in their qualifications and training. The salaries of vernacular schoolmasters of the lower grade at present range from Ɍ10 to 12 (being equal to the pay of ordinary house-keepers), of the middle grade Ɍ15, and of the higher grade Ɍ20 to 25. These low salaries do not and cannot attract competent men 159

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to occupy these responsible posts It is also necessary to improve the position of the village schoolmasters by increasing their emoluments and by other means, because they exercise a beneficial influence amongst the villagers. Ques. 10.—What subjects of instruction, if introduced into primary schools, would make them more acceptable to the community at large, and especially to the agricultural classes? Should any special means be adopted for making the instruction in such subjects efficient? Ans. 10.—To make the primary schools popular and attractive, I would recommend that, in addition to other subjects, much attention should be paid to mental arithmetic, composition, epistolary and mercantile correspondence, moral duties, adages and maxims, Native book-keeping and accounts, and lessons on objects, also instruction in trades and industrial arts. Ques. 11.—Is the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools of your province the dialect of the people? And if not, are the schools on that account less useful and popular? Ans. 11.—The vernaculars recognised and taught in the different schools in the Bombay Presidency are the dialects of the people. The instruction imparted therein is therefore useful as well as popular. Ques. 12.—Is the system of payment by results suitable, in your opinion, for the promotion of education amongst a poor and ignorant people? Ans. 12.—Yes, excepting in villages and rural districts, where it is necessary to encourage and assist well-conducted indigenous schools. Ques. 13.—Have you any suggestions to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? Ans. 13.—The fees levied in primary schools ranging from Ɍ1 to Ɍ3 press heavily on the poorer classes of the people. They should be reduced, say, onehalf, so as to place it within the means of the poor students to avail themselves of the advantages held out to them. In vernacular schools the fees ranging from 4 annas to 8 annas, and in some cases 1 rupee, are heavy and should be reduced Students who cannot afford to pay the school fees should be admitted free The present restriction of the free list, 15 per cent., should be removed, so that the doors of the Government schools should not be closed against poor candidates Ques. 14.—Will you favour the Commission with your views, first, as to how the number of primary schools can be increased; and, secondly, how they can be gradually rendered more efficient? Ans. 14.—The number of primary schools can, I believe, be increased by Government opening new schools in suitable localities and giving grants-in-aid and scholarships, and by enlisting the sympathies and inviting the co-operation of influential and enlightened Natives. Ques. 15.—Do you know of any instances in which Government educational institutions of the higher older have been closed or transferred to the management of local bodies, as contemplated in paragraph 62 of the Despatch of 1854? And

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what do you regard as the chief reasons why more effect has not been given to that provision? Ans. 15.—I do not know of any instances in which Government educational institutions of the higher order have been closed or transferred to the management of local bodies, as contemplated in paragraph 62 of the Despatch of 1854. The reason is obvious. Education has not yet made sufficient progress to warrant Government in closing their colleges or high schools to make way for private institutions. Ques. 16.—Do you know of any cases in which Government institutions of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, with or without aid, without injury to education or to any interests which it is the duty of Government to protect? Ans. 16.—I do not know of any cases in which Government institutions of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, without injury to education or to interests which it is the duty of Government to protect. The time for carrying out this suggestion has not arrived. Ques. 17.—In the province with which you are acquainted, are any gentlemen able and ready to come forward and aid, even more extensively than heretofore, in the establishment of schools and colleges upon the grant-in-aid system? Ans. 17.—In the Bombay Presidency several public-spirited and liberal gentlemen have come forward and aided more extensively than before in the establishment of schools and colleges and the erection of elegant buildings for educational purposes; but I do not know if there are any that are able and willing to come forward and aid in such work at present Ques. 18.—If the Government or any local authority, having control of public money, were to announce its determination to withdraw, after a given term of years, from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, what measures would be best adapted to stimulate private effort in the interim, so as to secure the maintenance of such institution on a private footing? Ans. 18.—If the Government or any local authority having control of public money were to announce its determination to withdraw, after a given term of years, from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, the probability is that it will be impossible to stimulate private effort to secure the maintenance of such institution on a private footing. Ques. 19.—Have you any remarks to offer on the principles of the grant-in-aid system, or the details of its administration? Are the grants adequate in the case of (a) colleges, (b) boys’ schools, (c) girls’ schools, (d) Normal schools? Ans. 19.—I venture to offer the following remarks on the principle of the grant-in aid system, the details of its administration, and the principle of religious neutrality which should be observed by Government When the grants-inaid system as instituted under the despatch of 1854 from the Court of Directors was introduced and earned out by the Local Government, the benefit of such aid was withheld from all schools and educational institutions, established and

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conducted by Christian Missionaries and other religious societies, on the ground that it would militate against the principle of religious neutrality observed by Government. I invite the attention of the Commission to an admirable despatch addressed by the late Lord Ellenborough, then President of the Board of Control, to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors, dated 28th April 1858. In this important document His Lordship makes the following pertinent remarks against the extension of grants-in-aid to Missionary schools:— “21. This measure, even guarded as it appears to be, by restricting the aid of Government to the secular education of the Natives in Missionary schools, seems to me to be of a very perilous character “22 The primary object of the Missionary is proselytism He gives education, because by giving education, he hopes to extend Christianity He may be quite right in adopting that course, and left to himself, unaided by the Government, and evidently unconnected with it, he may obtain some, although probably no great, extent of success, but the moment he is ostensibly assisted by the Government, he not only loses a large portion of his chance of doing good in the furtherance of his primary object, but by creating the impression that education means proselytism, he materially impedes the measures of Government directed to education alone “23 This has been the view taken of the effect of any appearance of connexion between the Government and the Missionaries by some of the most pious as well as the most able men who have ever been employed under the Government of India, and I have, at all times, adhered to their opinion.

*

*

*

*

*

“27 I must express my doubt whether the aid by Government funds to the imparting even of purely secular education in a missionary school is consistent with the promises so often made to the people, and till now so scrupulously kept, of perfect neutrality in matters of religion “28 It is true that the money of the State is only granted to the Missionary on account of the secular education which alone he engages to give to the Native, unless the Native should otherwise desire, but it may often, if not always, happen, that it is only through the aid thus given professedly for secular education, that the Missionary is enabled to keep the school at all, which he only designs for other, and those proselytising purposes “29. We thus indirectly support where we profess to repudiate, and practically abandon the neutrality to which we have at all times pledged ourselves to adhere. Such conduct brings into question our good faith, and may naturally give alarm to the people,”1

On the abovementioned grounds, His Lordship recommends the advisability of “withholding the aid of Government from schools with which Missionaries are connected.” The Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, in his report for the year 1857–58 (page 30) publicly expresses his “respectful concurrence in the arguments by

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Lord Ellenborough (in paragraphs 20—30), deprecates grants-in-aid to professedly Missionary schools as inconsistent with religious neutrality,” and declares that no pecuniary grant has been made in this Presidency to any Missionary school Sir George Russel Clerk, the then Secretary of the India Board and late Governor of Bombay, in an able memorandum recorded by him under date 29th March 1858, makes the following important recommendation:— “The Government of India should be directed to consider in a calm and unobtrusive spirit the best mode of rendering education really popular, to regulate it with no attempt at proselytism, open or disguised, and to rely that our greatest strength consists in regarding with feelings of clarity and patience the pursuit of religious instruction by all the different persuasions according to their several creeds.”

Sir John Peter Grant, late Governor of Bengal, has also recorded a minute against giving grant-in-aid to Missionary schools. Mr. Hodgson Pratt, late Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, has borne the following important testimony:— “The only Natives who send their children to Missionary schools are those who cannot afford to pay school fees No man who is tolerably well off will send his child to a Missionary school, and I have scores of times been applied to (unsuccessfully) by the sons of poor men for a small allowance to save them from the hardship of attending the Missionary school, and to enable them to go to the Government institution instead”

The above remark is applicable to this Presidency also. Here Natives of the poorest classes, who cannot afford to pay the heavy fees charged in Government schools, are compelled, much against their wish, to send their children to Missionary schools, where small and almost nominal fees are levied and a large number of free students are admitted. In 1857 the principal Native inhabitants of Bombay memorialised the Government of Bombay against the use in the Elphinstone Institution of class-books prepared expressly for the use of children professing the Christian religion and abounding in lessons containing the doctrines and principles of Christianity. In reply to their memorial, the Natives were informed that Government had directed the Director of Public Instruction to issue an order “prohibiting the teachers in Government schools from reading or teaching the lessons complained of by the petitioners2 The class-books used in all the Missionary schools consist for the most part of lessons relating to the principles, doctrines, and tenets of the Christian religion—books which have been prepared for the purpose of carrying out the object for which Missionary societies have established schools throughout the Presidency, namely, as an instrument in aid of the cause of the subversion of the ancient religions of India and the conversion of the Natives to Christianity. The study of the Bible and the course of Christian religious instruction prescribed for the

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Missionary schools are not optional but obligatory on all Native students attending these schools. And yet, for reasons with which I am unacquainted, a departure from the policy of religious neutrality was sanctioned by the Government of Bombay for the first time in the year 1863, and educational institutions supported by different Missionary societies have been allowed grants-in-aid since the year 1865–663 This proceeding has produced wide-spread dissatisfaction amongst the natives of this Presidency. On these grounds I venture to recommend that Government should be asked to revert to the original policy of withholding grants-in-aid from all schools conducted with the object of propagating Christianity or any other religion. The following statistics contained in the last report of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, show that the distribution of grants-in-aid amongst the educational institutions established for different classes of the people in this Presidency can scarcely be deemed to be fair. In the year 1880–81 the undermentioned sums were awarded for grants-in-aid by results, aggregating Ɍ80,698:—

To two colleges, viz., the St. Xavier’s Collage and Free General Assembly’s Institution To 28 permanent schools for Europeans and Eurasians To 91 permanent schools for Natives conducted chiefly by Missionaries To 19 private schools for Natives Total

Ɍ

s.

p.

3,600

0

0

34,890 37,739 4,469 80,698

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

The bulk of this amount was awarded to colleges and schools established by Christian religious and Missionary societies, leaving a small sum, less than Ɍ10,000, awarded to private schools established by Natives, These figures show the advisability of making a better and more equitable distribution of the grantsin-aid, so that the Natives might get a fair share. I regret to learn that the grants-in-aid allowed to several large and wellconducted educational institutions—namely, the Fort High School, the Chandunvádi High School of Bombay, and Bába Gokley’s School at Poona—have all been totally withheld since the year 1877–78, on grounds which, from the correspondence that has taken place, appear to be scarcely justifiable. The reason assigned by the Director of Public Instruction is that “the receipts of the institutions in question, independent of Government aid, are sufficient to maintain them in an efficient state, and also to yield an income to the proprietors” On referring to paragraph 53 of the Government Despatch of 1854, the Commission will find that no such instruction is laid down for awarding grants-in-aid. The only conditions prescribed are that they should be “under adequate local management, that is to say, one or more private patrons, voluntary subscribers or the trustees of endowments who will undertake the general superintendence of the school and be 164

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answerable for its permanence for some given time,” and “provided also that their managers consent that the schools shall be subject to Government inspection and agree to any conditions which may be had down for the regulation of such grants,” In vain the proprietor of the Fort High School pointed out that “the withdrawal of all Government aid must inevitably reduce the school from its present flourishing state to one of comparative inefficiency,” and prevent improvements being made in the seminary. The proprietors of another school, namely, the Chandunvádi High School No. 2, from which the grant was discontinued, represented that it would be impossible for them to maintain a well-trained teaching staff and other appliances and keep up the efficiency of the institution without a grant-in-aid from Government. Grants are still given to similar schools in Madras. The consequence of discontinuing the Government grant from Bába Gokhley’s School at Poona was, I hear, fatal to its existence. This seminary had, I am informed, competed successfully with the Government High School for several years Grant-in-aid has been withheld for several years from the Poona Native Institution—a seminary ably conducted by Mr. Vaman Piabbakar Bhave, which had educated and passed several youths in the Matriculation and Public Service examinations every year. Although three successive Educational Inspectors, who examined the school, reported favourably regarding the efficiency and successful management of the institution, yet aid was refused on the ground that there were “no funds for any private high school in Poona.”4 It appears from the report of the Director of Public Instruction for the year 1876–77 (p. 24) that, in consequence of the number of aided schools having in six years risen from 85 to 255, Government ordered a revision of the grant-in-aid rules and the framing of new rules, withdrawing grants for passing Matriculation and grants for salaries, and reducing by one-half the grants for passing the F.A. and B.A. examinations. The large reduction in grants which took place in 1876–77 is attributable to the strict enforcement of the revised rates. I regret to learn that a further reduction has been made this year to a considerable amount in the award of grants-in-aid, and the English school at Breach Candy Road has been struck off the register. I would submit to the Commission the desirability of restoring the grants that have been withheld or curtailed. Private educational institutions are obliged to incur heavy expense for employing and maintaining a qualified staff of teachers and appliances for the highest standard in preparing scholars for Matriculation. In order to contribute towards this heavy expenditure, it is necessary, in my opinion, to restore these grants and to confer them on a liberal scale. The grants-in-aid are adequate in the case of colleges, but are totally inadequate in the case of boys’ and girls’ schools. The amount of grants-in-aid for the English-teaching Anglo vernacular and vernacular schools and girls’ schools should be at least doubled, and should be so regulated as to enable private Native schools to recover a morety of the costs of their maintenance. There being no private Normal schools in this Presidency, there are no grants for them. 165

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Ques. 20.—How far is the whole educational system, as at present administered, one of practical neutrality, i.e,. one in which a school or a college has no advantage or disadvantage as regards Government aid and inspection from any religions principles that are taught or not taught in it? Ans. 20.—I found considerable difficulty in understanding the object and bearing of this question On enquiry I have been given to understand that the object of the question is to ascertain whether there is any truth in the contention of a certain class of persons who allege that the tendency of the Government system of education being atheistic, Government practically violate the principle of religions neutrality, and that they should, therefore, retire from the field of high-class education. I believe there is no truth in the contention just referred to. Having myself been educated under the Government system, and having come in contact with a great many alumni of the Government colleges in the Presidency, I am in a position to deny the allegation of an atheistic and immoral tendency. I am not aware of any of the professors inculcating the doctrine of atheism in any of the colleges in this Presidency. A high moral tone pervades the text-books and permeates the course of instruction imparted in Government colleges and schools. If it is intended to be suggested by this question that the educational institutions conducted by the Missionaries are disliked or discouraged by the Department, I must say that the result of my enquiries and information distinctly negatives such a suggestion. I am informed that in this Presidency and throughout British India the case is different. As stated in my answer to question 19, Government have given undue encouragement to Missionary schools and colleges by giving them liberal grants-in-aid, and have thereby departed from the principle of religious neutrality. These grants, although ostensibly given towards secular education, are virtually applied towards carrying out the primary object of these schools, viz., the impartment of instruction in Christianity with the view of converting Native children from their respective ancestral faiths to Christianity I cannot understand the principle on which Missionary societies accept pecuniary aids from Imperial and Provincial revenues raised from taxes contributed by the Natives for the general purposes of Government, and not for proselytism. Ques. 21.—What classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children? How far is the complaint well founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? What is the rate of fees payable for higher education in your province, and do you consider it adequate? Ans. 21.—All classes of the people, with the exception of Muhammadans of the non-commercial class, avail themselves of Government and aided schools and colleges for the education of their children. I do not think the complaint is well founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for education. The rate of fees payable for higher education has been greatly enhanced, so that it presses heavily on the middle and poorer classes of the people. It amounts to Ɍ10 per month. I would, therefore, recommend a reduction in the rate, so as to place higher education within the reach of classes who are desirous of availing themselves of the advantage. 166

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Ques. 22.—Can you adduce any instance of a proprietary school or college supported entirely by fees? Ans. 22.—I can adduce two notable instances of proprietary schools in Bombay supported entirely by fees, namely, the Fort High School and the Fort Proprietary School. But the fact should be borne in mind that the proprietors of these seminaries give their services to them as head masters in consideration of the amount of surplus realised by them from fees after deducting all other charges and expenses connected with the maintenance of these institutions in a state of efficiency. Ques. 23.—Is it in your opinion possible for a non-Government institution of the higher order to become influential and stable when in direct competition with a similar Government institution? If so, under what conditions do you consider that it might become so? Ans. 23.—In my opinion it is possible for a non-Government institution of the higher order to become influential and stable when in direct competition with a similar Government institution. The conditions under which it might become so are good management and adequate resources and support. Ques. 24.—Is the cause of higher education in your province injured by any unhealthy competition; and if so, what remedy, if any, would you apply? Ans. 24.—I am not aware of the cause of higher education in the Bombay Presidency being injured by any unhealthy competition. Ques. 25.—Do educated Natives in your province readily find remunerative employment? Ans. 25.—Educated Natives in this Presidency have considerable difficulty in finding remunerative employment. If a vacancy occurs in a public or private office, some fifty or a hundred applications are received from candidates seeking employment I am of opinion that Government should utilise the large expenditure incurred in connection with high education by holding out sufficient inducements to the under-graduates and graduates of the University for admission into the public service by open competition, instead of favouritism. With this object I would recommend that two standards of qualifications should be prescribed, one for the lower grade and another for the higher grade of the public service, and periodical examinations should be held of candidates for employment in the public service, and the following amongst other appointments should be conferred on the successful candidates:— 1. Head Clerks, Shirastedárs and Názirs in the District Courts. 2. Assistants, Head Clerks, Chitnis, Dafterdáis, Accountants, Mámlatdáirs, Deputy Accountants, Head Kárkúns and Shirastedárs to the Revenue Commissioners, Collectors and Magistrates, and Assistant Collectors and Magistrates 3. Uncovenanted Assistants and Head Clerks to Secretaries to Government, Collectors of Customs and Excise, and Political Agents. 4. Deputy Collectors and Magistrates. 5. Overseers and Assistant Engineers, P. W. D. 167

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6. Deputy Educational Inspectors, Masters of High Schools, Training Colleges, Normal Schools, and Anglo-Vernacular Schools, and other officers of the Educational Department. 7. Translators. 8. Inspectors of Registration and Stamps. 9. Telegraph Officers. 10. Forest Officers. 11. Superintendents and Inspectors of Post Offices and Postmasters. I am of opinion that if proper standards be framed, and suitable rules be prescribed, and admission to the above-mentioned public services be thrown open to public competition by Government, the difficulty now experienced by educated youths in obtaining employment will disappear, and the character and efficiency of the public service will be considerably improved. One step has, I am glad to say, already been taken in this direction by Sir R. Temple’s Government, by instituting a competitive examination for the admission of graduates of the University5 to a limited number of situations in the Revenue Department, but as these posts, beginning with kárkunship on Ɍ35 per month, are not worth much, they do not hold out sufficient inducements The principle is excellent. I therefore request the Commission to recommend that it should be carried out on the extended scale I have proposed. Ques. 26.—Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies farther with useful and practical information? Ans. 26.—I am of opinion that some change in the instruction imparted in secondary schools should be introduced with the object of storing the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information. Instruction in the classical languages might be dispensed with in the case of those who do not wish to matriculate. Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teacher and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance Examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in the secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—I think there is some truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the Entrance Examination of the University; but this cannot be avoided, although this circumstance to some extent impairs the value of the education imparted in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life. Ques. 28.—Do you think that the number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the University Entrance Examination is unduly large when compared with the requirements of the country? If you think so, what do you regard as the causes of this state of things, and what remedies would you suggest? 168

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Ans. 28.—I do not think that the number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the University Entrance Examination in this Presidency is unduly large when compared with the requirements of the country. Ques. 29.—What system prevails in your province with reference to scholarships; and have you any remarks to make on the subject? Is the scholarship system impartially administered as between Government and aided schools? Ans. 29.—The system prevailing in the Bombay Presidency with regard to Government Scholarships is different from that which, according to my information, prevails in the other Presidencies. Here all these scholarships, excepting University Scholarships, are awarded to Government schools and colleges, and none to aided schools. Scholarships endowed by private individuals are awarded either to Government or private institutions according to the conditions stipulated by the donors. The Bombay University Scholarships, Fellowships, gold medals and prizes comprise 20 Scholarships, ranging from Ɍ120 to Ɍ400 per annum, 2 Fellowships of Ɍ800 and Ɍ410 per annum, 4 gold medals and 14 prizes from Ɍ50 to Ɍ540 per annum, and are awarded by open competition to students of Government, Missionary, and private institutions with liberty to prosecute their further studies at any recognised college. Ques. 30.—Is Municipal support at present extended to grant-in-aid schools, whether belonging to Missionary or other bodies; and how far is this support likely to be permanent? Ans. 30.—I am not aware of Municipal support being extended in this Presidency to Missionary schools. Ques. 31.—Does the University curriculum afford a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools, or are special Normal schools needed for the purpose? Ans. 31.—The University curriculum hardly affords a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools. Special Normal schools are therefore necessary for training teachers in secondary and primary schools, as shown in my answer to question 9. Ques. 32.—What is the system of school inspection pursued in your province? In what respect is it capable of improvement? Ans. 32.—The system of school inspection pursued in the Bombay Presidency is that which is prescribed by the Government Educational Department. I would suggest one improvement as being particularly necessary. Much of the time of the Inspectors and Deputy Inspectors is, according to the present system, taken up with voluminous official correspondence, of which they ought to be relieved, so as to enable them to devote more time and attention to their legitimate duties. Ques. 33.—Can you suggest any method of securing efficient voluntary agency in the work of inspection and examination? Ans. 33.—I cannot suggest any method of securing efficient voluntary agency in the work of inspection and examination, unless such of the professors of Government colleges, masters of Government and private schools, and the graduates of the University, can be induced to undertake the task as a labour of love. Ques. 34.—How far do you consider the text-books in use in all schools suitable? 169

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Ans. 34.—Several of the text-books in use in all the schools are, in my opinion, not suitable to the wants and circumstances of the Natives. In the Government English schools, McCulloch’s series of school-books, which were in use for a considerable time, were superseded, I believe, on account of the objection that they contained many lessons in Christian doctrines and religion. Mr. Howard’s Series are now in use in Government schools, and the Royal Readers are used in most of the private schools, Native and European. Chambers’ Moral Class Book and its Gujaráthi translation by Messrs. Kahandas Mansaram and Nusserwanji Chandabhai have been discontinued, and no text-book on this important subject has been substituted by the Department. In Gujaráthi schools Hope’s excellent series have been in use for the last twenty years, as well as the Punchopakhyan Æsop’s Fables, and the Balmitra, an admirable translation of Burquins Children’s Friend. The latter three books have been discontinued. With a view to meet the requirements of the present state of progress and advancement in English and vernacular education and remedy the defects of several class-books, I would suggest to the Commission the advisability of recommending to Government or the Educational Department the appointment of a committee to examine and report on the school-books now in use, and, in cases in which any books are found to be unsuited, to propose the substitution or compilation of other text-books better adapted for the different classes of schools now existing in this Presidency. Ques. 35.—Are the present arrangements of the Education Department in regard to examinations or text-books, or in any other way, such as unnecessarily interfere with the free development of private institutions? Do they in any wise tend to check the development of natural character and ability, or to interfere with the production of a useful vernacular literature? Ans. 35.—The present arrangements of the Educational Department in regard to examinations or text-books, or in any other way, do not appear to me to be such as unnecessarily interfere with the free development of private institutions; nor do they in any wise tend to check the development of natural character and ability, or to interfere with the production of a useful vernacular literature. I should think the tendency is quite the contrary. In fact, the Department fosters and encourages the production of a useful vernacular literature. Ques. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India what parts can, in your opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? Ans. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India, in my opinion, higher and middle-class as well as primary education can be most effectually undertaken and conducted by the State, aided by private local hoards and municipal agency, and public bodies and associations. Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? Ans. 37.—I think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would produce disastrous consequences 170

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and check the spread of education. I do not believe it will promote the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes. On the contrary, it will, I apprehend, nullify the effects of education and retard the accomplishment of England’s noble mission to qualify the Natives for selfgovernment and detenorate the character of the public, and thereby injuriously affect the interests of Government. Ques. 38.—In the event of the Government withdrawing to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges, do you apprehend that the standard of instruction in any class of institutions would deteriorate? If you think so, what measures would you suggest in order to prevent this result? Ans. 38.—In the event of the Government withdrawing to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges, I apprehend that the standard of instruction in institutions of that class would deteriorate. It would be therefore impolitic for Government to withdraw from the direct management of educational institutions in this country until education has taken a deep root and has made a great progress throughout British India. Ques. 39.—Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestions to make on this subject? Ans. 39.—This important branch of instruction does not, I regret to say, occupy a place in the course of Government colleges and schools. Due attention should, I submit, be paid to a knowledge of the principles of moral conduct and duty—a study which is greatly needed, and which formed a part of the course taught in indigenous schools in the shape of moral maxims, precepts, and tales. I would strongly recommend the Commission to enjoin the necessity of supplying the omission and introducing a systematic course of instruction in the principles and precepts of morality and the duties of life. This measure, if properly carried out, will be attended with great advantage in improving the conduct and character of the rising generation. Ques. 40.—Are any steps taken for promoting the physical well-being of students in the schools or colleges in your province? Have you any suggestions to make on the subject? Ans. 40.—Sufficient steps are not taken for promoting the physical well-being of students in the schools or colleges in this Presidency. I would strongly recommend that all the large schools and colleges be provided with the necessary means and appliances of physical education, viz., gymnasia and play-grounds, and that prizes should be awarded for athletic sports and cricket matches, riding, fencing, and other exercises. In the city of Bombay, in the Fort and on the Esplanade, there are several large schools, such as the Elphinstone High School, the Anglo-Vernacular Schools, the Proprietary, the Fort High and the Chandunvádi High Schools, without any gymnasia or play-grounds. I would recommend that Government should provide two or three large gymnasia and play-grounds on the Esplanade for the large number of students, about 3,000, attending these seminaries, and should give liberal grants to all private gymnasia, play-grounds, and libraries that are not self-supporting. 171

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Ques. 41.—Is there indigenous instruction for girls in the province with which you are acquainted; and if so, what is its character? Ans. 41.—Owing to the seclusion of females, there is scarcely any indigenous instruction for girls in this Presidency. Ques. 42.—What progress has been made by the Department in instituting schools for girls; and what is the character of the instruction imparted in them? What improvements can you suggest? Ans. 42.—Very little progress has been made by the Department in instituting schools for girls in this Presidency compared with what has been done in the Bengal Presidency and the North-Western Provinces. In 1870–71 there were 74 schools attended by 2,816 girls,6 maintained at a cost of Ɍ2,949 from Imperial funds and Ɍ10,328 from the educational cess. There has been a progressive increase in the number of female schools during the last decade. Last year there were 193 schools attended by 11,691 girls These schools were maintained at a cost to the Provincial revenues of Ɍ16,967 and Ɍ50,781 defrayed from local rates or cesses, fees, endowments, Municipal grants, the revenues of Native States, and other sources.7 The sum spent by Government on primary education for Native females in this Presidency amounts only to half the sum spent in awarding grants to schools for Europeans and Eurasians.8 It is utterly inadequate to the wants of the large population of this Presidency. In the city of Bombay Government had not opened a single female school up to the year 1873. In that year an enlightened Parsi gentleman, who has recently given a permanent endowment of Ɍ50,000 for providing a suitable building for the Fort school belonging to the Parsi Girls’ School Association, having offered to pay half the expenses, Government were induced to open a female school in this city. In 1878 the Municipal Corporation having given an increased giant to be appropriated to female schools, four small schools have since been opened by Government. These schools are small, and, with one exception, are not situated in good houses, nor conducted by competent female teachers. It is necessary greatly to improve their status and management and the character of the instruction imparted therein. Government should, in my humble judgment, spend a much larger sum than the amount now appropriated to female schools. They should employ better-paid and competent female teachers and introduce improvements in the studies. Less time and attention should be devoted to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and more to domestic economy, house management, singing, knitting, needle-work, embroidery, cookery, and other arts adapted to females. They should also establish more vernacular female schools throughout the Presidency and in this great city, and open at least two good English schools for Native girls to meet the growing wants of the metropolis in regard to primary education. At present there are 18 flourishing vernacular female schools in this city, established and conducted by public-spirited benevolent Native associations attended by upwards of 2,600 girls with liberal endowments for scholarships. They will serve as feeders of the English schools, and of vernacular schools of the higher class. Government should also establish

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one or more evening schools for giving education of superior character and training female teachers employed in the female schools. Ques. 43.—Have you any remarks to make on the subject of mixed schools? Ans 43.—I am not aware of the existence of mixed schools in this province. I do not consider it advisable to establish such schools, to which the generality of the people are sure to object. Ques. 44.—What is the best method of providing teachers for girls? Ans. 44.—The best method of providing qualified female teachers for girls is to train them under a competent tutoress or superintendent in a female Normal school or college. In 1868 the Government of India sanctioned for five years a grant of Ɍ12,000 a year for the establishment of a female Normal school in the city of Bombay. Before giving sufficient time for a fair trial to this important experiment, in the success of which I took a great interest, the then Director of Public Instruction transferred the school from Bombay to Poona in 1872, so that for the last twelve years the capital of the Bombay Presidency has been deprived of the benefit of a school, which is urgently required to supply trained female teachers for 24 female schools existing in this city attended by more than 3,000 girls. With a view to increase the efficiency of the female Normal school, I would recommend that one or more properly trained schoolmistresses or lady superintendents be got out from England and employed to supervise the Normal school, and also to visit and superintend the Government and private female schools, and to regulate the studies and maintain discipline on the best model. Ques. 45.—Are the grants to girls’ schools larger in amount and given on less onerous terms than those to boys’ schools, and is the distinction sufficiently marked? Ans. 45.—The grants-in-aid to girls’ schools are larger in amount and given on less onerous terms than those to boys’ schools and rightly so. The distinction is sufficiently marked, because it is necessary to hold out sufficient encouragement to such institutions. Ques. 46.—In the promotion of female education, what share has already been taken by European ladies; and how far would it be possible to increase the interest which ladies might take in this cause? Ans. 46.—In the promotion of female education no share that I am aware of has been taken by European ladies in Bombay. This is much to be regretted. To supply this desideratum to some extent, I have in my answer to question 44 suggested the advisability of getting out from England duly qualified trained schoolmistresses. Ques. 47.—What do you regard as the chief defects, other than any to which you have already referred, that experience has brought to light in the educational system as it has been hitherto administered? What suggestions have you to make for the remedy of such defects? Ans. 47.—In addition to the defects already pointed by me, that experience has brought to light in the educational system as it has been hitherto administered, I would refer prominently to a great defect which it is necessary to remedy, viz, the neglect of education of the masses and the absence of much of an utilitarian and 173

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practical character. Commercial, moral, agricultural, and technical education is more necessary than a classical, philosophical, and mathematical education for the bulk of the people. Ques. 48.—Is any part of the expenditure incurred by the Government on high education in your province unnecessary? Ans. 48.—The only part of the expenditure incurred by the Government on high education that is unnecessary is the high cost of direction and inspection. This expense, amounting to more than Ɍ2,20,000 per annum, is susceptible of retrenchments It is not so high in Bengal and Madras. The Universities in these Presidencies are self-supporting, whilst our University costs the State Ɍ32,000 per annum. Economy might be practised with considerable advantage by reducing the salaries of several highly paid Principals and graded professors and by employing qualified Natives on reduced salaries in the colleges Large grants which have been made by Government towards the construction of ornamental or high edifices in Bombay are unnecessary, and are, moreover, in contravention of orders issued by superior authorities. Ques. 49.—Have Government institutions been set up in localities where places of instruction already existed, which might by grants-in-aid or other assistance adequately supply the educational wants of the people? Ans. 49.—I am not aware of Government institutions having been set up in localities where suitable places of instruction already existed, which might by grant-inaid or other assistance adequately supply the educational wants of the people. Ques. 50.—Is there any foundation for the statement that officers of the Educational Department take too exclusive an interest in higher education? Would beneficial results be obtained by introducing into the Department more men of practical training in the art of teaching and school management? Ans. 50.—I don’t think there is any foundation for the statement that officers of the Educational Department take too exclusive an interest in higher education. Beneficial results would certainly be obtained by introducing into the department more men and females of practical training in the art of teaching and school management. Ques. 51.—Is the system of pupil teachers or monitors in force in your province? If so, please state how it works? Ans. 51.—The system of pupil-teachers or monitors is not in force in this Presidency. I would certainly recommend a trial of the system under favourable auspices. Ques. 52.—Is there any tendency to raise primary into secondary schools unnecessarily or prematurely? Should measures be taken to check such a tendency? If so, what measures? Ans. 52.—I am not aware of any tendency to raise primary into secondary schools unnecessarily or prematurely. Ques. 53.—Should the rate of fees in any class of schools or colleges vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil?

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Ans. 53.—The rate of fees in any class of departmental schools or colleges should not vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil, which it would often be difficult to ascertain exactly. But I would recommend that Principals and head masters of colleges and schools should be invested with discretionary authority to admit free of charge students whose circumstances are such as to prevent their parents from paying the prescribed fees. Ques. 54.—Has the demand for high education in your province reached such a stage as to make the profession of teaching a profitable one? Have schools been opened by men of good position as a means of maintaining themselves? Ans. 54.—The demand for high education in this Presidency has not reached such a stage as to make the profession of teaching generally a profitable one. In the Presidency town and in some large cities schools have been opened by men of good position as a means of maintaining themselves. But such cases are exceptional. Ques. 55.—To what classes of institutions do you flunk that the system of assigning grants according to the results of periodical examinations should be applied? What do you regard as the chief conditions for making this system equitable and useful? Ans. 55.—To all classes of educational institutions the system of assigning grants according to the results of periodical examinations should, I think, be applied. The chief conditions for making this system equitable and useful would be strict, impartial, and vigilant inspection. Ques. 56.—To what classes of institutions do you think that the system of assigning grants in and of the salaries of certificated teachers can be best applied? Under what conditions do you regard this system as a good one? Ans. 56.—I think that the system of assigning grants in aid of the salaries by certificated teachers can be applied to all classes of institutions? Ques. 57.—To what proportion of the gross expense do you think that the grant-in-aid should amount, under ordinary circumstances, in the case of colleges and schools of all grades? Ans. 57.—The grants-in-aid should, I think, amount under ordinary circumstances, in the case of colleges to one-third, and schools of all grades to one-half of the gross expense. Ques. 58.—What do you consider to be the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught as a class by one instructor in the case of colleges and schools respectively? Ans. 58.—I consider that the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught as a class by one instructor in the case of colleges should be forty and in schools twenty-five to thirty. Ques. 59.—In your opinion should fees in colleges be paid by the term or by the month? Ans. 59.—In my opinion fees in colleges should be paid by the term, and not by the month?

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Ques. 60.—Does a strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools? Ans. 60.—A strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality does not require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools, but it requires the withdrawal of grants from Missionary schools in which religions education for converting the students to Christianity forms the chief object. Ques. 61.—Do you think that the institution of University professorships would have an important effect in improving the quality of high education? Ans. 61.—I do think that the institution of University professorships has an important effect in improving the quality of high education. Ques. 62.—Is it desirable that promotions from class to class should depend, at any stage of school education, on the results of public examinations extending over the entire province? In what cases if any, is it preferable that such promotions be left to the school authorities? Ans. 62.—It is generally not desirable that promotions from class to class should depend at any stage of school education on the results of public examinations extending over the entire province. In the generality of cases it is advisable that such promotions should be left to the school authorities. Ques. 63.—Are there any arrangements between the colleges and schools of your province to prevent boys who are expelled from one institution, or who leave it improperly, from being received into another? What are the arrangements which you would suggest? Ans. 63.—There are no arrangements that I am aware of between the colleges and schools of the Presidency to prevent boys who have been expelled from one institution, or who leave it improperly, from being received into another. It is difficult to suggest practical measures in this matter. Ques. 64.—In the event of the Government withdrawing from the direct management of higher institutions generally, do you think it desirable that it should retain under direct management one college in each province as a model to other colleges; and if so, under what limitations or conditions? Ans. 64.—As I do not contemplate the contingency, suggested in this question, of the Government withdrawing from the direct management of higher institutions generally, I need not consider the alternative proposal. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard? Ans. 65.—I do not think it is necessary that all the professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B.A. standard should be Europeans I would recommend a mixture of European and native professors. The Principal and professors of English Literature, Logic, and Moral Philosophy, might for the present be Europeans But considerations of justice and economy obviously require that competent Natives should be appointed Professors of Mathematic, Chemistry, Biology, History, and Political Economy, Sanskrit, and other oriental languages 176

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and other departments of knowledge Some years ago Mr. Dadabhai Naorojee, and latterly Mr. Kero Lakshman Chhatre filled the mathematical chair in the Elphinstore College and Deccan College with ability and credit, and Mr. Mahadev Govind Ranade was acting Professor of History and Moral Philosophy in the former college. Ques. 66.—Are European professors employed or likely to be employed in colleges under Native management? Ans. 66.—There have been instances of European professors having been employed in a large educational establishment under Native management in Bombay. Ques. 67.—Are the circumstances of any class of the population in your province (i e, the Muhammadans) such as to require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education? To what are these circumstances due, and how far have they been provided for? Ans. 67.—The circumstances of a particular class of the population in this Presidency (e.g, the Muhammadans) are such as to require exceptional treatment in the matter of education These circumstances are due to apathy and religious prejudices. In Bombay the Anjuman-i-Islam, which has been recently established, has adopted measures to provide for the education of Muhammadans. Ques. 68.—How far would Government be justified in withdrawing from any existing school or college, in places where any class of the population objects to attend the only alternative institution on the ground of its religions teaching? Ans. 68.—Government would not be justified in withdrawing from any existing school or college, in places where any class of the population objects to attend the only alternative institution on the ground of its primary object being religions instruction or proselytism. Ques. 69.—Can schools and colleges under native management compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management? Ans. 69.—Schools and colleges under Native management, if properly conducted, can compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management. Ques. 70.—Are the conditions on which grants-in-aid are given in your province more onerous and complicated than necessary? Ans. 70.—I have shown in my answer to question 19 that the conditions on which grants-in-aid are given in this Presidency as revised in 1876–77 are more onerous than necessary, and that they should be recast on a liberal scale.

Supplementary Question. Ques. 71.—As you contend that the amount now spent by the State is inadequate to the educational requirements of the people, and as you advocate a large increase of expenditure on education, from what source do you 177

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propose that Government should provide the necessary funds? Do you propose any retrenchments or the levy of a larger cess than the existing tax for education? Ans. 71.—I do not propose that the funds required for education in the Presidency should be provided by increase of taxation. The head of the Government publicly declared a few years ago that the load of taxation presses on the poorer classes of the people with “crushing severity.” The recent reduction of the salt tax does not affect the inhabitants of this Presidency. The removal of import duties has not given any appreciable relief to the needy classes. By making judicious retrenchments in the present heavy expenditure of several public departments, Government will be able to save large sums which might be appropriated, not only to the extension of education, but also to the relief of taxation. Public expenditure, which has of late been largely increased from time to tune, admits of considerable retrenchment in the different departments. 1. The Ecclesiastical Establishment is kept up by the State on too large a scale not only for the spiritual wants of the British Army, but also of the well-to-do Christian civil population. In this Presidency Government not only maintains a Bishop on Ɍ25,600 per annum and more than two dozen Chaplains on salaries ranging from Ɍ6,000 to Ɍ9,600 each, but gives allowances to Missionaries, Clergymen, and Priests, and defrays all the expenses attendant on divine worship in St. Thomas’s Cathedral—a proceeding which militates against the principle of religious neutrality. The President of this Commission, in his address recently delivered at a large meeting of the Anjuman-i-Punjab at Lahore, is reported to have made the following declaration— “The State cannot teach the Muhammadan religion at the cost of the Hindu tax-payers, any more than it can teach the Christian religion at the cost of the Muhammadan taxpayers.”

I submit that the time has arrived for the disestablishment of the State Church in India. 2. The cost of direction and inspection in the Educational Department, amounting annually to about 2¼ lakhs, is high, because it absorbs more than one-third of the amount spent on all Government and aided institutions exclusive of the University and general and professional colleges not inspected by the Department. The cost of several colleges is also high and admits of reduction. Recently large contributions have been made towards the construction of ornamental buildings for schools in Bombay, although such expenditure has been prohibited by superior authority. 3. I would also suggest retrenchment, in other departments, civil and military, of the administration. For details I refer the Commission to the evidence which I gave in 1873 before the Parliamentary Committee on East India Finance. 178

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Memorial of the Sástris of Ahmedabad. May the blessings of the Pandits of the City of Ahmedabad attend His Excellency Lord Ripon, who has acquired a name for statesmanship in the land of England, and who, as Governor General, like the sun that imparts bloom to the lotus, confers happiness on us, the people of India! May our best wishes attend Dr. Hunter, the President, and the members of the Education Commission, who are verved in courtesy and doing good to others! This is the prayer of the Sástris and Pandits residing in the City of Ahmedabad. That the Mogul Emperors, Peshvas, and the Gaekvads, who successively reigned over this land, gave encouragement to Sanskrit literature. By the patronage of those rulers, teachers in Sanskrit, secure in their means of comfortable livelihood, left aside all other occupation and imparted education, day and night, to their pupils. Thus, the knowledge of the Sástras had, at that time, attained full development. Such is not the case at present. It is true that the knowledge of Sanskrit, as a language, has come to be diffused among all classes of people. Yet the study of logic, Mimansa, and other systems of philosophy, has almost disappeared. The object of modern students of Sanskrit is to acquire a familiarity with the Sanskrit tongue, and not with the various sciences expounded in that language. It cannot be argued that a mere knowledge of the language would enable those desirous of mastering the sciences to attain their object, because oral interpretation traditionally conveyed from teacher to pupil is necessary to a proper understanding of the real meaning of the various sciences, and because Western scholars are not expected to be familiar with the traditional interpretation of them. For this very reason German professors have secured the services of some old pandits for the benefit of themselves and of their pupils. But, by reason of the smallness of the number of pandits thus employed, and because of the growing rarity of pandits on account of the closing of the schools for them, Hindu sciences and philosophy stand a chance of rapid disappearance. The only means calculated, in our opinion, to put a stop to such a contingency happening is to establish Sanskrit colleges, and to employ a greater number of the old race of pandits in the existing colleges and schools. We therefore fervently pray that your Honourable Commission will recommend steps like these to be taken by those responsible for the government of the country, in order to bring about a revival of Sanskrit learning in India. AHMEDABAD, The 6th November 1882. To—The HONOURABLE W. W. HUNTER, C.I.E., L.L.D., PRESIDENT, and the MEMBERS of the EDUCATION COMMISSION The Memorial of the Anjman-i-Islam of Bombay RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH IS FOLLOWS.—Your Memorialists beg, in the first place, to put on record the lively satisfaction they feel at the arrival of the President 179

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and Members of the Education Commission to the capital of Western India, and to express a conviction that while the labours of the Commission cannot fail to do an immense amount of good to the cause of general education in India, it is the Muhammadan community, and the interests of Muhammadan education in particular, that must be more largely benefited than any other community in consequence of the peculiar circumstances by which they are surrounded. 2. That education has made rapid progress in India during the last twenty years, that its benefits have been more or less shared by all communities with one single notable exception, are facts which must be patent to all, and to none more so than to the members of the Education Commission. Whether we look to the schools, the colleges, the liberal professions, or the Government services, the same fact stares us in the face, and we find that while the Hindus, Parsis, Christians, and all other communities have participated in the general intellectual, moral, and material progress of the country, that community which only a short time ago was ruling India from one end to the other, has not only not progressed, but has actually been thrown back, and has now reached a depth of ignorance, poverty, distress, and degradation which, unless speedily remedied, cannot fail to be a source of danger to the State. 3. To show the present deplorable state of the Muhammadan community of this Presidency in regard to high education, your Memorialists beg to invite your attention to the following startling statistics taken from the Report of the Director of Public Instruction for 1880–81:— The Deccan College has 175 students, but not a single Muhammadan. The Elphinstone College has 175 students, and only 5 Muhammadans. The Ahmedabad College has 24 students, but not a single Muhammadan. The St Xavier’s College has 71 students, and only 1 Muhammadan. The General Assembly’s Institution has 85 students, and no Muhammadan. 4. The following figures show that the same painful state of things exists in regard to special or scientific education amongst Muhammadans:— The Government Law School has 152 scholars, and only 3 Muhammadans. The Grant Medical College has 282 pupils, only 3 of whom are Muhammadans. The Poona Engineering College has 159 students, only 5 of whom are Muhammadans. 5. The figures given below show that Muhammadans, as a rule, have not received any benefit from the High Schools of this Presidency:— The Poona High School has 574 students, out of whom only 12 are Muhammadans. The Sholapur High School Has 110 students, out of whom only 2 are Muhammadans. The Rutnageri High School has 176 students, out of whom only 10 are Muhammadans. 180

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The Elphinstone High School has 795 students, out of whom only 17 are Muhammadans. The St. Xavier’s High School has 675 students, out of whom only 19 are Muhammadans. The records of the University show that while no less than 15,247 students belonging to other communities have passed the Matriculation Examination during the last twenty-three years (1859 to 1881), only 48 Muhammadans youths have passed that examination, during the same period! 6. The figures given below show the same painful state of things in regard to secondary education,— There are 6,735 pupils learning English in the city of Bombay, out of whom only 220 are Muhammadans. There are 9,586 in Central Division, out of whom only 307 are Muhammadans. There are 977 in North-East Division, out of whom only 39 are Muhammadans There are 4,459 in Northern Division, out of whom only 182 are Mahummadans. There are 2,801 in Southern Division, out of whom only 62 are Muhammadans. There are 19,965 in Sindh, out of whom only 795 are Muhammadans. 7. In regard to primary education the Muhammadans have not fared much better, inasmuch as out of a total of 275,000 pupils in the vernacular schools of the Presidency we find that only 33,568 are Muhammadans, while no less than 238,077 are Hindus. 8. Your Memorialists submit that it is unnecessary to cite any further figures or statistics to establish the painful fact that from a combination of causes and circumstances, for some of which at least the educational authorities are distinctly responsible, the Mussulman population of this Presidency has been sinking deeper and deeper into ignorance, poverty, and distress. Neither does it appear to be necessary to argue at length the incontrovertible proposition that this state of things ought not to be allowed to exist one day longer than possible. 9. As to the causes which have brought about the present unsatisfactory state of the Muhammadan society in India, your Memorialists beg to invite your attention to the views expressed by the Honourable B. Tyabjee in his evidence before the Commission. Those causes may shortly be recapitulated as follows:— 1. A feeling of pride for the glories of their past empire, and the consequent inability to reconcile themselves to the circumstances of the present. 2. Love and pride for the literature of India, Persia, and Arabia, to which they have been so long attached, and the consequent inability to appreciate the modern arts, sciences, and literature of Europe. 3. A vague feeling that European education is antagonistic to the traditions of Islam and leads to infidelity or atheism. 4. Failure or neglect on the part of the educational authorities to provide suitable schools for Muhammadan youths. 181

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5. Poverty, which prevents them from availing themselves of even the existing schools. 6. A feeling that the Government of the country takes no notice of their reduced position and does nothing to extricate them from it. 7. A feeling that English education in Government schools is of little practical value and is useless for the ordinary purposes of life. 10. It is obvious that some at least of the above specified causes are capable of being speedily removed by the Government, and your Memorialists, while endorsing generally the views expressed by the Honourable B. Tyabjee in his evidence, would invite your earnest attention to the remedial measures proposed by bun and which may be summarised as follows— 1. The establishment of primary, secondary, and even high schools for Mussulman boys in all the principal centres of Muhammadan population throughout the Presidency. 2. The adoption of the Hindustani language as the medium of instruction in all Muhammadans schools. 3. That instruction in Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic should be combined with instruction in the other branches of knowledge. 4. That Mussulman teachers and supervisors should, as far as possible, be employed to conduct and superintend the management of such schools. 5. That, whenever possible, a Committee of educated and independent Muhammadan gentlemen should be invited to inspect and to advise upon the constitution and management of Mussulman schools. 6. That the ideas, feelings, and sentiments, and even the prejudices, of Mussulmans must be carefully taken into account in the foundation and management of schools intended for Mussulman boys. 7. That a series of text-books—Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic—should be published and adopted in Mussulman schools, and that the attention of Oriental scholars should be especially invited to this important subject by the oiler of suitable rewards. 8. That in consideration of the extreme poverty of the community, poor Mussulman boys should be admitted entirely free. 11. The observations which your Memorialists have hitherto made apply exclusively to Muhammadan education, but they feel that they ought not to lose this opportunity of expressing their views in regard to the general educational system to be established in India, and which must influence the prosperity or otherwise of the Mussulman community no less than that of the other subjects of Her Majesty in India. 12. In the first place, your Memorialists beg to deprecate in the strongest manner possible any idea or suggestion that the present policy of the Government in regard to high education should in any degree be departed from. Your Memorialists are 182

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satisfied that any such departure would be fatal to the cause of education in India, and they earnestly hope that the present Viceroy, who of all others has the good of the people at heart, would not seriously entertain a policy which, so far as your Memorialists can judge, has been universally and unanimously condemned by all competent and disinterested witnesses, and which, if adopted, would at one blow cut off all means for the moral, material, and intellectual progress of the people. 13. In the next place, your Memorialists would invite your earnest attention to the question of establishing schools for agricultural and technical education, where the masses of the people could be taught scientific methods of agriculture and other practical arts, sciences, and industries as a means of obtaining their own livelihood, and at the same time forwarding the material and intellectual prosperity of the country. Your Memorialists are aware that this is a most difficult and complicated question, but at the same time they feel that the time has now come for the Government to make one supreme effort for the purpose of rescuing the people from the baneful results of their own apathy and indifference in the matter. The soil of the country is being gradually impoverished, and those ancient arts and manufactures which had flourished in India for centuries have now been practically extinguished in consequence of the modern inventions of Europe and America, with the manufacture and practical working of which the people of this country are totally unacquainted. 14. Under these circumstances your Memorialists submit that the Government would only be discharging half its duty should it remain content with establishing high schools and colleges without making any efforts to make the masses of the people acquainted with those improved methods of agriculture and those practical arts, sciences, and industries,—and the use, manufacture, and working of those inventions and mechanics,—which have so completely altered the face of Europe and America during the present century. 15. Another important subject to which your Memorialists would beg to direct your attention is the establishment of some schools at least of a more practical kind, where more of useful and less of ornamental instruction may be given to those who wish to adopt a mercantile or an agricultural or some other practical profession, and who do not wish to graduate at the University, or to follow any of the learned professions. Your Memorialists are of opinion that in a commercial and practical Presidency like Bombay education would be much more general and would be much more largely supported by the wealthy and mercantile classes if suitable schools specially designed for giving a practical education were opened. As it is, all the commercial classes, whether Hindu—as for instance the Bhattias, the Lohannaa, and the Banias,—or Mussulman—as the Memons, the Khojas, and the Borahs,—have steadily kept themselves aloof from all Government schools. 16. For the purpose of attracting these commercial and other practical classes, your Memorialists would recommend the following modifications in the usual curriculum, viz.,— (a) Algebra and Euclid, as well as minute details of general geography, history, and grammar, should be omitted. 183

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(b) Mental and practical arithmetic, native modes of writing fraction?, casting accounts, letter-writing, book-keeping, Indian weights and measures, and multiplication tables, should be more systematically taught. 17. While advocating these reforms in the system of national education for hoys, your Memorialists cannot but press upon the Commission the extreme importance of extending facilities for the education of girls also. Hitherto the educational authorities seem to have confined their attention to the education of boys only, but it is obvious that India can never hope to be a really well-educated and civilised country so long as one-half of its population remains in a state of absolute ignorance. To attack this evil at the root it is necessary to establish elementary schools for girls where reading and writing, a little arithmetic, sewing, knitting, &c., should be taught. 18. Another matter of great general importance to which your Memorialist would draw your attention is the necessity of making some provision for the physical development of the pupils in the various Government schools. With this object your Memorialists would recommend the establishment of play-grounds, gymnasia, &c, and would insist upon a certain portion of the time being devoted to play and exercise superintended by the teachers themselves. 19. Your Memorialists are, of course, aware that to modify, extend, and develope the educational system of India in its primary, secondary, and higher phases in the manner indicated above, and to open new agricultural, technical, and commercial schools, as well as to provide suitable facilities for the education of girls, would require larger funds than are at present at the disposal of Government. Considering, however, not only the importance, but the magnitude of the interests involved in the question—considering that the moral, material, and intellectual progress of the nation depends very largely on the efficiency of its educational system—considering that the happiness, prosperity, and even the peace and security of Her Majesty’s Indian subjects depend far more upon the development of the national resources than upon the perfection of the military system, your Memorialists cannot but earnestly hope that you will recommend and that the Government of Lord Ripon will adopt some means or other for the accomplishment of these high and noble aims. 20. More specially do your Memorialists entreat the Commission to examine into the state of Muhammadan education, to consider, and, if possible, to remove the causes which have hitherto checked all progress—moral, material, and intellectual—of the Mussulman community, and to recommend and insist upon the adoption of such remedial measures as may enable that community to make up for lost time, and to participate in the blessings of enlightenment, and moral and material prosperity, along with the other communities of India. 21. The expenditure necessary for this purpose may be great, possibly greater in proportion than the expenditure on the education of the other communities of India; but your Memorialists do not hesitate to assert that no amount of expenditure can be too great, that no amount of expenditure can be justly grudged by the 184

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other communities when the object of the expenditure is to save 40 millions of Her Majesty’s subjects from sinking lower and lower in the scale of civilisation and becoming a standing menace to the security of the Empire. 22. Your Memorialists speak from a full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances relating to the present distressing state of Muhammadan society all over India, when they state it to be their firm conviction that it is absolutely necessary, not merely for the sake of the Mussulmans themselves, but for the peace, security, and welfare of the whole Indian community, that a strong effort should be made to rescue the Muhammadana from their present dangerous state of ignorance and consequent distress. And your Memorialists, as in duty bound, shall ever pray.

Notes 1. Vide Report of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay for 1857–58, pp 11, 12. 2. Vide Report of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, for the year 1857–58, pp 24, 25, 32 to 36 3. Vide Report of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay for the year [Illegible Text] [Illegible Text], p. [Illegible Text] 4. Vide Printed Reports of the Poona Native Institution for 1880 and 1881. 5. Vide Report of the Director of Public Instruction for 1880–81, pp. 135–137. 6. Vide Report of Public Instruction, Bombay, for 1870–71, p 108 7. Vide Report of Public Instruction, Appendix O, pp 54–55. 8. The greater portion of the cost of the primary male and female schools opened in this city by Government is defrayed out of the Municipal grant and school fees.

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7 JOTIBA PHULE’S STATEMENT TO THE EDUCATION COMMISSION, EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE BOMBAY PROVINCIAL COMMITTEE AND MEMORIALS ADDRESSED TO THE EDUCATION COMMISSION, VOL. II (CALCUTTA: SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT PRINTING, 1881), 140–145

A Statement for the information of the Education Commission. My experience in educational matters is principally confined to Poona and the surrounding villages. About 25 years ago, the missionaries had established a female school in Poona, but no indigenous schools for girls existed at the time. I, therefore, was induced, about the year 1854, to establish such a school, and in which I and my wife worked together for many years. After some time I placed this school under the management of a committee of educated natives. Under their auspices two more schools were opened in different parts of the town. A year after the institution of the female schools I also established an indigenous mixed school for the lower classes, especially the Mahars and Mangs. Two more schools for these classes were subsequently added. Sir Erskine Perry, the President of the late Educational Board, and Mr. Lumsdain, the then Secretary to Government, visited the female schools and were much pleased with the movement set on foot, and presented me with a pair of shawls. I continued to work in them for nearly 9 or 10 years, but, owing to circumstances which it is needless here to detail, I seceded from the work. These female schools still exist, having been made over by the committee to the Educational Department; the principal one being the female normal school now under the management of Mrs. Mitchell. A school for the lower classes, Mahars and Mangs, also exists at the present day, but not in a satisfactory condition. I have also been a teacher for some years in a mission female boarding school. My principal experience was gained in connection with these schools I devoted some attention also to the primary education available in this Presidency, and have had some opportunities 186

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of forming an opinion as to the system and personnel employed in the lower schools of the Educational Department. I wrote some years ago a Marathi pamphlet exposing the religious practices of the Brahmins, and, incidentally among other matters, adverted therein to the present system of education, which, by providing ampler funds for higher education, tended to educate Brahmins and the higher classes only, and to leave the masses wallowing in ignorance and poverty. I summarised the views expressed in the book in an English preface attached thereto, portions of which I reproduce here so far as they relate to the present enquiry— “Perhaps a part of the blame in bringing matters to this crisis may be justly laid to the credit of the Government. Whatever may have been their motives in providing ampler funds, and greater facilities for higher education and neglecting that of the masses, it will be acknowledged by all that in justice to the latter this is not as it should be. It is an admitted fact that the greater portion of the revenues of the Indian Empire are derived from the ryots’ labour—from the sweat of his brow. The higher and richer classes contribute little or nothing to the State’s exchequer. A well-informed English writer states that our income is derived, not from surplus profits, but from capital, not from luxuries, but from the poorest necessaries. It is the product of sin and tears. “That Government should expend profusely a large portion of revenue thus raised on the education of the higher classes, for it is these only who take advantage of it, is anything but just or equitable. Their object in patronising this virtual high-class education appears to be to prepare scholars who, it is thought, would in time vend learning without money and without price. If we can inspire, say they, the love of knowledge in the minds of the superior classes, the result will be a higher standard of morals in the cases of the individuals, a large amount of affection for the British Government, and an unconquerable desire to spread among their own countrymen the intellectual blessings which they have received. “Regarding these objects of Government the writer above alluded to states that we have never heard of philosophy more benevolent and more Utopian. It is proposed by men who witness the wondrous changes brought about in the Western world, purely by the agency of popular knowledge, to redress the defects of the two hundred millions of India, by giving superior education to the superior classes and to them only. We ask the friends of Indian Universities to favour us with a single example of the truth of their theory from the instances which have already fallen within the scope of their experience. They have educated many children of wealthy men, and have been the means of advancing very materially the wordly prospects of some of their pupils, but what contribution have these made to the great work of regenerating their fellow-men? How have they begun to act upon the masses? Have any of them formed classes at their own homes, or elsewhere, for the instruction of their less fortunate or less wise countrymen? Or have they kept their knowledge to themselves, as a personal gift, not to be soiled by contact with the ignorant vulgar? Have they in any way shown themselves anxious to advance the general interests and repay philanthropy with patriotism? Upon what grounds is it asserted that the best way to advance the moral and intellectual welfare of the people is to raise the standard of instruction among the higher classes? A glorious argument this for aristocracy, were it only tenable. To show the growth of the national happiness, it would only be necessary to refer to the number of pupils at the colleges and the lists of academic degrees. Each wrangler would be accounted a national benefactor; and the existence

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of deans and proctors would be associated, like the game-laws and the ten-pound franchise, with the best interests of the Constitution. “One of the most glaring tendencies of the Government system of high-class education has been the virtual monopoly of all the higher offices under them by Brahmins. If the welfare of the ryot is at heart, if it is the duty of Government to check a host of abuses, it behoves them to narrow this monopoly day by day so as to allow a sprinkling of the other castes to get into the public service. Perhaps some might be inclined to say that it is not feasible in the present state of education. Our only reply is that if Government look a little less after higher education and more towards the education of the masses, the former being able to take care of itself, there would be no difficulty in training up a body of men every way qualified, and perhaps far better in morals and manners. “My object in writing the present volume is not only to tell my Sudra brethren how they have been duped by the Brahmins, but also to open the eyes of Government to that pernicious system of high-class education which has hitherto been so persistently followed, and which statesmen like Sir George Campbell, the present Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, with broad and universal sympathies, are finding to be highly mischievous and pernicious to the interests of Government. I sincerely hope that Government will ere long see the error of their ways, trust less to writers or men who look through high-class spectacles, and take the glory into their own hands of emancipating my Sudra brethren from the trammels of bondage which the Brahmins have woven round them like the coils of a serpent. It is no less the duty of such of my Sudra brethren as have received any education, to place before Government the true state of their fellow-men and endeavour to the best of their power to emancipate themselves from Brahmin thraldom. Let there be schools for the Sudras in every village; but away with all Brahmin schoolmasters? The Sudras are the life and sinews of the country, and it is to them alone, and not to the Brahmins, that the Government must ever look to tide them over their difficulties, financial as well as political. If the hearts and minds of the Sudras are made happy and contented, the British Government need have no fear for their loyalty in the future. “JOTEERAO PHOOLEY.”

PRIMARY EDUCATION. There is little doubt that primary education among the masses in this Presidency has been very much neglected. Although the number of primary schools now in existence is greater than those existing a few years ago, yet they are not commensurate to the requirements of the community. Government collect a special cess for educational purposes, and it is to be regretted that this fund is not spent for the purposes for which it is collected. Nearly nine-tenths of the villages in this Presidency, or nearly 10 lakhs of children, it is said, are without any provision whatever for primary instruction. A good deal of their poverty, their want of self-reliance, their entire dependence upon the learned and intelligent classes, is attributable to this deplorable state of education among the peasantry. 188

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Even in towns the Brahmins, the Purbhoos, the hereditary classes, who generally live by the occupation of pen, and the trading classes seek primary instruction. The cultivating and the other classes, as a rule, do not generally avail themselves of the same. A few of the latter class are found in primary and secondary schools, but owing to their poverty and other causes they do not continue long at school. As there are no special inducements for these to continue at school, they naturally leave off as soon as they find any menial or other occupation. In villages also most of the cultivating classes hold aloof, owing to extreme poverty, and also because they require their children to tend cattle and look after their fields. Besides an increase in the number of schools, special inducements in the shape of scholarships and half-yearly or annual prizes, to encourage them to send their children to school and thus create in them a taste for learning, is most essential. I think primary education of the masses should be made compulsory up to a certain age, say at least 12 years. Muhammadans also hold aloof from these schools, as they somehow evince no liking for Marathi or English. There are a few Muhammadan primary schools where their own language is taught. The Mahars, Mangs, and other lower classes are practically excluded from all schools owing to caste prejudices, as they are not allowed to sit by the children of higher castes. Consequently special schools for these have been opened by Government. But these exist only in large towns. In the whole of Poona and for a population exceeding over 5,000 people there is only one school, and in which the attendance is under 30 boys. This state of matters is not at all creditable to the educational authorities. Under the promise of the Queen’s Proclamation I beg to urge that Mahars, Mangs, and other lower classes, where their number is large enough, should have separate schools for them, as they are not allowed to attend the other schools owing to caste prejudices. In the present state of education, payment by results is not at all suitable for the promotion of education amongst a poor and ignorant people, as no taste has yet been created among them for education. I do not think any teacher would undertake to open schools on his own account among these people, as he would not be able to make a living by it. Government schools and special inducements as noted above are essential until such a taste is created among them. With regard to the few Government primary schools that exist in the Presidency, I beg to observe that the primary education imparted in them is not at all placed on a satisfactory or sound basis. The system is imperfect in so far as it does not prove practical and useful in the future career of the pupils. The system is capable of being developed up to the requirement of the community, if improvements that will result in its future usefulness be effected in it. Both the teaching machinery employed and the course of instruction now followed require a thorough remodelling (a) The teachers now employed in the primary schools are almost all Brahmins; a few of them are from the normal training college, the rest being all untrained men. Their salaries are very low, seldom exceeding Rs. 10, 189

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and their attainments also very meagre. But as a rule they are all unpractical men, and the boys who learn under them generally imbibe inactive habits and try to obtain service, to the avoidance of their hereditary or other hardy or independent professions. I think teachers for primary schools should be trained, as far as possible, out of the cultivating classes, who will be able to mix freely with them and understand their wants and wishes much better than a Brahmin teacher, who generally holds himself aloof under religious prejudices. These would, moreover, exercise a more beneficial influence over the masses than teachers of other classes, and who will not feel ashamed to hold the handle of a plough or the carpenter’s adze when required, and who will be able to mix themselves readily with the lower orders of society. The course of training for them ought to include, besides the ordinary subjects, an elementary knowledge of agriculture and sanitation. The untrained teachers should, except when thoroughly efficient, be replaced by efficient trained teachers. To secure a better class of teachers and to improve their position, better salaries should be given. Their salaries should not be less than Rs. 12 and in larger villages should be at least Rs. 15 or 20. Associating them in the village polity as auditors of village accounts or registrars of deeds, or village postmasters or stamp vendors, would improve their status, and thus exert a beneficial influence over the people among whom they live. The schoolmasters of village schools who pass a large number of boys should also get some special allowance other than their pay, as an encouragement to them. (b) The course of instruction should consist of reading, writing Modi and Balbodh and accounts, and a rudimentary knowledge of general history, general geography, and grammar, also an elementary knowledge of agriculture and a few simple lessons on moral duties and sanitation. The studies in the village schools might be fewer than those in larger villages and towns, but not the less practical. In connection with lessons in agriculture, a small model farm, where practical instruction to the pupils can be given, would be a decided advantage, and, if really efficiently managed, would be productive of the greatest good to the country. The text-books in use both in the primary and Anglo-vernacular schools require revision and recasting, inasmuch as they are not practical or progressive in their scope. Lessons on technical education and morality, sanitation and agriculture, and some useful arts, should be interspersed among them in progressive series. The fees in the primary schools should be as 1 to 2 from the children of cess-payers and non-cess-payers. (c) The supervising agency over these primary schools is also very defective and insufficient. The Deputy Inspector’s visit once a year can hardly be of any appreciable benefit. All these schools ought at least to be inspected quarterly if not oftener. I would also suggest the 190

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advisability of visiting these schools at other times and without any intimation being given. No reliance can be placed on the district or village officers, owing to the multifarious duties devolving on them, as they seldom find time to visit them, and when they do, their examination is necessarily very superficial and imperfect. European Inspectors’ supervision is also occasionally very desirable, as it will tend to exercise a very efficient control over the teachers generally. (d ) The number of primary schools should be increased— (1) By utilising such of the indigenous schools as shall be or are conducted by trained and certificated teachers, by giving them liberal grants-in-aid. (2) By making over one half of the local cess fund for primary education alone. (3) By compelling, under a statutory enactment, municipalities to maintain all the primary schools within their respective limits. (4) By an adequate grant from the provincial or imperial funds. Prizes and scholarships to pupils, and capitation or other allowance to the teachers, as an encouragement, will tend to render these schools more efficient. The municipalities in large towns should be asked to contribute whole share of the expenses incurred on primary schools within the municipal areas. But in no case ought the management of the same to be entirely made over to them. They should be under the supervision of the Educational Department. The municipalities should also give grants-in-aid to such secondary and private English schools as shall be conducted according to the rules of the Educational Department, where their funds permit,—such grants-in-aid being regulated by the number of boys passed every year These contributions from municipal funds may be made compulsory by statutory enactment. The administration of the funds for primary education should ordinarily be in the hands of the Director of Public Instruction. But if educated and intelligent men are appointed on the local or district committees, these funds may be safely entrusted to them, under the guidance of the Collector, or the Director of Public Instruction. At present the local boards consist of ignorant and uneducated men, such as patels, enamdars, surdars, &c., who would not be capable of exercising any intelligent control over the funds.

INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS. Indigenous schools exist a good deal in cities, towns, and some large villages, especially where there is a Brahmin population. From the latest reports of Public Instruction in this Presidency, it is found that there are 1,049 indigenous schools with about 27,694 pupils in them. They are conducted on the old village system. The boys are generally taught the multiplication table by heart, a little Modi 191

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writing and reading, and to recite a few religious pieces. The teachers as a rule are not capable of effecting any improvements, as they are not initiated in the art of teaching. The fees charged in these schools range from 2 to 8 annas. The teachers generally come from the dregs of Brahminical society. Their qualifications hardly go beyond reading and writing Marathi very indifferently, and casting accounts up to the rule of three or so. They set up as teachers as the last resource of getting a livelihood. Their failure or unfitness in other callings of life obliges them to open schools. No arrangements exist in the country to train up teachers for indigenous schools. The indigenous schools could not be turned to any good account, unless the present teachers are replaced by men from the training colleges and by those who pass the 6th standard in the vernaculars. The present teachers will willingly accept State aid, but money thus spent will be thrown away. I do not know any instance in which a grant-in-aid is paid to such a school. If it is being paid anywhere, it must be in very rare cases. In my opinion no grants-in-aid should be paid to such schools unless the master is a certificated one. But if certificated or competent teachers be found, grants-in-aid should be given and will be productive of great good. HIGHER EDUCATION. The cry over the whole country has been for some time past that Government have amply provided for higher education, whereas that of the masses has been neglected. To some extent this cry is justified, although the classes directly benefited by the higher education may not readily admit it. But for all this no wellwisher of his country would desire that Government should at the present time withdraw its aid from higher education. All that they would wish is, that as one class of the body politic has been neglected, its advancement should form as anxious a concern as that of the other. Education in India is still in its infancy. Any withdrawal of State aid from higher education cannot but be injurious to the spread of education generally. A taste for education among the higher and wealthy classes, such as the Brahmins and Purbhoos, especially those classes who live by the pen, has been created, and a gradual withdrawal of State aid may be possible so far as these classes are concerned; but in the middle and lower classes, among whom higher education has made no perceptible progress, such a withdrawal would be a great hardship. In the event of such withdrawal, boys will be obliged to have recourse to inefficient and sectarian schools, much against their wish, and the cause of education cannot but suffer. Nor could any part of such education be entrusted to private agency. For a long time to come the entire educational machinery, both ministerial and executive, must be in the hands of Government. Both the higher and primary education require all the fostering care and attention which Government can bestow on it. The withdrawal of Government from schools or colleges would not only tend to check the spread of education, but would seriously endanger that spirit of neutrality which has all along been the aim of Government to foster, owing to the 192

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different nationalities and religious creeds prevalent in India. This withdrawal may, to a certain extent, create a spirit of self-reliance for local purposes in the higher and wealthy classes, but the cause of education would be so far injured that the spirit of self-reliance would take years to remedy that evil. Educated men of ability, who do not succeed in getting into public service, may be induced to open schools for higher education on being assured of liberal grants-in-aid. But no one would be ready to do so on his own account as a means of gaining a livelihood, and it is doubtful whether such private efforts could be permanent or stable, nor would they succeed half so well in their results. Private schools, such as those of Mr. Vishnu Shastree Chiploonker and Mr. Bhavey, exist in Poona, and with adequate grants-in-aid may be rendered very efficient, but they can never supersede the necessity of the high school. The missionary schools, although some of them are very efficiently conducted, do not succeed half so well in their results, nor do they attract half the number of students which the high schools attract. The superiority of Government schools is mainly owing to the richly paid staff of teachers and professors which it is not possible for a private school to maintain. The character of instructions given in the Government higher schools is not at all practical, or such as is required for the necessities of ordinary life. It is only good to turn out so many clerks and schoolmasters. The Matriculation examination unduly engrosses the attention of the teachers and pupils, and the course of studies prescribed has no practical element in it, so as to fit the pupil for his future career in independent life. Although the number of students presenting for the Entrance examination is not at all large when the diffusion of knowledge in the country is taken into consideration, it looks large when the requirements of Government service are concerned. Were the education universal and within easy reach of all, the number would have been larger still, and it should be so, and I hope it will be so hereafter. The higher education should be soarranged as to be within easy reach of all, and the books on the subjects for the Matriculation examination should be published in the Government Gazette, as is done in Madras and Bengal. Such a course will encourage private studies and secure larger diffusion of knowledge in the country. It is a boon to the people that the Bombay University recognises private studies in the case of those presenting for the entrance examination. I hope the University authorities will be pleased to extend the same boon to higher examinations. If private studies were recognised by the University in granting the degrees of B.A., M.A., &c., many young men will devote their time to private studies. Their doing so will still further tend to the diffusion of knowledge. It is found in many instances quite impossible to prosecute studies at the colleges for various reasons. If private studies be recognised by the University, much good will be effected to the country at large, and a good deal of the drain on the public purse on account of higher education will be lessened. The system of Government scholarships at present followed in Government schools is also defective, inasmuch as it gives undue encouragement to those classes only who have already acquired a taste for education to the detriment of 193

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the other classes. The system might be so arranged that some of these scholarships should be awarded to such classes amongst whom education has made no progress. The system of awarding them by competition, although abstractedly equitable, does not tend to the spread of education among the other classes. With regard to the question as to educated natives finding remunerative employments, it will be remembered that the educated natives who mostly belong to the Brahmincal and other higher classes are mostly fond of service. But as the public service can afford no field for all the educated natives who come out from schools and colleges, and moreover the course of training they receive being not of a technical or practical nature, they find great difficulty in betaking themselves to other manual or remunerative employments. Hence the cry that the market is overstocked with educated natives who do not find any remunerative employment. It may, to a certain extent, be true that some of the professions are overstocked, but this does not show that there is no other remunerative employment to which they can betake themselves. The present number of educated men is very small in relation to the country at large, and we trust that the day may not be far distant when we shall have the present number multiplied a hundred-fold, and all be taking themselves to useful and remunerative occupations and not be looking after service. In conclusion, I beg to request the Education Commission to be kind enough to sanction measures for the spread of female primary education on a more liberal scale. POONA; 19th October 1882

JOTEERAO GOVINDRAO PHOOLEY, Merchant and Cultivator, and Municipal Commissioner, Peth Joona Gunja. Poona.

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Evidence of THE HON. SYED AHMED KHAN, BAHADUR, C.S.I. [The following questions are special and not contained in the Standard List]

Ques. 1.—Are you acquainted with the state of private and public instruction in Upper India and more especially in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh? Ans. 1.—Yes, I have such an acquaintance. But I am better acquainted with the state of education in the North Western Provinces than with that in Oudh or the Panjab. Ques. 2.—Describe the means by which you have obtained that acquaintance. Have you ever had any connection with the Educational Department? Ans. 2.—I have long taken an interest in the diffusion of education and enlightenment in my country, and have, to the extent of my ability, always invited the attention of my Hindu and Muhammadan fellow countrymen to that subject. In 1859 I succeeded in bringing about the establishment of a school for elementary education at Moradabad by subscriptions collected from the people. It flourished for some time, and was finally converted into a Tahsili school. In 1863 my endeavours in seeing 195

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an English school established in a similar manner at Ghazipur became successful. This school still exists under the name of Victoria School and has now attained the status of a high school. In 1864 I took part in the establishment of a scientific society, which still exists, and a magnificent building was erected for that purpose at Aligarh by raising subscriptions from the gentry of the neighbouring districts, the object of this society being to encourage and publish vernacular translations of works on European sciences. A bilingual (English-Urdu) paper, known by the name of “The Aligarh Institute Gazette,” was also started in connection with this society, and is still in existence. I have, moreover, convened meetings from time to time to review the Government educational system, and to examine its merits and defects. In 1866 I began a movement for the establishment of Educational committees in each district, which was also attended with success. I have myself acted for some years as a member of the Educational committee at Aligarh, which afforded me an opportunity of acquainting myself with the working of tahsili and halkabandi schools. Early in 1869 I undertook a journey to Europe primarily with the object of obtaining an insight into the English system of education. During my stay in England I published a pamphlet known by the name of “Strictures upon the Present Educational System in India,” and then, on my return to India in 1871, I formed a distinct “committee for the better diffusion and advancement of Learning among Muhammadans of India.” The endeavours of this committee were directed to investigating the means by which the Muhammadans may be reconciled to the study of Western sciences and arts. These endeavours resulted in the foundation, in 1875, of the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh, which has attained a wonderful progress. The college has since been affiliated to the Calcutta University up to the B.A. standard, and has some three hundred students on its rolls. I am an Honorary Secretary to the Standing Committee, whose business is to further the objects of the college, and to have the control of its funds. I am also an Honorary Secretary to two other committees of the same college—the “Managing Committee” and the “Committee of the Directors of Instruction in the various Languages and Secular Learning.” These are the means by which I have obtained an acquaintance with educational affairs. Ques. 3.—With reference to high and primary indigenous schools will you please describe what kind of schools they are, and how they are established? Ans. 3.—In the North Western Provinces and Oudh and the Panjab the high and primary indigenous schools were, and are still, found to be of four classes, as specified below— (1) Private Schools.—This class consists of those schools which are kept by private individuals at their own houses when a person engages a teacher primarily for the instruction of his own children, and allots a separate place for the purpose. But it not unfrequently happens that the children of his relatives and of his neighbours are also admitted to it each paying a trifling fee to the teacher, and thus a small school is established. Such school lasts as long as the teacher, or any successor of that teacher, continues in office. (2) Self supporting schools.—These schools come into existence in the following manner.—A teacher of some reputation, and one who enjoys the confidence 196

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of the people, takes the house in a quarter of a city or town, fixes his residence there, and opens a school for the tuition of boys. He lives entirely on the fees paid by the boys, and the school continues as long as the income derived from the fees suffices for the maintenance of the teacher. (3) Schools of private individuals, who devote themselves in offering gratuitous instruction to people simply for public benefit. The widespread fame of such persons generally attracts a large number of pupils from distant parts of the country, who fix their residence in the same town or city in which the teacher resides, and study the various branches of learning. I have myself seen the number of such students (whose proficiency may be classed with the standard of our higher college classes) rising to 30 and even to 40 in some places. (4) Schools established by private funds or charitable endowments.—In this class of schools a number of teachers is entertained, and students are not only gratuitously taught, but some provision is occasionally made for their maintenance also. The Arabic schools which exist in Jaunpur, Deoband, Saharanpur, and in the grand mosque at Aligarh fall in this category, and, if I remember rightly, the Maharaja of Cashmere had, a few years ago projected a scheme for the establishment of a similar Sanskrit school at Benares. Ques. 4.—What do you think to be the probable number of such schools in the North-Western Provinces? Ans. 4.—It appears from official papers that the number of indigenous schools in 1870–71 was 4,665, imparting an instruction to 54,575 boys. But I feel persuaded that this latter number is considerably below the actual number, for I remember that at the time when enquiries as to the number of indigenous schools and of the students reading in them were being conducted, a great misconception had arisen in the minds of the people regarding the object of this proceeding. Some of them used to detain their children from going to school, while teachers were invariably in the habit of giving less numbers than what they actually were. The number of the schools, too, was not correctly ascertained, and I have no doubt but that a large number of the schools of Class (I) had not come within the enquiries. It has been enjoined in the rules for the preparation of the annual statistical returns promulgated in 1879 that “no account should be taken in statistical returns of schools not under regular inspection.” As the indigenous schools have all been of this class, they have been entirely excluded from the enquiries of the Educational Department. Consequently we have no means by which the existing number of these schools and of the students reading in them may be known. But as Native of the country, I have reasons to believe that the number of these schools has now considerably decreased, which is indeed much to be regretted. Ques. 5.—What languages and what subjects are taught in them? Ans. 5.—The schools comprised in classes (I) and (II) afforded instruction in Persian literature to almost all the Muhammadans and Hindus of respectable position. The schools kept by Hindus did not differ from the Muhammadan ones in point of subject or instruction. Persian was, and is, still taught in them. Hindi was read only by those classes of people who held a lower rank in society, and 197

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who were engaged in some petty trade, as is still the case in the North-Western Provinces. In Persian schools much attention was paid to Persian literature and an education which, in my opinion, was much more efficient and advanced than the present standard of vernacular middle class, was imparted, and as the subjects were explained and discussed in Urdu, which is the vernacular of those provinces, and the translation of Persian texts was also made into that language, these schools were indirectly a means of improving the students’ proficiency in the Urdu language side by side with the Persian. Methods of composition and style were also taught to the students by giving them subjects to write upon, by which their acquirements were made substantially and practically useful to them. Elementary books, containing moral lessons in prose and poetry and written by authors of established reputation, were taught to beginners. A few rules of arithmetic, which are of essential importance to men in their daily life were sometimes included in the study. In Hindi schools no great attention was paid to Hindi literature. Their endeavour was confined to the acquisition of the degree of proficiency which might enable the students to put in writing, in Nagri character, the words just as they fall from the mouth. The mode of writing letters, &c., was also taught in them. These schools paid a far greater amount of care to the tuition of arithmetic than the Persian ones. This, however, was not done in a regular way by setting fixed lessons from a book, but by means of certain arithmetical tables and various practical rules and formulæ known by the name of “Gur,” which were all learnt by heart by the students, with the object of enabling themselves to settle mercantile and other daily-life accounts verbally, and without the help of pen and paper. European critics have viewed this mode of teaching with absolute contempt. No doubt, if this mode of teaching was intended to make the learner an adept in higher portions of arithmetic, their structures were just and right. But, considering that it only meant to qualify persons for petty commercial dealings, I do not think any other mode of instruction would better serve that purpose. We cannot but admit that the son of a petty shop keeper will tell the amount of interest due for a certain period on a certain sum of money, and the price at various rates of various quantities of the articles he buys or sells,—which to a student of a Government school who has received a regular instruction would take some time to work out his slate and pencil,—with wonderful quickness and without the slightest error. In this matter I fully concur in the remarks made by the Government of India in the 14th paragraph of the Resolution. The institutions that fall under classes (III) and (IV) impart instruction in Arabic and Sanskrit to a most advanced standard, and teach the highest branches of literature and philosophy, a detailed account of which does not appear necessary here. Ques. 6.—What are the races and social condition of the pupils who receive instruction in those schools, and what benefit do those schools, in your opinion, confer upon the country? 198

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Ans. 6.—The first two classes of the schools have pre-eminently afforded great benefit to high and middle classes of the people, as well as to the trading classes. The country, too, owes a great deal to these schools. Almost the whole number of those men who can lay a claim to learning in the North-Western Provinces, the Panjáb, and Behár, which, however, has a greater identity with the North-Western Provinces than with any other province, owes its education to these very schools, and I have no hesitation in saying that most of those men of approved abilities, both Hindu and Muhammadan, who form the amlas of judicial courts in those provinces, have been the offsprings of these alma maters. The third and fourth classes of the institutions have mainly contributed to the preservation and maintenance of oriental literature and science in this country. It is these institutions which have given birth to men so illustrious in oriental learning. Even at the present time those who have acquired any degree of fame for proficiency in oriental science or literature will be found to owe their celebrity to these very schools. As far as my own attainments extend, although they are very limited and quite insignificant in comparison with those of most others, I confess I have received no other sort of education than that imparted by the first and third classes of these institutions. Qeus. 7.—To what extent have they been utilised as a part of the educational system, and in what manner can others be similarly utilised, by means of regular monthly grants, or by the system of payment by results, or in any other way? Ans. 7.—As far as I can judge, I think the first two classes of the schools in the North Western Provinces which could most appropriately be utilised as a part of the educational system have not received a due consideration. I would even go to the length of thinking that the educational officers of those provinces have viewed these schools with jealousy. Officers connected with primary education considered it a great achievement to establish a new Government school, with a suitable number of boys, while the cessation of an indigenous school, which ought to be a matter of regret to them, was invariably regarded as a triumph. If I remember rightly, an educational officer had, in one of his annual reports, exultingly declared, in connection with the progress of the Government primary school system, that so many indigenous schools1 had ceased to exist that year. Such unfortunate circumstances have been the main cause of the decline of indigenous schools in the North-Western Provinces, and I know no school of the first or second class which may have been made a part of the Government educational system in those provinces. In some districts, however, teachers of the indigenous schools were transferred to the newly established Government schools, which only resulted in the ruin of the former. The number of unaided elementary schools in the NorthWestern Provinces is found to be 212. But they are not of the ancient indigenous type, but have been founded on the Government primary school system, and a certain amount of grant is allowed by Government in aid of them. To encourage indigenous system of schools and to improve the existing schools by making them a part of the educational system is undoubtedly calculated to benefit the country, and to further the objects of primary and vernacular middle education. I have no 199

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doubt that the indigenous schools of classes I and II can easily be utilised as a part of the educational system in the following manner, whether by means of grant in aid or of payment-by-results:— 1st.—The schools may be allowed the freedom of retaining their own languages, subjects, and text-books. 2ndly.—They may be requested to add a little of arithmetic, mensuration, history, and geography to their existing subjects of study, and to adopt, as text-books for these additional subjects, any books they choose out of the numerous works now procurable. 3rdly.—they may be induced to submit to their inspection by Deputy Inspectors of the Educational Department, and to the examination of students in these additional subjects, from time to time. 4thly.—The teachers may be required to submit short monthly returns showing the number of students and other necessary particulars. In this way the schools of classes I and II may easily be assimilated with the Government educational system. It may, at first sight, appear a gratuitous assumption to suppose that the teachers of such schools will have no difficulty in teaching these additional subjects. But, in my opinion, the subjects recommended are not so advanced as to be inaccessible to men of that standard of ability which the teachers of indigenous schools generally possess. No attempt should be made to displace any of these teachers, as the existence and prosperity of these schools entirely depend upon their personal influence and character. The schools of classes III and IV can by no means be so utilised, nor is there any necessity for that inasmuch as they impart education to the highest standard. The Deputy Inspectors should, however, enquire of their own accord into their state as much as they can, and then it will be advisable to enter the information thus gathered into the annual reports, for these institutions are the means of diffusing high oriental education in this country. Ques. 8.—With reference to vernacular schools for primary education recognised by Government, do you consider the existing number of Government aided and unaided schools in the North-Western Provinces sufficient for the purpose for which they have been established? Ans. 8.—It appears from official papers that the number of Government schools in 1881 in the North Western Provinces was 4,332, that of aided schools 212, and that of unaided schools 26, total 4,570. As the area of the North Western Provinces is 83,785 square miles, it gives an average of a little more than 18 square miles for each school, which places them at a distance of 4¼ miles from one another at the average rate. If indigenous schools, which still form a considerable number, be also taken into account, the average length of the intervening distances between the schools will be still more reduced. Now, considering the character of the country as regards population and the distances that lie between scattered towns and villages, I do not think the present number of schools inadequate. It does not require extension, except, perhaps, in some special cases. On the other hand, the existing institutions are, in my opinion, capable of affording instruction to a much 200

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greater number of pupils. Every available means should, therefore, be adopted for improving their efficiency and for making them more useful and popular. Ques. 9.—Are the existing arrangements for their inspection quite efficient, or do they call for improvement? What suggestions would you make on this point? Ans. 9.—I do not think the present system of inspection adequate. The Inspectors whose circles comprise a vast area do not, as a matter of course, find sufficient time for inspection, and have no means of acquiring an intimate acquaintance with the real state of the schools under them. It is exceedingly doubtful that they will be able to recognise the students of a certain school already inspected by them, should such students be again presented before them with the boys of some other school. I do not mean to say that the reports of Deputy Inspectors and Sub-Deputy Inspectors are not reliable but their contents certainly require to be examined and ascertained, for which the Inspectors have, of course, rare opportunities. I had an opportunity of inspecting many schools while I was a member of the Educational committee at Aligarh. I always found the registers of those schools which were situated at some distance from the city in a wretched state, and attendance was never found to correspond with the number of students given on the rolls. I have occasionally had reasons to suspect the correctness of the school registers. It was not unusual to enter supposed names in them. Once I set out to inspect a village school which used to send regular reports of its working and it appeared that a reasonable number of students was reading in it. But on reaching the village I was surprised to find that there was no school at all, that the place which was represented as the school building was no other than a shed for buffaloes, and that the contents of the registers and reports were altogether fictitious. Altogether, I am naturally led to believe that an improvement has since been introduced into the system of inspection, and that such flagrant cheatings have disappeared, or, at any rate, have become rare, yet I do not consider the present system satisfactory. I have reason to believe that the Deputy Inspectors and Sub Deputy Inspectors are generally assiduous in making their reports show a greater number of students than what it really is with a view of obtaining credit for good work. For these reasons the existing arrangements are not satisfactory in my opinion. Ques. 10.—Are the standards of education and the courses of study in vernacular schools popular? Do you consider them quite suitable for the purposes of education? Ans. 10.—The standard of education fixed for vernacular schools is, in my opinion, not popular, and is certainly not suitable. The standard of literature taught in those schools is hardly sufficient for enabling a student to acquire tolerable proficiency in subjects which are of use to him in his after life. The degree of proficiency acquired in indigenous schools in this respect far surpasses that afforded by these schools. And this fact makes them contemptible in the eyes of the people. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to raise the standard of literature in those 201

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schools. The regular study of arithmetic should, in vernacular primary schools be supplemented by the indigenous method of gur, which is more practical. The present standard of history in vernacular middle schools,—which does not go beyond giving a list of the names of kings, the dates of their accession and death, and a very brief and imperfect account of their reigns, which leave no impression on the mind of the student, and which are forgotten as soon as the boy feels he has no more to do with them—should be carefully revised and replaced by a more advanced standard calculated to develop his mind. And when the standard of literature will also be improved, the students will have no difficulty in mastering the more important points of the subject in which they should be examined, instead of the minor ones. At present there exists a nice translation of Elphinstone’s History of India, besides a number of other histories containing the Hindu, Muhammadan, and English periods, and compiled by some of the ablest men of this country, such as Munahi Zukaullah, Professor of the Muir Central College, Allahabad. These works, or portions of them, can with advantage be introduced into the vernacular middle schools, of which the present standard of education evidently calls for improvement. Ques. 11.—Does the system of middle class vernacular examination stand in need of an improvement? What would, in your opinion, be the best plan for the examination of primary vernacular schools? Ans. 11.—I have no objection against the manner in which the vernacular middle class examination is at present conducted. But I would object to the mode in which the question papers are now set. If the papers set by various examiners were referred to a certain committee under the control and supervision of the Director of Public Instruction, in order that those papers may be reduced to a uniform standard as regards work and difficulty, it would surely further the objects of the examination. As regards primary schools, their examination had better be left to those who exercise an immediate supervision over them. I am averse to mustering the students of the various schools at a central point for the purposes of examination. I am also unable to support the system of awarding scholarships after the vernacular middle class examinations, for at the time when these scholarships are given the vernacular study is, in fact, at an end. The system of payment by results would therefore, be more appropriate. Scholarships should be given to those students only who may join the middle class after passing the primary examination, and who may thus prove themselves deserving of those scholarships. Ques. 12.—What sections of the people have generally derived benefit from these institutions? Are there any classes of the population that have not, or very little, availed themselves of this benefit? If so, to what causes may their failure to do so be attributed? Ans. 12.—Those classes of the people have, as far as I know, availed themselves of the benefit offered by vernacular schools who hold a rank between the lower and middle classes of the society. But the sons of husbandmen, of petty landholders, and of professional workmen, for whose education these schools 202

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were primarily designed, have comparatively kept aloof from them. The means of workmen and labourers are generally very limited. Their constant manual labour is scarcely sufficient for their very subsistence. The children, as soon as they are fit for any work, are at once employed in it. If they may not associate their children in their daily labours, it will doubtless be impossible for them to defray the additional expenditure of maintaining the children from their already insufficient earnings. There is no great difference between the conditions of ordinary cultivators of land and of those petty landholders who hold small tracts of land in common property, and cultivate those tracts themselves. Both of these classes are, generally speaking, men of quite limited means, who are not able to procure even the necessary implements of husbandry. It is, therefore, impossible for them to carry on their business of agriculture with any degree of success unless they bring over their whole families to their assistance. Separate works are allotted to different members of the familes. For example, the younger ones are employed in carer works requiring a lighter manual labour,—such as the guardian of the field against animals, the weeding of the crops, the direction of the course of water into certain beds, the grazing of the cattle, and so on. There are many trifling parts of the business which, if not left to little boys and girls will seriously retard the progress of it. These are the causes which unavoidably prevent their sending their little ones to schools for education. There are, however, some villages where the landholders or cultivators are comparatively more prosperous, and their circumstances can admit of their dispensing with the services of their children in agricultural business, or where the presence of a canal reduces the necessity of watering their fields. In such villages (provided the villages bordering on a canal are free from diseases) boys can be spared for education, and sons of the cultivators and landholders have, more or less, derived benefit from the schools. The greatest difficulty, however, is that the above named class of the people does not seem to appreciate education at all. They are unable to understand how education can be useful to them in their daily life, which is no better than that of an ordinary kuls. What fruit can we, under these circumstances, reap by establishing schools in villages where they are not wanted at all. In this very class those who are a little better off than mere kulis and follow a regular occupation by keeping a regular shop, such as the carpenter who constructs the ordinary village carts, their wheels, and other implements of husbandry, are tolerably able to read and write, and generally send their sons to Government or indigenous schools. But an itinerant workman, who goes from house to house to seek employment, never thinks of procuring education for his children. Ques. 13.—Do you think the number of boys now receiving instruction in these schools low in comparison with the population and state of the country? If so, how would you account for it? Ans. 13.—This question can briefly be replied in the affirmative, for a more extended system of education is not wanted by the country. But this answer is not 203

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quite sufficient,—it requires an explanation. It appears from official papers that 162,471 scholars were receiving education in 1881 in those schools of the North Western Provinces which were under the control and supervision of Government officers. Their comparison with the population of that part of the country cannot, owing to the special circumstances of the country, afford a just estimate as regards the working of this machinery. In India women are almost entirely precluded from education, while agricultural and labouring classes, that form by far the greatest portion of the population, are equally strangers to it. How to induce these classes to benefit from education is another question which leads us to a discussion of those circumstances which have combined in estranging them from education. To suggest measures for the removal of those obstacles, whether such measures be feasible or not, is a subject which has no connection with the working of the machinery set up for education. Moreover, that portion of the population which consists of men who are too old to be educated must not be taken into account for obvious reasons. To form, therefore, a correct estimate of the working of the machinery, with regard to the special circumstances of the country, it is necessary, in the first place, to exclude these four large sections of the population from the number. The degree of success of the scheme may then be judged by the number of the school-going boys of the classes that hold a position between the middle and lower ranks of society, and perhaps by the number of boys in a portion of the middle class too. If this be made the standard of judgment, I have no doubt but that the machinery will be found to be in as good working an order as can ever be expected in India. If it be desirable to increase its efficiency, the object can be secured, not by adding any part to the machine itself, but to place the persons who have hitherto been incapable of reaping any benefit from it in a position which may provide facilities to them in this respect. At present we have no means by which we may be able to judge of the usefulness of the machinery in the manner above indicated. Only the Census Report of 1871 could help us a little in this way. But I am sorry I could not have an access to the book here. The Secretary of the Commission also kindly tried to procure it for me, but without success. Ques. 14.—Can you suggest any improvement in the present system of tuitional fees? Ans. 14.—I have no objection to raise against the present system of levying the tuitional fees. But I must question the propriety of requiring the sons of zamindars and cultivators of land studying in vernacular schools to pay tuitional fees, when a separate education cess of one per cent of the Government revenue is already levied upon all zamindars, affecting as it does in its incidence all the classes connected with land. Although this argument may not be accepted as logically true, this immunity will nevertheless tend to swell the number of such boys in vernacular schools. Ques. 15.—What steps would it, in your opinion, be most advisable to take to give a wider extension to these schools, and to render them more efficient and popular?

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Ans. 15.—I do not think there is any necessity for increasing the number of these schools, except in special cases. Our endeavours should rather be confined to making the existing institutions more useful and popular, which can be brought about in the following manner:— 1st.—By reforming the courses of study and raising the standard of literature. 2ndly.—By appointing such persons to be teachers of the school as are popular and possess the confidence of the people residing in that locality. 3rdly.—By fixing their salaries on a standard sufficient to make them appreciate their appointment. 4thly.—By securing the co operation of respectable men in each pargana in the cause of education. If the present system of kalkabands were so re cast that each village in which a patwars resided might be provided with a vernacular primary school for the benefit of all the villages of the circle under the said patwars, it would give more regular appearance to the system, and would perhaps increase the number of the schools, if so desired. Ques. 16.—To what extent has the establishment of the Educational committees helped in the supervision and control of these schools, and how far has it contributed towards making them popular? Ques. 17.—Do you consider that any advantage is likely to result from extending the supervision of the Municipal committees and district officers? What would, in your opinion, be the most advisable way of accomplishing this end? Ques. 18.—Can you suggest any improvement in the existing financial arrangements relating to these institutions? Ans. 16, 17 & 18.—These three questions (16, 17, and 18) are so closely connected with one another as to require a collective answer. I have always been of opinion that the system of public instruction cannot progress satisfactorily until Native gentlemen of respectable position and influence be made to co-operate in the work. The co-operation of a Native gentleman who commands the respect and possesses the confidence of the people,—no matter whether he himself possesses any amount of learning and is capable of helping in educational matters,—is calculated to bring the whole weight of his influence and popularity in favour of a scheme with which he himself is connected, and is therefore likely to bear good fruit. I have always regarded the non-association of respectable Natives in the work of education as a great drawback and a great political mistake. A movement in this direction was made by the Talukdars of the Aligarh District in 1866. On the 10th May of that year they submitted a petition to the Local Government, a portion of which I beg to quote below as deserving the attention of the Commission:— “That while your petitioners pay for the expenses of education it is obviously a hardship that they should not be allowed to take any part in the management of the system or exercise any control over the disbursement of the funds. It is very mortifying to them to find that they are not consulted on any points connected therewith and that, notwithstanding

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their having to provide the funds they know nothing as to the manner and purposes in which those funds are expended. That your petitioners beg respectfully to submit their opinion that all the money which they contribute for education at the rate of 1 per cent on the jumma should together with the sum which the Government grants or may grant in future in and of the cause be separately funded under the designation of Educational Fund and applied solely for the benefit of the people of that district alone from which the contribution is raised, and to which it rightfully belongs, to the exclusion of all others. That a committee consisting of the Educational Officers and the district landholders and gentlemen presided over by the Collector of the District or the Commissioner of the Division should be formed for the general control and supervision of the system and for regulating the expenditure and all matters connected with the business of education should be left to the discretion of the committee so constituted. “That this committee should be required to frame a code of rules for the guidance of schools and should determine the amount to be granted annually for all the schools that may be existing or may hereafter be established in the [Illegible Text] the tahails and village of the district and allot separate funds for the maintenance of each school and that all those measures of the committee be officially laid before the Government and [Illegible Text] upon everywhere in the district after they shall have been sanctioned by Government.”

In 1872 I wrote a note in reference to the working of the committees which had been thus constituted, as the rules which regulated those committees had seriously paralysed their independence, and had thus defeated the original object. It will not be out of place to give here an extract from that note, as it bears directly upon the subject:— “Not long ago the deplorable condition into which education in India had fallen attracted the notice of some of the Native gentlemen of Aligarh. They considered the matter carefully, and determined to represent the case to Government. A petition was accordingly drawn up by them requesting that the Natives should be allowed to have a hand in the management of public instruction and that committees should be formed in each district. Mr. George Lawrence the Collector of the district lent his assistance in the cause and he deserves the thanks of the Native community. When the application came before the authorities of the Educational Department they were naturally offended and looked upon the movement as one tending to curtail their rights and authorities. The Honourable Mr. Drummond however, the then Lieutenant Governor, North Western Provinces, was determined to grant the petition and His Honour accordingly gave him sanction to the proposals directing a trial to be first made in the district of Aligarh and Etawah. The order was however not acted up to for a long time, till at last His Honour himself took notice of it and extended the order generally to all districts: the result was the present Educational committee in each district. It is much to be regretted however that the Native members of the said committees when they sit with Europeans and the educational authorities in the same room look more like thieves who have entered a gentleman’s house for theft than like bold advocates of an important cause. They are on the other hand looked upon by their European fellow members as men of the opposite party, to defeat whom is deemed by the educational authorities as well as by other European members as their right established by the laws of nature.

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Thus owing to the circumstances just noticed the committees have been able to do nothing to amend the political error before alluded to the management of public instruction still rests in the hands of the Government: the Committee can do nothing against the will of the Director of Public Instruction and they have no power to interfere in the management of affairs they are in fact about as useful as the same number of wax figures in Madame Tassaud’s exhibition. As long as this state of affairs lasts the members are of opinion that there is no hope of the village and tahsih schools being in any way beneficial to the Natives.”

The rules regulating the establishment and working of the Educational committees were, however, subsequently amended, and revised rules were issued on the 9th February 1877. But these two fell materially short in the main point of enlisting Native co-operation to any great extent, and the objects for which the establishment of the committees was desired were not attained. I feel persuaded that if the existing system were re-formed and re-cast in the following manner, the efficiency and popularity of the vernacular education would be considerably increased:— (1) The Collector may be deemed as head of the vernacular instruction of each district, and may be held to be in the same relation with the Director of Public Instruction in this respect which, in financial affairs, he holds with the Commissioner. This arrangement is likely to dispense with the necessity of the Inspectors of Schools. (2) The post of Deputy Inspector, who rarely commands any influence or respect in the district, should be abolished altogether, and that of a separate Native Deputy Collector be created for assisting the Collector in this additional work; the work of vernacular education being made a part of the functions in the same manner as other Deputy Collectors are put in charge of treasury. (3) The post of Sub-Deputy Inspector or Pargana Visitor may be retained, and may be made subordinate to that of the Deputy Collector so created, with a proper alteration in its denomination. (4) An Educational committee may be formed in each district, having for its members the most influential and respectable men of that district. (5) Municipal Commissioners may also be declared members of the Educational committee in each district. (6) The Deputy Collector mentioned above may be appointed Secretary to the said committee. (7) It may be incumbent on the said Deputy Collector to inspect personally, at least four times a year, all the vernacular schools in the district, to investigate the real condition of these schools, to report the results of his inspection and investigation to the committee, to prepare monthly and annual statistical returns and reports, and to use his personal influence in the promotion of education. (8) The Pargana Visitor may be required to inspect all the schools of his pargana at least four times a month, and to submit a report of each inspection to the Secretary of the said committee. 207

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(9) The Collectors and other Revenue officers may also inspect schools in the course of their periodical tours, and may communicate to the committee the information they may thus be able to gather regarding the working of these schools. They will, of course, have ample opportunity for this purpose, and the whole work of inspection, which is now devolved on Inspectors and is not, as a matter of course, satisfactorily carried on, will go on quite smoothly. (10) Each pargana may have its own Educational committee, consisting of the respectable men of that parganah, and having the Tahsildar of the parganah for its President and the Parganah Visitor for its Secretary. (11) The members of both the District and Parganah committees may be requested to pay occasional visits to schools within their respective jurisdictions, and to submit reports to their respective committees in connection with such visits. (12) The whole management of these vernacular schools,—such as the increase or reduction in the number of these schools, the selection of proper places for their establishment, the distribution of the schools according to the different languages (Hindi, Urdu, or Persian) taught in them, the construction and repairs of school houses, the appointment and dismissal of teachers the selection of the course of study on consultation with the Director of Public Instruction, the adoption of proper measures for the inducement of those classes that show an apathy towards education, and so on,—may rest with the committee, so that the members may take an interest in this important affair, and may feel that they have a substantial share in its management and control, and that their services can be really useful. (13) The incomes of these schools derived from the various sources, from the Imperial, Local Municipal or other Funds, may all be placed at the disposal of the committees which may themselves have to prepare their annual budgets after the manner of the Municipal committees, and may regularly submit those budgets to the Director of Public Instruction. (14) The savings effected by the abolition of Inspectorships and Deputy Inspectorships will be sufficient to meet the increased demand of appointing an additional Deputy Collector. This arrangement is certainly calculated to increase the amount of work in the office of the Director of Public Instruction. But this may be remedied by appointing an Assistant to the Director under the name of Inspector or under any other denomination. I feel convinced that these arrangements, if carried into effect, will place the educational system on a far better footing than it at present is and will, at the same time, involve no additional cost to Government. The above suggestions relate exclusively to vernacular schools. It should not be understood that I want to make English schools also subject to these committees. On the contrary, I am of opinion that any such attempt will prove prejudicial to the interests of the English schools, although they may be mere elementary ones. Ques. 19.—Are you of opinion that the present state of the Normal schools is satisfactory as regards their efficiency, or do you consider there is room for improvement? 208

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Ans. 19.—The present state of the Normal schools is not, in my opinion, much objectionable. The only defect that appears to me is that, instead of training the teachers in the mode of imparting instruction, they afford a regular instruction to the teachers like any other ordinary school. The standard of study in these schools should, moreover, be raised in the same proportion as that in vernacular schools, and a provision should be made by which the teachers of indigenous schools may also be admitted to them when so required. Ques. 20.—With reference to English schools for primary, middle, high, and collegiate education, do you consider that English education is essentially requisite for the interests of the country, and for the people in their daily affairs of life? If so, to what standard? Ans. 20.—About thirty years have now elapsed since the despatch of 1854. During this period the condition of India has undergone a considerable change. Railways have united distant provinces, and have facilitated intercourse to a great extent. Telegraphic lines have been extended all over the country, and have provided facilities for distant persons to talk with one another as if they were in the same room. These very things have infused a new life into commercial business, and have given a fresh impulse to every sort of enterprise. In 1854, when the above-named despatch was written, India was certainly in a condition which might justify our thinking that the acquisition of knowledge through the medium of the vernaculars of the country would be enough to meet our immediate wants. But now such is not the case. Vernacular education is no more regarded as sufficient for our daily affairs of life. It is only of use to us in our private and domestic affairs, and no higher degree of proficiency than what is acquired in primary and middle vernacular schools requisite for that purpose, nor is more wanted by the country. It is English education which is urgently needed by the country and by the people in their daily life. It will be useless to realise the truth of what I have said by any theoretical argument when we practically find so many proofs of it every day. We see that an ordinary shop keeper, who is neither himself acquainted with English nor has any English knowing person in his employment, feels it a serious hindrance in the progress of his business. Even the itinerant pedlars and boxwalas, who go from door to door selling their articles keenly feel the necessity of knowing at least the English names of their commodities, and of being able to tell their prices in English. A gentleman who visits a merchant’s or a chemist’s shop to make necessary purchases, but is neither himself acquainted with English nor is accompanied by a person knowing that language, feels his position as one of real perplexity. In consequence of the facilities afforded for travelling, respectable men are often under the necessity of sending and receiving telegraphic messages, and their ignorance of English proves a serious hardship to them. A few months ago a respectable Native gentleman sent his wife by railway from one stat on to another, telegraphing a relation of his at the latter station to be present at the railway station with a conveyance for the lady, who was of course a parda nashin. The message reached him in time but he was unhappily not acquainted with English. He was yet in search of an English 209

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knowing person who might explain to him the import of the communication, when the train reached the station and the lady was necessarily compelled to leave the carriage and to wait outside. The state of affairs has therefore been so altered during the last thirty years that a necessity for English education is as much felt as that for a vernacular one. The standard of matriculation would, in my opinion, answer the purposes above described. In these days the name of popular education can, in fact, most appropriately be applied to this very standard of English education. It is high time that Government, as well as the people, should exert to their utmost in extending this popular education, if I may be allowed so to call it. I trust that the observations I have made will not be construed into any desire on my part to suppress high education, or that I do not attach much importance to it. I shall show shortly how essentially necessary it is for the country. Ques. 21.—What amount of benefit has the country, in your opinion, derived from Government, private and Missionary institutions teaching European sciences and literature? Ans. 21.—Almost the whole amount of benefit derived by the country from English education may be attributed to Government and Ecclesiastical institutions. The latter have contributed no less than the former in affording the benefit of English education to the country. Some of the Missionary institutions rather possess a better staff of European teachers than that in Government institutions of the same status, owing to the fact that Missionary teachers are generally wont to offer their services in this charitable cause on lower salaries than what their attainments could justly claim. In the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and the Panjab, English education has hither to made very little progress, and they stand in great need of primary and secondary education. It is indeed much to be regretted that private institutions in this country have taken very little part in the diffusion of English education, although it was their duty to take the lead in the matter. Ques. 22.—Would it be more beneficial to the country to diffuse a knowledge of Western arts and sciences through the medium of the vernaculars of the country, instead of doing so through the medium of English? Ans. 22.—In Vernacular and English primary and middle schools, the object of which is to impart instruction up to that standard only, and not to prepare scholars for a higher standard of education, the interests of the country will no doubt be furthered by teaching the Western sciences to the standard laid down for those institutions in vernacular. But in English elementary schools, which have been established with the object of serving as a stepping stone for higher education, the tuition of European sciences through the medium of the vernacular is calculated to ruin the cause of education. I confess I am the person who had first entertained the idea that the acquisition of the knowledge of European sciences through the medium of the vernaculars would be more beneficial to the country. I am the person who had found fault with Lord Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 for exposing the defects of oriental learning and recommending the study of Western science and literature, and had failed to 210

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consider whether the introduction of European sciences by means of the vernaculars would bring any advantage to the Native community. I did not confine my opinion to theory alone, but tried to put it into practice. I discussed the matter at various meetings wrote several pamphlets and articles on the subject, and sent memorials to Local and Supreme Governments. A Society, known by the name of “The Scientific Society, Aligarh,” was established for the very purpose, and it translated several scientific and historical works from the English language into the vernacular. But I could not help acknowledging the fallacy of my opinion at last. I was forced to accept the truth of what an eminent liberal statesman has said that “what the Indian of our day wanted, whether he was Hindu or Muhammadan, was some insight into the literature and science which were the life of his own time, and of the vigorous race which were the representative of all knowledge and all power to him.” I felt the soundness and sincerity of the policy adopted by Lord William Bentinck when he declared that “the great object” of the Government “ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the nations of India.” The reasons which seem to favour the dissemination of European learning through the medium of the vernaculars are twofold, but they are quite groundless and fallacious. First, the idea that the instrumentality of the vernaculars will facilitate the propagation of Western sciences is in itself erroneous, as I will show presently. I may be allowed to say here that all European sciences are divided into two kinds—certain and uncertain. The former includes arithmetic, algebra, chemistry, &c., which require no great knowledge of the English language, and a person having but an imperfect acquaintance with English finds no great difficulty in learning them. I can adduce two living evidences in support of my statement. Pandit Bapu Deo Shastri, C.I.E., of Benares, and Munshi Zukaullah, Professor Muir Central College, Allahabad, have a very imperfect knowledge of English. They are unable to speak English. They cannot write a couple of lines in that language free from mistakes. But, notwithstanding this, they can read, understand, and teach the most advanced English works on science. As regards uncertain sciences, such as logic, philosophy, political economy, jurisprudence, &c., they are based on so abstract, intricate, and nice reasonings that they are, by causes to be shown presently, liable to lose much of their force if presented to the mind through the medium of a vernacular. The second idea which seems to suggest itself to us is that no country has ever advanced in any science until after that science has been rendered into the language of that country. But, this too is an erroneous conclusion. It has been divested of an important feature which may be said to be the very life of the argument. It could, in fact, be said with the greatest propriety that no country has ever advanced in any science until after that science has been rendered into the language which rules over the country. It is not the vernacular, but the English language which rules over India. No science can, therefore, be promoted in this country through the medium of the vernacular. History furnishes no precedent of 211

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a science being promoted among any people through the medium of a language which was not the language of the ruling class. I now come to those obstacles and causes which make the diffusion of European science through the medium of the vernaculars in this country a task of doubtful possibility, if not quite impossible. Works on this science can be furnished into the vernacular languages in no other way except by means of translations. Those who are familiar with translation work are well aware of the insurmountable difficulties that occur in rendering a scientific work into a vernacular, and in inventing and determining proper technical terms in that language. Whenever the same terms as used in the original language, are adopted for want of proper substitutes, the book forms a curious mixture of the two languages, and the reader can neither understand nor pronounce the strange words. When they are Arabicised with a slight change of form in order that they may look more harmonious with the Urdu language, they assume a curious guise and become equally unintelligible to Englishmen and Hindustanis. They rather seem to constitute the language of a strange creature. The equivalents for such terms are hunted out from Arabic or Sanskrit, although they may be quite appropriate as regards signification; it often happens that those equivalents have a second and additional meaning in those languages, and for this reason they are incapable of imparting the exact idea conveyed by the original words. The vast capacity of the Arabic and Sanskrit languages for the invention of new equivalents for those technical terms cannot be denied. But the task is one of extraordinary difficulty, and will require a long time, even if a separate academy like that in Paris were established for the purpose. History is a science which presents a comparatively less difficulty in being translated into a different language. But I am firmly convinced that vernacular translations of English histories will do anything but good to the country. The oriental literature is replete with exaggerations and metaphorical expressions which have obtained so firm a hold on every sort of writing in Asia, and have consequently come to be considered so common-place a thing that the very words and expressions have lost their whole force, and are no longer capable of making any impression on the human mind. For instance, if we utter the phrase Bádskâh i álijâh, the first part of it (Bádshâh) will no doubt convey the idea of a king; but the adjective álijáh, which have become totally void of force by constant misapplication, will necessarily fail to make any impression on the mind, not even so much as would have been produced by the English phrases Great King. In the same way in the phrases Bádshah i ádil and Bádsháh i zálim—the words adil and zálim are taken to be words of indifferent importance, and do not much affect the sense of the words to which they are attached. I can quote hundreds of instances like these. But this is not the case with English literature. The translation of history into the vernacular is therefore calculated to annihilate all those moral advantages which it is possible for a student to derive from its study in the English language; and the fact is that, as long as our community does not, by means of English education, become familiar with the exactness of thought

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and unlearn the looseness of expression, our language cannot be the means of high mental and moral training. The same remarks apply to the translation of works on moral science, which I am going to show by a few examples. Take, for instance, the word civilisation, the nearest rendering of which is tahzíb or sháyastagi; or take the words morals and character, of which akhláq and khaslat are perhaps the most appropriate translations respectively. But all these Urdu equivalents are ordinarily used in a sense different from that conveyed by the English words, and cannot therefore answer the purpose. The word utility, the sense of which I have often expressed by the words muf digi and faida mandi, but I am sure these terms are far from giving an exact idea of the signification of the word. Now, taking it for granted that European works on science have properly and exactly been translated into the vernacular, it still remains to be considered whether a science is promoted by means of the translations of a few of its textbooks. He who studies the text books of a science must also study, in addition to those books, various writings and opinions of ancient and modern authors in connection with that subject, if he is really desirous of qualifying himself in it. The absence of such writings, or the translations of such writings in his own language, will make his attainments but imperfect. But apart from this it should be borne in mind that knowledge has made, and it is still making, rapid and wonderful progress in this nineteenth century, and it is essentially necessary for those who are engaged in the acquisition of a science that they should keep themselves informed of all the results of modern investigations that appear from time to time in the shape of articles and reviews in the columns of newspapers, journals, and magazines. It is virtually impossible to provide a constant supply of vernacular translations of these great means of instruction and enlightenment. During the reigns of the Caliphs of Baghdâd, from Mansûr Dawâmkî down to the reign of his fourth successor, the greatest endeavour was made to translate scientific books into Arabic—a matter which involved enormous expense of money, although the scientific literature of those days was very limited. Notwithstanding all such endeavours, those translations were found to be very inadequate, and their scientific value cannot be compared with the works which the progress of modern science has produced. The fact is that science in Europe makes a progress more rapid than the greatest practicable agency for translations, which the present circumstances of India can bring into existence, and can keep pace with, and I am convinced that for a long time to come any attempt at imparting a knowledge of European sciences through the medium of vernacular translations will be fraught with evils which amount to no less than calamity to the cause of real education and enlightenment of India. Ques. 23.—Have all classes of the people benefited from the study of Western sciences and literature in Government or other institutions, and have the Muhammadans also derived this benefit as readily as the other communities? If not to what causes may their forbearance be attributed?

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Ans. 23.—Of all the sections of the Indian community the Muhammadans have derived the least benefit from European sciences and literature. It is evident, from the annual reports on public instruction, that in Government and Missionary schools and colleges, which may be regarded as the only means of disseminating Western science and literature in this country, the number of Muhammadans is extremely limited. To verify this statement by more obvious argument I had, in 1878, drawn up for submission to the Local Government the following statistical table for the twenty preceding years. This table conclusively shows the smallness of success which English education has had amongst Mussalmans:— Names of the University Degree

Total Number of Graduates

Number of Muhammadan Graduates

Doctor in Law Honors in Law Bachelor in Law Licentiates in Law Bachelor in Civil Engineering Licentiates in Civil Engineering Master in Arts Bachelor of Arts Doctor in Medicine Honors in Medicine Bachelor in Medicine Licentiates in Medicine and Surgery

6 4 705 235 36 51 326 1,343 4 2 58 385

None None. 8(a) 5(b) None None 5(b) 30 None None 1(a) 8(a)

TOTAL

3,155

57

(a) None from the North Western Provinces. (b) No Muhammadan has passed either in English or Science.

Now, taking the figures given in the “Memorandum on the Census of British India of 1871–72,” presented to Parliament, the population of Hindus in the provinces subject to the Calcutta University (Bengal Assam North Western Provinces, Ajmere, Oudh Panjab, and Central Provinces) is 90,484,547, and that of Muhammadans amounts to 35,679,138; in other words the number of Muhammadans is about ²⁄5ths of the Hindus. It would, therefore, be expected that the number of Muhammadan graduates would be about 3,262; but the table given above shows the number to be only 57, and the proportion is therefore a little less than 1⁄55. Turning to the calendar of the Rurbî Civil Engineering College, which gives instruction with a view to secure properly trained officers for the Public Works Department, the number of Muhammadans who have successfully passed the examinations is disproportionately small. From the year 1850 to 1876 the number of students who successfully passed through the Engineering class 214

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is 226, out of which only 3 are Muhammadans. The results of the Upper Subordinate Class Examination (which requires a knowledge of English) are equally unsatisfactory. Between the year 1848 and 1876 no less than 707 students passed the Upper Subordinate Class Examination but of them the number of Muhammadans is only 11. The effect of the above results appears in a much more unsatisfactory light when it is taken into consideration that the greater portion of the Hindu population consists of agriculturists and of persons employed in low occupations of life, whilst the same is not true of the Muhammadans who, being descended from the former rulers of the country, have inherited learning as the principal means of livelihood. Hence the figures above cited conclusively prove that, owing to some serious causes, English education has found no favour with the Mussalmans. I have myself earnestly endeavoured for years to trace the causes to which this shortcoming of the Muhammadans may be ascribed. And in 1871 my humble endeavours resulted in the formation of a committee, the object of which was to investigate the causes which prevented our community from taking advantage of the system established by Government and to suggest means by which education could be spread amongst them. As a means of receiving aid in their enquiries the committee offered three prizes for the best essays by educated Muhammadan gentlemen on the subject of Muhammadan education, and no less than thirty two essays were sent in. The views expressed in these essays were fully discussed at a large meeting of respectable and educated Mussalmans, and the committee arrived at the conclusion that Muhammadans had strong feelings to dislike to modern education, and that their antagonism to the Government educational system was not a mere matter of chance. This aversion of the Mussalman community is due to the fact that when in the reigns of the Caliphs of Baghdâd the Greek sciences of logic, philosophy, astronomy, and geography were translated into Arabic they were accepted by the whole Muhammadan world without hesitation, and, with slight mod fications and alterations they gradually found their way into the religious books of the Muhammadans, so that in course of time these sciences were identified with their very religion, and acquired a position by no means inferior to that of the sacred traditions of faith. A few spurious but well known foreign, as well as indigenous traditions, which referred to remote historical events, and to which time had lent a charm, were likewise adopted and accepted like other religious doctrines. European learning, which was founded on the results of modern investigations, differed widely in principle from these Asiaticised Greek dogmas, and the Muhammadans certainly believed that the philosophy and logic taught in the English language were at variance with the tenets of Islam, while the modern sciences of geography and astronomy were universally regarded, and are still regarded by many, as altogether incompatible with the Muhammadan religion. History was viewed in no better light, inasmuch as it differed from their adopted traditions. As regards literature it must be admitted that it is a subject which is always more or less connected with the religion of the nation to which it belongs, 215

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and, such being the case, the Muhammadans, as a matter of course viewed this branch of knowledge, too, in anything but a favourable light. Their antipathy was carried so far, indeed, that they began to look upon the study of English by a Mussalman as a little less than the embracing of Christianity and the result was that Muhammadans generally kept aloof from the advantages offered by Government institutions. There are still some Mussalmans who denounce the study of English in the severest terms, and those who pursue or endeavour to promote that study are positively pronounced to be Christians. But this prejudice has of late decreased to a great extent, and is not entertained by so large a port on of the Muhammadan community as formerly. This may be said to be the main cause of the abstention of the Muhammadans from the study of European science and literature. Ques. 24.—Can you suggest how the causes which may have hitherto operated in excluding the Muhammadans from this benefit might be removed? Ans. 24.—The very nature of the causes which have operated in excluding the Muhammadans from the benefit of English education makes it impossible for Government to bring about their removal Government could in no way interfere with, or make an attempt to expose the fallacy of, those views which the Muhammadans had rightly or wrongly believed to be their religious doctrines. There was no remedy but that some members of their own community might undertake the arduous task of impressing on the Muhammadans the advantages accruing from English education, and of proving by argument and reason that such education was in no way inconsistent with the tenets of their religion, and that the fanciful theories of Arabicised Greek science and philosophy, which the advance of modern science and enlightenment tended to subvert, had no connection with the doctrines of Islam. Numerous discouraging circumstances and serious social dangers lay in the path of those advanced Muhammadans who undertook the task, odious as it seemed to the detractors of modern civilisation among Muhammadans. The advocates of reform and enlightenment were sure to be made the object of furious and frantic abuse, and to be denounced as atheists, apostates and Nazarenes. But they were fully convinced that the Muhammadan nation could never be able to get rid of those illusive ideas and prejudices, until some members of their community prepared themselves to incur the odium which fanaticism and bigotry are always ready to offer to the advocates of enlightened reform. I was an humble participator in the endeavours of those who determined to devote themselves to this unpleasant task for the well being of their co-religionists. With this object a periodical, named the “Muhammadan Social Reformer,” was issued in which the more advanced Muhammadans from time to time wrote articles on the subject of education and social reform, and in spite of the vigorous opposition from the bigoted and conservative Muhammadans, made public speeches in various parts of Upper India to rouse the Muhammadans to make exertions to educate themselves and to release their duties as citizens. The advocates of the cause of reform and enlightenment had, of course, anticipated the opposition with which they had to contend before 216

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undertaking so momentous a task, and had prepared themselves for the worst consequences to their personal popularity among the common people. They did not mind the difficulties and obstacles which bigotry and ignorance placed in their way, but persevered in their endeavours; and I am glad to notice that my co-religionists have now begun to yield to reason and to acknowledge and amend their errors. The number of Muhammadan students in English-teaching institutions is now much greater than what it was ten years ago. The Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh has some 225 Muhammadan pupils at present, most of whom belong to good families, and have travelled from various parts of India and study European sciences and literature, along with their own religion, languages, and literature. The Mussalmans are now everywhere relaxing their undue prejudices, and reconciling themselves to modern thoughts and conditions of life. Time is no doubt a great reformer, but I think the endeavours above alluded to, which have been going on for the last twelve years, have in no small degree contributed to the present state of things. The remedy, therefore, lies in no hands but those of the Muhammadans themselves, and the evils can be removed by their efforts alone. Ques. 25.—In what proportion have elementary and high education progressed in the country? Ans. 25.—In Upper India i.e., the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and the Panjab, English education has made very little progress, and has much room for improvement. But the proportion in which the various standards of education have hitherto progressed in the country is very satisfactory. Looking at the Report on Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces for 1880–81, we find the following number of scholars in those provinces receiving education on the 31st of March:— University education Secondary ” Primary ”

888 scholars 8,752 ” 205,903 ” 215,543

This shows the number of scholars receiving secondary education is about ten times the number of those receiving University education, and the number of those receiving primary education is about 232 times the number of the same. Combining the two lower grades of education together we find that the spread of elementary education bears to that of collegiate education a ratio of 242 to 1 nearly I am, therefore, not prepared to admit that the high education has outstripped elementary education in this country. Now, if we turn to the results of examinations, we find in the same report that 77 scholars had passed from colleges, 258 from high schools, and 24,001 from primary schools, in 1880–81. It will appear from these results that the various standards of education are not disproportionate. 217

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Q. 26.—Are the courses of study now in use in primary and middle schools and the manner in which the examinations are held, satisfactory and popular, and can they be regarded as fit criteria for regulating promotions to higher classes? A. 26.—Neither the courses of study, nor the systems of examination now in vogue, are suitable or satisfactory in my opinion. At present the aim of all primary and middle schools, whether Government or Missionary, is to train and prepare students for the higher grades of education. But the course of study adopted for the purposes of the middle class examination falls short of promoting that object. In primary and middle schools, which comprise the lower school classes as far upwards as the third school class, the subjects taught consist of English, Mathematics, Geography, and History, the last three of which are taught in vernacular and the examinations are also held in the languages in which the subjects are taught. After passing the middle class examination, the student enters the high school, which consists of the second and first (or Entrance) classes, where he is required to read every subject in the English language. The boy now finds himself unequal to the task so suddenly imposed upon him, and it is not unusual that he is obliged to remain for two years, instead of one, either in the second or in the Entrance class. This defect in the course of study, and in the mode of examination, generally occasions to the students the loss of a whole year of their lives, besides incurring an additional tuitional expenditure for that period. The experience acquired by my connection with the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College for the last seven years, has fully proved to me this defect in the course of study. And this was the reason to that the committee of the Directors of Instruction for that college deemed it fit to leave off the University course and to adopt another in its place in which every subject is taught in the English language in the middle and primary classes. This change, of course, has been attended with success, as was anticipated. Students finishing the course of the middle class have done very well in the second, as well as in the Entrance class. I hear that Mr. Nesfield, Inspector of Schools, Oudh, had also offered some objections against the present system of studies, and that the Director of Public Instruction, North Western Provinces, had asked the opinions of his subordinate officers in regard to them. But I do not know what those objections were, and to what points they did refer. Should the Commission deem it fit to call for the correspondence in question, it would furnish them with a valuable information, and aid them in arriving at a decision in regard to this point. Ques. 27.—What course would, in your opinion, be best calculated to secure the co-operation of private individuals and local corporations in the diffusion of knowledge and the enlightenment of the country? Ans. 27.—The object would, in my opinion, be best secured by extending the grant in aid system, and by placing it on a more satisfactory footing. If the present rules for grant in aid be revised and made more liberal, they will, I believe, not fail to commend themselves to the people, to stimulate and encourage private enterprise, and to lead to the formation of the local corporations which will co-operate with Government in enlightening their country. Such a step is, at least calculated 218

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to give a fresh impulse to Missionary enterprise, and to increase the number of Missionary institutions, which are, in my opinion, equally useful for the country. Ques. 28.—What effect, in your opinion, has the present state of high education in this country produced upon primary and secondary education, and upon the interests of the country in general? Ans. 28.—The extent of progress hitherto made by the country is, in my opinion, mainly due to that standard of education which is now denoted by the name of high education, provided it may deserve that name. This standard of education has, indeed done much good to the State. It has furnished Government with competent officers on low salaries, and it cannot for a moment be doubted that, in the absence of such education, Government would sustain a great pecuniary loss to ensure the present efficiency of administration. The amount of money expended by Government in this education has, in fact been applied in improving the efficiency of administration, which is equally complimentary to Government and to the country. Should the profit accrued to Government by sums expended in productive works be compared with the savings effected in the work of administration by a cheap supply of efficient officers the money applied to the promotion of this education will not prove the less profitable investment. This education has, moreover, made a wholesome effect on secondary and primary education. As these standards of education form a sort of ladder for persons to reach high education, the thing is in itself sufficient to magnify the importance of these standards in the eyes of the people. Persons of high attainments are not useful to themselves alone. They are like lamps which reflect light on all things surrounding them. The presence of well educated and enlightened persons has done much service in the enlightenment and reformation of this country. In the degree in which such persons are multiplying, the country is making strides towards civilisation, and ignorance and prejudice are disappearing. But it is to be regretted that the supply of such persons has not yet been equal to the demand. The country still stands in need of a large number of such persons. Ques. 29.—Please describe the measures which you would recommend should be adopted to enable the Native community “to secure that freedom and variety of education which is an essential condition in any sound and complete educational system,” so that “all the youth of the country” may not “be cast as it were, in the same Government educational mould.” Ans. 29.—The extent to which “freedom and variety” of education may be secured, depends in a great measure on the system adopted by the Universities of a country for awarding degrees of profciency in various branches of learning. We should now cast an eye on what the Universities of this country have done in this respect. I will, however, confine my remarks to the Calcutta University, which is the largest University in this country. This University confers degrees in Law, Engineering Medicine and Arts and every one is at liberty to select any one of these subjects he may like. The “freedom and variety” of education are, of course, secured to persons, inasmuch as they relate to these four different branches of 219

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learning. But the subject of Arts is itself a comprehensive subject, and calls earnestly for that “freedom and variety” which have not been granted to it, or have been granted to a very limited extent. The courses adopted by our University for examinations in Arts have been fixed in an imperfect imitation of the London University, and the result is that our graduates do not become adept in any single branch of the subject. I must, therefore, be opposed to the existing system. But, as this discussion relates to a subject which lies beyond the pale of the Commission’s enquiries, I think I had better not say anything more about it. I would only bring to the notice of the Commission the following extracts from the speech of His Excellency the Viceroy delivered at the Senate Hall on the occasion of the late Convocation of the Calcutta University, for these extracts contain valuable hints on the sort of education which is so much needed by the country, and which the present system of the University falls short of providing. His Excellency says, that “the first thing needed in education is thoroughness of knowledge, the mental powers can be better trained by knowing a few things thoroughly than by knowing many things superficially,” and again, that “more real mental training is to be derived from the thorough study of a single subject than from a skin-deep acquaintance with a hundred sciences.” I would however, briefly state my opinion to be that the greatest possible scope should be given by the University to the thorough cultivation and deep knowledge of those subjects which recommend themselves to the tastes genius, and mental proclivities of individual students. A thorough knowledge of the English language and literature should in every case be compulsory for a degree in Arts. But the candidate should be left at liberty to choose either one of the classical languages of Europe or Asia, or one comprehensive branch of knowledge, such as Mathematics, Physics, Natural Sciences. Moral Sciences, Ancient and Modern History, &c. This system, I believe would conduce to promote the cause of sound learning and original thought in India, and in time would produce authors and writers whose influence will be felt by the masses and become a part of the mental life of the nation. Ques. 30.—Do you regard the prevailing mode of instruction in English sciences and literature in any way detrimental to the interests of oriental literature? Ans. 30.—The excellent plan adopted by our Universities and followed by all colleges and schools—that of retaining the study of oriental languages as second languages and giving the students an option in regard to them—has saved those languages from being neglected on account of the progress of English education. A fit place has been accorded to them in the courses of study, so that a person can now obtain the highest degree of proficiency in any of these languages. It is possible for a person to secure the degree of M.A., not only in one of these languages but in several of them. But the arrangements recently made by the University in reference to the courses of study, which are to take effect from 1884 and in which the second language has been made optional in the A section of the B.A. Course, and has been omitted altogether in the B section of the same Course are undoubtedly calculated to ruin the cause of oriental languages. 220

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Ques. 31.—To what extent do you consider that Government should support primary and secondary education respectively, and to what extent collegiate education? Ans. 31.—As my personal opinion on this point is at variance with the public feeling, I may be allowed to give a sketch of both the views. I am personally of opinion that the duty of Government in relation to public instruction is not to provide education to the people, but to aid the people in procuring it for themselves. But the public feeling seems to differ widely from this view. The people base their argument on the fact that in India all matters affecting the public weal have always rested with Government. They see no reason why the education of the people, which is also a matter of public weal, should not rest with Government. After a full consideration of the question in all its bearings, I come to the conclusion that the native public cannot obtain suitable education unless the people take the entire management of their education into their own hands and that it is not possible for Government to adopt a system of education which may answer all purposes and satisfy the special wants of the various sections of the population. It would, therefore, be more beneficial to the country if Government should leave the entire management of their education to the people and withdraw its own interference. The public opinion, as I have just said, is not in favour of this view. They say that the time has not yet arrived which may warrant such withdrawal on the part of Government. A very able and intelligent Native gentleman, for whom I entertain sincere respect said to me some time ago that the idea that we should ourselves procure our education was an entire mistake, that the use of the word ourselves in any national sense with reference to the people of India was out of place, for he said that no nation could undertake any great work without the co-operation of all classes, high and low, whether in point of wealth or political and administrative power. He added that the higher order of political and administrative power in India was held by Government and its European officers, and that those who benefited most by commerce in India were also Europeans, and therefore they formed in reality the most important section of the Indian population. He said that whenever these officers had been requested to give some pecumary aid in the establishment of a college or school in this country for the benefit of the Natives, they had generally held aloof as if they had no concern with the thing at all. Apropos of this I may be allowed to relate an incident which has happened to myself. At the time when the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College was established Aligarh, I asked a European gentleman holding a high office under Government to grant some pecuniary aid to the institution. He replied that he was not bound to help us in the matter, that the institution was a child of ours and not his, and that he would rather be inclined to spurn it than to hug it with paternal affection. To do justice to public opinion, I confess it is not an easy matter for us to say that people ought to bear the burden of their education themselves. If we but consider the present state of India, we shall be forced to acknowledge that there are 221

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innumerable difficulties which threaten any such attempt on the part of the people with complete failure. As regards the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and the Panjáb, I am of opinion that the existence of at least a high school, capable of imparting instruction up to the Entrance standard, is desirable in each district. In districts in which schools have not been established by local agencies, or by Missionaries, the Government is bound to bring one into existence, and as soon as a school of either of the above descriptions springs up in any of such districts, Government can safely close its own school after satisfying itself about the stability of the new institution and its efficiency for teaching up to the Entrance standard. I would, moreover, suggest that a college maintained at Allahabad entirely by the cost and under the guarantee of Government would suffice for the North Western Provinces and Oudh to all intents and purposes, and that a similar college established at Lahore would be enough for the educational requirements of the Panjab. But both these colleges should be capable of imparting the highest standard of education. These arrangements would dispense with the necessity of keeping any other college in the above-named provinces. Should local or Missionary corporations, however, desire to establish a college at any place in those provinces, Government ought to support such college by a liberal grant-in aid. I mean to say that there should be only one Government college in each province, and that all the rest, if any, may be aided ones. I must regard the Canning College at Lucknow and the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh as aided colleges, although the management of the former lies in the hands of Government instead of any local corporation. But it will be remembered that public feeling and opinion are opposed to all measures calculated to close any of the existing Government colleges or schools. The idea that Government desires to reduce and discourage high education in this country has occupied the minds of the majority of the people, although the speeches delivered by His Excellency the Viceroy on several occasions have contributed to lessen this impression among the more intelligent portion of the community, who have now come to believe that any attempt, if at all, to lower the standard of high education, will have none but financial grounds. However, the impression has not yet been entirely removed. Should Government happen to close any of the existing colleges, no matter how just and reasonable the grounds may be on which Government bases its action, it will be viewed by the people as a step to suppress high education. As regards Missionary institutions, in which the Holy Bible is taught along with secular books in a compulsory manner, my personal opinion is that the study of the Bible is in no way prejudicial to the Muhammadan religion. On the contrary, I am of opinion that the study of the Bible affords a valuable help in acquiring a knowledge of English literature. To persons anxious to obtain a knowledge of English or Greek literature, the study of the Holy Bible furnishes the same amount of help as the study of the Hebrew Bible furnishes to 222

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those who want to get an acquaintance with Hebrew literature, or the study of the Holy Kuran to those who are in search of a knowledge of Arabic. It must, therefore, be a foolish thing on the part of the Muhammadans to disapprove of Missionary institutions. But the general feeling among the Muhammadans is certainly adverse to my opinion, and the abolition of a Government institution in favour of a Missionary one will most probably be viewed with feelings of dissatisfaction, though I for one, am unable to see any reasonable ground for such dissatisfaction. In any case it will be proper for Government to ascertain the real state of public feeling before taking any step in this direction. There are many things which seem to present no difficulty theoretically, but it has often been found to be no easy task to put them into practice. It cannot for a moment be questioned that in colleges and schools which he under the control and supervision of Government officers, the introduction of religious study, no matter whether it may refer to Hindu, Muhammadan, Christian, or Jewish religion, will be repugnant to the avowed policy of the Government, and will spread discontent among the people. In places where there are only Missionary institutions, should any section of the population not like to get their children educated in those institutions, those people should establish a separate school or college for themselves, and Government should also grant some aid to such institutions, without entering into a discussion of the expediency of such institutions, when Missionary institutions already existed there. Government should, moreover, take care that district officers do not throw obstacles in the way of such local endeavours, and do not use their authority and influence against them as has been the case in some districts. By adopting such measures, Government would, in my opinion, not leave to the people any just ground for complaint. Ques. 32.—Is the existing grant in aid system in consonance with the suggestions you have made above, should effect be given to them? If not, in what manner and on what principle would you alter it so as to correspond? Ans. 32.—The existing grant in aid rules for the North Western Provinces, promulgated by Government Order No. 449A, dated 2nd June 1874, are, in my opinion, inadequate for the purpose in hand. One of the conditions on which aid is to be granted is that “the school as strengthened by the grant, will supply a distinct want, and that the educational requirements of the neighbourhood are not already sufficiently met by existing schools.” Now, the very establishment of a school or college by the public, mainly at their own cost, warrants the assumption that a necessity for it has really arisen, and that an aid from Government is merely required to swell the existing funds. As long as the above condition remains unaltered, the public cannot have any assurance that the colleges or schools they intend to establish will receive an aid from Government, and more especially in places where Missionary institutions already exist. Under such circumstances, they would rather be inclined to infer, by the absence of any other alternative, that the desire of the Government is to compel them to enter Missionary schools. This condition, therefore, requires to be annulled. 223

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A high school cannot be said to have an adequate staff, unless there be a European head master, graduates of a University for its subordinate masters, and three competent second language teachers for Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian, respectively. Such a school cannot be maintained by a less income than Rs. 900 per mensem. It now remains for us to see what amount of grant in-aid do the existing rules allot to such schools. The rules require that the average attendance of boys who learn English should not be “less than one for every Re 1–8 of the monthly grant.” It is therefore impossible for a school of the kind I have just described to expect an aid from Government that may amount to half its expenditure, unless that school undertakes to have an average attendance of at least three hundred English reading students. And this is simply tantamount to saying that no one should ever attempt to establish an efficient high school in the hope of receiving a suitable and from Government. No fixed scale of grant-in aid has been laid down for colleges. To regulate grants in aid by the number of students receiving instruction is, in my opinion, a wrong principle. The grants should not be regulated by the number of students, but by the quality of the instruction imparted. A better quality of instruction necessarily involves a higher expenditure. It is much better to impart a sound instruction to a limited number of scholars than to furnish a large number of students with an imperfect education. I would, therefore, suggest that the grant in aid should be regulated by the amount of the expenditure of the college or school for which such aid is solicated, and that such aid should in no case be less than half of the total expenditure of the institution. And when the people furnish the moiety, Government cannot justly enter into a discussion of the number of the students receiving instruction and of the average per head of the grant in aid. Ques. 33.—Would the existing scholarship system answer its purpose as well under the altered arrangements you have suggested? Ans. 33.—In the North Western Provinces and Oudh, Government scholarships are at present awarded to the best deserving of those scholars of Government and aided institutions who successfully pass the Middle Class, Entrance, and First Arts examinations, with a view to help them in prosecuting further studies. I could suggest no better method for awarding scholarships. It is a pity that the number of scholarships should have been considerably reduced, and it is essentially necessary that savings should be effected in other heads of expenditure to increase the number of scholarships. I am in favour of the system of scholarships, and can never bring myself to admit that scholarships are a sort of bribes for education. Scholarships are the best means of inducing students to continue their studies. Scholarships are particularly needed in India, and more especially for the Muhammadan community. They prove an essential help to those poor students whose circumstances make it impossible for them to continue their studies beyond a certain class. Most of these renowned and illustrious personages of ancient times who have made valuable additions to science, or have adorned literature with elegant works among Muhammadans as well as among other nations, could claim but a poor parentage. Great expectations may still be entertained of 224

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such persons in this direction. It is therefore absolutely necessary that a wider extension may be given to the system of scholarships. If I remember rightly, there still exists in England some provision for the help of those poor students who are known by the name of “Sizars,” but they are viewed with some degree of contempt by their more fortunate school fellows. The Managing Committee of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh have also adopted a mode for the maintenance of such “Sizars.” But they carry it out with so much secrecy that other students have not the least knowledge of the existence of such “Sizars” who thus escape the contempt with which they would otherwise have been viewed. This mode of assisting deserving students has been a great success. Q. 34.—Can the system of payment by results be, in your opinion, usefully applied to English schools? If so, in what way would you provide for its application to such schools? A. 34.—As regards English schools and colleges, the system of payment by results, i e , one in which cash payments are made, is not, in my opinion, advisable. The custom of presenting prize-books to students who have successfully passed their examinations is only another form of payment by results, and is, in my opinion, suited to all intents and purposes.

Answers by the HON. SYED AHMED KHAN BAHADUR, C. S. I., to certain of the Questions framed by the Commission. Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combinations for local purposes? Ans. 37.—The immediate effect of the withdrawal of Government from the direct management (if the word includes pecuniary support) of schools and colleges, will be to reduce high education nearly to the point of death, but my personal opinion is, that it will subsequently revive spontaneously, and will then have a healthy life, and be self supporting. Ques. 39.—Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestions to make on this subject? Ans. 39.—So far as I am aware, definite instruction in duty or the principles of moral conduct does not occupy a separate or prominent place in Government colleges and schools. Indeed, it is more than doubtful whether Government can take any definite steps towards imparting such instruction without treading upon religious ground. Only such educational institutions as are established by the Natives themselves can do much to improve the social and moral feelings of the students. At the same time I firmly believe that the influence of all high instruction in sciences and arts, and the 225

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influence of English literature in particular, go far to advance the cause of truth, morality, and sense of duty. If the instruction imparted in Government colleges fails to achieve this fully, it is because the subjects of instruction are multifarious, whilst the standard of efficiency in any individual subject is low. The Government system of education encourages a smattering of many subjects and a mastery of none, and the result is that it has not produced really great writers or leaders of thought whose names are likely to live, or whose influences will be felt by the nation. This is a great misfortune to the cause of moral and social progress. The purely native feeling is decidedly against multifariousness of study, if it means want of depth, and we have a Persian proverb— “Nim hakim [Illegible Text] Nim mulla [Illegible Text]. A half-doctor is a danger to life; A half priest a danger to faith. I have heard that the English poet Pope has composed a similar proverb in English.

Cross-examination of the HON’BLE SYED AHMED KHAN, C. S. I. By MR. DEIGHTON. Q. 1.—Would you kindly state whether, in your opinion, it is advisable that high schools should be placed under the control of Municipalities as has recently been ordered by the Government of the North-Western Provinces? If not, will you kindly state your reasons for disapproving of such an order? A. 1.—In my opinion Municipalities should have no control of the working of English teaching schools of any class. Government schools should remain under the control of the Director of Public Instruction, Missionary schools should be managed by Missionaries, and schools or colleges established by bodies of Native gentlemen should remain under their own control. In my opinion, neither the Municipalities, nor any Revenue or Magisterial officer connected with the administration of the district, should be allowed any power of interfering with Missionary schools or educational institutions established by bodies of Native gentlemen. By MR. SYED MAHMUD. Q. 1.—With reference to your 23rd answer, please state whether, in your opinion, religious prejudices are the only causes which have kept Muhammadans aloof from English education. Is there anything in their socio-political traditions which has the same effect? 226

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A. 1.—In my 23rd answer I have only touched upon the main cause. If all the causes to which the failure of the Muhammadans to avail themselves of the benefits of English education to an adequate extent is due were noticed, it would become a lengthy detail. It may be briefly stated that the causes which have kept the Muhammadans-aloof from English education may be traced to four sources— to their political traditions, social customs religious beliefs, and poverty. An insight into the political causes can be obtained by studying the history of the last two centuries, and especially by studying the well known work written by the Honourable the President of the Commission and named “Our Indian Mussalmans.” Briefly, I may say that the Muhammadan public was not opposed to the establishment of British rule in India, nor did the advent of British rule cause any political discontent among that people. In those days of anarchy and oppression, when the country was in want of a paramount power, the establishment of British supremacy was cordially welcomed by the whole Native community; and the Muhammadans also viewed this political change with feelings of satisfaction. But the subordinate political change which this transition naturally involved as a consequence, and which proved a great and unexpected blow to the condition of the Muhammadans, engendered in them a feeling of aversion against the British, and against all things relating to the British nation. For the same reason they conceived an aversion for the English language and for the sciences that were presented to them through the medium of that language. But this aversion is now declining in the same degree in which education is spreading among Muhammadans. The Muhammadans were proud of their socio-political position, and their keeping aloof from English education may in some measure be ascribed to the fact that the Government colleges and schools included among their pupils some of those whom the Muhammadans, with an undue pride and unreasonable self conceit and vanity, regarded with social contempt, and under this vain impression they did not think it worth their while to associate with persons whom they considered inferior to themselves in social position. The same vanity, self conceit, and prejudice of the Muhammadans led them to attach an undue importance to their own literature, metaphysics, philosophy, and logic, and in the same spirit they regarded the English literature and modern sciences as quite worthless, and productive of no mental and moral good. They did not tolerate those persons being called learned men who had acquired a respectable knowledge of European literature or science. They could never be brought to admit that sound and useful learning existed in any language except Arabic and Persian. They had given a peculiar form to moral philosophy, and had based it on religious principles which they believed to be infallible, and this circumstance had dispensed, as they thought, with the necessity of European science and literature. I still remember the days when in respectable families the study of English, with the object of obtaining a post in Government service or of securing any other lucrative employment, was considered highly discreditable. The prejudice has now, however, much slackened. The religious aspect of the question I have already described. The poverty of the Muhammadan community is only too obvious to require any comment. I am, 227

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however, of opinion that the above mentioned socio-political causes, though still extant, have been mitigated to a considerable extent, and the Muhammadans are gradually freeing themselves of old prejudices, and taking to the study of English literature and science. Q. 2.—What has been the result of the attitude of Muhammadans towards English education? A. 2.—The importance of a knowledge of English in this country cannot be questioned. The Government has justly rendered the possession of that knowledge indispensable to Natives who are placed in charge of high and responsible offices in executive and judicial administration, and the blessings of the British rule will no doubt be increased when Native subordinate officials who are to assist the English officers in the work of administration are acquainted with the English language. In the same manner, a knowledge of the English language is essential to those who engage in trade, or who adopt the legal or medical profession. The want of attention shown by the Muhammadans towards the study of English has unfortunately debarred them from these lucrative professions, and has consequently increased their poverty, depriving them at the same time of the benefit of other sorts of learning also. Q. 3.—Have any special measures been taken by the people or the Government for spreading English education among the Mussalmans? A. 3.—As far as I know, the Muhammadans have, during the last few years, established a few small schools in various places, but the course of study in such schools has been confined to instruction in Arabic and Persian literature and theology I know of no school established by the people for the diffusion of English learning among the Muhammadans except the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh. But I hear that a school has recently been established by Nakhuda Muhammad Ali Rogay at Bombay for the same object. The “Calcutta Madrasa,” established by the Government of Bengal long ago, does not meet the object satisfactorily. It neither imparts English education to an adequate standard, nor makes that education compulsory, and the result has been that some three hundred of the Muhammadan scholars reading in it have remained destitute of English education. In 1871 the Government of India passed a Resolution in which the attention of the Local Governments was invited to the subject of Muhammadan education. The Government of Bengal, too, established several schools for the benefit of the Muhammadans from the income of the Muhsin Endowment and Calcutta Madrasa Funds, but I hear that a considerable number of the students of these schools have not received the benefit of English education. Similar specific measures for the intellectual advancement of the Mussalman community were adopted by the Government of Madras during the administration of Lord Hobart. Small schools were also established in the North Western Provinces for the same purpose, but I am not aware of the effect which these schools had upon primary and secondary education. I can only say that the measure has produced no material effect upon high education among Muhammadans, or upon their social and moral condition. 228

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Q. 4.—Please state whether, in your opinion, Government should take any further special measures for the advancement of English education among Muhammadans? A. 4.—I am decidedly of opinion that the Mussalman community has no right to expect Government to adopt any denominational measure for them. The system of education established by Government is equally open to all sections of the population, and it cannot, and should not, show any partiality for a particular class or section. The failure of the Muhammadans to derive an adequate share of benefit from it is their own fault. They should now abide by the consequences of that failure, and must thank themselves for their backwardness in the race of progress. In consideration, however, of the exceptionally unfortunate condition of the Muhammadans and of their deplorable ignorance and poverty, Government would only be according an indulgence to them if it should be pleased to consider the subject of Muhammadan education as a special case, and in doing so the best plan for the Government would, in my opinion, be to use every endeavour to induce the influential and well to-do classes of the Muhammadans to establish schools and colleges for the intellectual and moral advancement of their co-religionists, to encourage and support the endeavours of such men by a more liberal and extended system of grant-in aid, and to cause such European officials as have hitherto viewed such affairs with discouraging coldness to take a more indulgent interest in them. The Muhammadans have undoubtedly a just and natural claim to all endowments which have been made by men of their own race expressly for the education of the Muhammadan community, and the disposal of some of which at present rests with Government. But I regret to say that I am unable to regard the uses to which those endowments are at present applied as calculated to do any substantial good. Q. 5.—With reference to a statement in your 31st answer, quoting the views of a friend as to the absence of sympathy among European officers towards native endeavours for establishing educational institutions, please state your own opinion on the subject, and also to what causes you attribute the circumstance? A. 5.—I agree in the views of my friend which I have quoted, and have therefore given in my 31st answer an example of what personally happened to me. At the same time, it is my opinion and belief that the Government and its high statesmen cordially desire our welfare and feel sympathy with us. But the majority of those subordinate European officers who have the administration in the mofussil in their hands, are careless of, and indifferent to, our education and enlightenment. There are, no doubt, some of them who go out of their way to show sympathy to us, and take a share in our endeavours by helping us in our work with both by money and by other means. Towards such English officers we naturally feel gratitude from the bottom of our hearts. But there are also some European officers, though they are few, who strongly feel that the spread of education and enlightenment among Natives, and especially among the Mussalmans, is contrary to political expediency for the British rule. This class of men dislike Natives educated in English, and regard them with anger and jealousy. Similarly, some officers of the Educational Department used to view the establishment of independent educational institutions 229

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with a jealous eye. But I am thankful to say that, at least in my part of the country, such is not the case at present. I have not made these remarks with reference to my experience in any particular part of my life, but generally, and I have based them on my experience ever since I first began to take an interest in the subject of education among my countrymen. The causes of the circumstances I have described are numerous, and some of them neither pleasant nor obvious. But I may briefly state that the great majority of English officers believe that their duty is to do only their official work, and that they are not called upon to take any trouble about other matters connected with the needs of the country. They do not come into social relations with Natives, and therefore they are seldom able to know the real and inner wants and needs of the Native population. Consequently, neither have they any occasion to become acquainted with the requirements of Natives, nor to feel sympathy with them. Thus, speaking generally, no real sympathy exists between European officers and the Natives—I mean such sympathy as exists between two friends. I think this very unfortunate, at least for my countrymen, but I wish to say plainly that the blame does not rest entirely with either the English officers or the Natives. I firmly believe that as soon as sincere friendly sympathy is established between Englishmen and Natives, schools and even colleges will begin to be established all over the country, and will cost Government no more than the grant-in-aid rules could easily allow. But I am sorry to confess that I do not think that much improvement in this respect can be expected for some years to come. Q. 6.—How far, in your opinion, can Government take any steps towards the education of Muhammadan girls, and with what chances of success? A. 6.—Before proceeding to answer the question, I beg leave to say that the general idea that Muhammadan ladies of respectable families are quite ignorant, is an entire mistake. A sort of indigenous education of a moderate degree prevails among them, and they study religious and moral books in Urdu and Persian, and in some instances in Arabic. Among my own relations there are ladies who can speak and understand Arabic very fairly, can read and teach Persian books on morality, and can write letters in Persian, and compose verses in their own language. But this is not a new or a rare thing. I myself read elementary Persian books with my mother, and received from her other moral and instructive lessons in my early youth, which are still fresh in my memory. In families of the better classes there have been ladies in comparatively recent times who possessed a high degree of ability. I remember a lady who belonged to the family of the famous Shah Abdul Aziz of Delhi, and who possessed a considerable amount of learning in Arabic books of religion, and used to preach religious and moral doctrines among her sex like a qualified and competent preacher. The poverty of the Muhammadans has been the chief cause of the decline of female education among them. It is still a custom among the well to-do and respectable families of Muhammadans to employ tutoresses (Ustánis or Mullanís) to get their girls instructed in the Holy Kurán, and in elementary theological books in the Urdu language. Sometimes a father or a brother or some other near kinsman teaches them to write letters in Urdu, and occasionally imparts to them instruction in Persian books. To qualify them to read and write telegraphic 230

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messages, some boys have taught English to their sisters sufficient for the purpose, and I know of two girls who can even write letters in English. I admit, however, that the general state of female education among Muhammadans is at present far from satisfactory; but at the same time, I am of opinion that Government cannot adopt any practical measure by which the respectable Muhammadans may be induced to send their daughters to Government schools for education. Nor can Government bring into existence a school on which the parents and guardians of girls may place perfect reliance. I cannot blame the Muhammadans for this disinclination towards Government girls’ schools, and I believe that even the greatest admirer of female education among European gentlemen will not impute blame to the Muhammadans if he is only acquainted with the state of those schools in this country. I have also seen a few of the girls’ schools in England. Were these institutions for a moment supposed to be just like those in India in every respect, would any English gentleman like to send his daughters for education to them? Certainly not. I am therefore decidedly of opinion that the efforts hitherto made by Government to provide education to Muhammadan girls have all been in vain, and have completely failed to produce any effect whatever upon the respectable families of the Muhammadans. Nor have the lower classes derived any benefit from them. The question of female education much resembles the question of the oriental philosopher who asked whether the egg or the hen was first created. Those who hold that women should be educated and civilised prior to men are greatly mistaken. The fact is that no satisfactory education can be provided for Muhammadan females until a large number of Muhammadan males receive a sound education. The present state of education among Muhammadan females is, in my opinion, enough for domestic happiness, considering the present social and economical condition of the life of the Muhammadans in India. What the Government at present ought to do is to concentrate its efforts in adopting measures for the education and enlightenment of Muhammadan boys. When the present generation of Muhammadan men is well educated and enlightened the circumstance will necessarily have a powerful, though indirect, effect on the enlightenment of Muhammadan women, for enlightened fathers brothers, and husbands will naturally be most anxious to educate their female relations There are even at this time many significant indications of this desire on the part of educated men a few instances of which I have already given. Any endeavours on the part of Government to introduce female education among Muhammadans will, under the present social circumstances, prove a complete failure, so far as respectable families are concerned, and, in my humble opinion, will probably produce mischievous results, and be a waste of money and energy. By MR. PEARSON. Q. 1.—Have you ever heard that school fees are sometimes paid by the teachers when Government officers use pressure to increase the collections beyond the rates to which the people are accustomed? A. 1.—Yes. I have heard so. 231

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Q. 2.—In your opinion, can the and genous schools of Northern India in which young children learn the elements of book keeping and arithmetic only, be improved by adding a course of general instruction? A. 2.—I think not. Q. 3.—Do you think that schools in which young children learn to read only a few pages of the Kurán, together with a little religious teaching, can be improved by adding a course of general instruction? A. 3.—I think not. You can neither introduce a general course, nor is it practicable to improve such schools in any way. Q. 4.—Please state if there is any system of indigenous schools for girls of the poorer classes in Northern India? A. 4.—There is no public system of instruction for girls of any kind in the North-West Provinces Girls are taught privately to read religious books and books on morals. Q. 5.—Where there is no desire for any kind of schools which might be established by the Department, is it worth while for Government to make efforts to induce the people to accept education? A. 5.—The Panjab and North-Western Provinces in this matter are on a par. Where there is no desire no schools can be established. But it you can remove the causes which prevent the existence of a desire for education, you should try to do so, and then the schools will be beneficial. Q. 6.—Where Government schools have been maintained for many years without results adequate to the expenditure incurred, should the attempt be abandoned, or is it better to persevere in hopes of a change in the popular sentiment? A. 6.—There is no use in continuing to maintain schools in such places. But you should not cease to endeavour to remove the causes which hinder the success of the schools. Q. 7.—Do you think that the working classes in India are competent to judge for themselves whether the education offered in departmental schools is suitable for their children? A. 7.—They have no time even to consider such a question. Q. 8.—What is your opinion of educational durbars, and similar agencies, for stimulating a desire for education? A. 8.—They are nothing but shows. By MR. LEE-WARNER. Q.—With reference to the remark of the able Native gentleman quoted in your answer to question 31 and your own comments on it, can you, from your own experience, mention any European station in India in which contributions are not made by Europeans towards the cost of some mission or other private school for Natives? A.—The question is complex, and as its form is negative, it implies that in every European station in India Europeans give contributions towards native 232

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education. I do not admit the fact implied in the question. The rest of the question relates to two separate matters.—first, Missionary schools, second, private schools established by Natives. I will answer each part of the question separately as they cannot both be answered together. To the first part my answer is that I know of no European station in which a Missionary school has been established by contribution and is not supported by Europeans. To the second part of the question my answer is that I am not, from personal knowledge, aware of any station where a Native school has been established and is supported by contribution from Europeans except our own Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh which receives only one European contribution now, as I will presently mention. There may, however, be a few places where individual Europeans have made donations or given small contributions towards the establishment of a school or college for Natives. To our Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh a few European noblemen and gentlemen,—prominent among them the Hon’ble Mr. Justice Spankie (late of the Allahabad High Court), the Earl of Northbrook, the Hon’ble Sir William Muir, the Hon’ble Sir John Strachey, Mr. Charles Elliott, C.S., His Excellency the Marquis of Ripon, and also Lord Stanley of Alderley, and two other English gentlemen of high position, who have no connection with this country at all,—have made liberal donations. The Earl of Lytton was the first who most generously gave to our college a handsome annual contribution which continued till His Lordship left this country. His Excellency the Marquis of Ripon likewise allows a munificent annual contribution to that college besides the liberal donation already mentioned. These, and a few others, are the European noblemen and gentlemen to whom I have alluded in my answer to a previous question as possessing the heartfelt feelings of gratitude of the Muhammadan community. But of the European officers of the station, although there have been many changes among them since the college has been established, no one ever gave a monthly or annual contribution to that college, nor has any of them, with one exception only, made any donation to it. The present local authorities, however, owing to their great personal kindness to me, are showing much sympathy towards that institution and are exerting themselves for its welfare, and this is gratefully and deeply appreciated by us. So that His Excellency the Marquis of Ripon is the only one among Europeans in India who gives to the Aligarh College an annual contribution. In other stations, like Saháranpur, Deoband, Agra, &c., where Natives have established small schools, European officers of the station, so far as I know, do not contribute towards the expenses of those schools. By MR. WARD. Q. 1.—With reference to the self supporting schools mentioned in answer 3, can you state what the usual rate of fee is? A. 1.—There is no fixed rate; it varies from 4 pice to 1 rupee according to the means of the pupil. 233

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Q. 2.—Is it the fact that Mussalman men of learning have scruples against making any profit from teaching? A. 2.—Those men who teach in the name of God think it unlawful to take money for teaching; but, besides that class, there are other learned men who take employ and receive salaries for teaching. Q. 3.—Can you assign any cause for the decrease in the number of indigenous schools mentioned in answer 4? A. 3.—When Government schools were established, people thought that greater worldly good would accrue to them by going to Government schools. Q. 4.—Then this cause dates back to Mr. Thomason’s time? A. 4.—In Mr. Thomason’s time the work of vernacular education was extended only to a few districts. Q. 5.—With reference to answer 7, do you think that the sell me of entrusting the direction of education to district committees is likely to further the utilisation of indigenous schools in the North-Western Provinces? A. 5.—Certainly. Q. 6.—Do you think it is likely to improve the character of the inspection and the trustworthiness of reports? A. 6.—Certainly, if the committees interest themselves in the matter. Q. 7.—Can you state what was the reply of the Government to the petition of the Aligarh zamindars quoted in answers 16, 17, 18? A. 7.—So far as I remember, the answer was that the local funds were not to be regarded as the property of the people of the district, but were to be spent at the discretion of the Local Government. Q. 8.—With reference to the incident mentioned in answer 31, is it the fact that in the prospectus which was issued regarding the Anglo-Vernacular College, stress was laid on the propriety of subscriptions being chiefly confined to the Mussalman community. A. 8.—When the prospectus of the college was originally published, the committee resolved by a large majority that it was essential that Englishmen should join with Muhammadans in the cause of education, and the committee also resolved that the English nation, who are our rulers, should be asked to share in the work. The third point which the committee had in their mind was that it would be contrary to political expediency to establish a college avowedly alienated from English sympathy. At the same time it was resolved that Muhammadans should ask Englishmen to contribute, but not Hindus, because it was regarded as a matter of shame that Hindus should be asked to subscribe to a separate college for Muhammadans. Q. 9.—Is it a fact that in establishing the Scientific Society of Aligarh you received considerable assistance, both in money and sympathy, from European gentlemen? A. 9.—I received none except from Mr. Bramly, who gave me Rs. 1,000, but said he had previously paid no attention to education.

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By P. RANGANADA MUDALIYAR, M.A. Q. 1.—You say in answer 7 that “the schools of classes (1) and (2) may easily be assimilated with the Government educational system.” Would the private individuals to whom schools of class (1) belong allow any Government interference? would these schools possess any degree of permanence? A. 1.—In my opinion they would allow interference, provided the course I have suggested is adopted. I have described how they can be made to possess permanence. Q. 2.—While I entirely concur with you as to the necessity of a fair knowledge of English for a thorough study of any particular branch of science, I should like to have an explanation from you as to how a knowledge of elementary principles of science is to be imparted to the masses except through the medium of the vernacular? A. 2.—Those who do not intend to study English afterwards must be taught through the medium of the vernacular. By THE REV. W. MILLER. Q. 1.—What public do you refer to when you say in your answer to question 31 that the public feeling is opposed to your own? A. 1.—I refer to the Native public. By MR. CROFT. Q. 1.—Efforts have from time to time been made to introduce the elements of Western science into the Arabic department of the Calcutta Madrasa, and, except as regards elementary arithmetic, these efforts have uniformly failed owing to the indifference or hostility of the pupils. Would you, therefore, having regard to the true interests of the Muhammadans, make the study of English and of Western science compulsory in the Arabic department of the Madrasa, or would you think it sufficient to encourage the study of English by appointing an English teacher, attendance at whose classes should be optional? A. 1.—In my opinion the Arabic department should be abolished. The system of English education should be continued, and Arabic made compulsory as a second language. The Madrasa then should be raised to the status of a college for Muhammadans only. Q. 2.—In the Madrasas of Hughli, Dacca, Rajshahye, and Chittagong, which are supported from the Mohsin Endowment, it was decided from the beginning that English teaching should be introduced whenever any considerable number of the pupils manifested a desire for it, and it has accordingly been now introduced into all those Madrasas—in Dacca up to the Entrance standard of the University, in other Madrasas to a lower standard. Do you think that provision sufficient, or would you make English a compulsory part of the course in all those Madrasas?

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A. 2.—My opinion is that, whenever in any Madrasa Arabic is taught, coupled with a little English, harm is done to both studies, and consequently to the pupils. Where there is no great desire for instruction in English, I would only establish a school teaching a little English, coupled with the study of Arabic or of the vernacular to a moderate standard. By DR. JEAN. Q. 1.—Are you of opinion that the practical rules and formulæ known by the name of “Gur” should, under such circumstances and for such purposes as stated in the answer to question 5 be taught in schools exclusive of, or rather together with, European methods of calculation? A. 1.—In the indigenous schools alluded to, the instruction imparted by means of “Gur” is sufficient for pupils educated in those schools and therefore the introduction of European methods would be superfluous. By THE HON. BABU BHUDEB MUKERJI. Q. 1.—Do you know the difference between the Nagri and Kaithi characters? A. 1.—I do not know. Q. 2.—Are you aware of any Government order under which Kaithi writing was abolished from the Patwari papers of the North-Western Provinces and Nagri substituted for it? A. 2.—I am not aware. Q. 3.—Do Natives of the North-Western Provinces who have received high education in English find it easy to get remunerative employment out of the Department of Public Instruction? A. 3.—It is impossible to answer that question briefly. Explanatory Question by THE PRESIDENT Q. 1.—You have said that the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of high education would, in the first place reduce those institutions nearly to the point of death. Is it a matter of fact that many such schools and colleges giving high education are at this moment flourishing in the hands of Missionaries and under private Native management as at Aligarh and elsewhere, without direct Government management? A. 1.—Yes. The withdrawal of Government from direct management as used in my answer was intended to include the withdrawal of all pecuniary aid. In that case high education would reach the point of death. But if aid is given, then we can establish many schools.

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Memorial from the Members of the Hardui Union Club in favour of Hindi. To THE PRESIDENT OF THE EDUCATIONAL COMMISSION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA HONOURABLE SIR, I. Heartily and cordially welcoming with sincere pleasure the news that an Educational Commission has been appointed by our benign Government in view to enquiring into the condition of education in India and principally on the points noted below, We, the undersigned, think ourselves justified in laying before the Commission our humble opinion with advertence to the improvement of primary education, and other topics connected therewith. The questions which occupy the attention of the Commission are— (1) How is the mass education (i.e.) the elementary education of the agricultural and other industrial classes of Indian carried on at present? Can it be improved, and if so, by what means? (2) Can it be made to exercise a wider influence so as to become a national thing in course of time? (3) How far should Government aid educational institutions, and can such institutions be made to support themselves in case the Government withdraws its aid? (4) What are the best means of promoting male and female education, so that it may practically help the higher education of Native children? II. In our humble opinion, to propagate education successfully among the masses of the people in India, and in fact in every country, great care should be taken in selecting the language to be adopted as the medium of instruction, and we think in this selection the consideration of the following points essentially necessary;—(1) the medium language ought to be one that best suits the wants and requirements of the people, (2) that assists them in their daily walk of life, (3) most materially and easily helps them in expressing their ideas, as well as in impressing them upon their minds, (4) affords material assistance in translations. Although many Persian and even Arabic words have been introduced into our language by the invasion of the Muhammadans, yet our mother tongue—we mean the language which our children first begin to speak—bears a closer affinity to Hindi than to Urdu. Our household members do not understand as properly when we speak before them in Urdu, which we are compelled to acquire in schools, we undergo a heavy task in reforming our language, changing it from Hindi into Urdu, for otherwise we cannot be educated. This is indeed a matter of regret for us and cannot possibly improve the mass education, not to say of making it a national thing. Without the help of the mother tongue the mass education cannot be improved, and our mothertongue is most decidedly Hindi. We therefore loudly appeal for its introduction 237

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in our schools, and we hope that our impartial and benign Government will take into consideration our appeal. Our own conviction is that no language can either be better appreciated by the people, or easily understood and acquired by them, than their own mother tongue. We need hardly say that it is the easiest language, and can be acquired and properly understood with very little difficulty. With these considerations we beg to recommend Hindi as the most proper and fit one to be selected as the medium of instruction in these provinces. Our recommendations will, no doubt, meet with strong opposition and many persons will advocate the introduction of Urdu as the medium of instruction. But it is very well known, and has to some extent been proved, that Urdu is not our mother tongue, which is a conglomeration of Persian and Hindi. Urdu is still unknown in nearly all the villages of these provinces where Hindi is universally spoken and easily understood. It is not time for us to say under what difficulty we labour, by the fact that all the court business is transacted in Urdu, the parties neither understand the judge, nor the latter the pleadings of the former, one thing is written, but quite a different meaning can be construed from it, cases are upset, right is made wrong, and vice versa. How annoying and perplexing it is to read Shekasta writing in Urdu and court business is generally transacted in Shekasta hand. Another reason for our rejecting Urdu is that in no language are there to be found so many immoral books as in Urdu, and it is very difficult for young and raw students to save themselves from the immoral effects of these books when they are perused by them. Education is the most effectual remedy for the preservation and improvement of a man’s morality, but if he is to study immoral books we mean love stories such as Gulbakaoh, &c., he is sure to lose his mind and will never be able to make real improvement. To be plainer, the effect of education will be lost upon him, may, it would produce a contrary effect, then we see no use of introducing Urdu. In Upper India, we mean in the Bengal Presidency, there are four large divisions— Bengal, Behar, North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and the Punjáb. In the former of the two their respective mother tongues are the medium of imparting primary education as well as they are the court languages, while in the latter two provinces Urdu is much encouraged and taught. Now if we compare the former two with the latter ones, we find Bengal and Behar far in advance of the latter as regards education and consequent civilization, union, and wealth, and this fully proves the problem that education can be successfully imparted by adopting our mother tongue, Hindi, as the medium of instruction. Why is it that the mass education is, we should say, unknown in these provinces; we do not lack perseverance, zeal, strength, energy and labour, then why are we not on an equal footing with Bengal and Behar? The only reason is that we are not properly educated. The medium of instruction selected for us being Urdu the mass of the people naturally turn away from learning it and consequently remain uneducated for the whole of their lives. Few words from us will suffice for the second question. It will no doubt, in course of time, become a national thing if our mother tongue Hindi is chosen. The Government for the present should not withdraw its aid because the country is unripe for self support, but in future, when local boards are constituted and the 238

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people understand the principles of local self government which the benign and liberal Government of Lord Ripon has proposed to teach us and has done much towards it, the Government can advantageously stop its support. But regard must be had that no improvement can be expected if Hindi is not encouraged. The Government has proposed that the members of the local boards to whom the management of schools is to be transferred are to be selected from the land owning classes of the district who have, as a rule, great taste for their mother tongue Hindi and are utterly unacquainted with Urdu, and under which circumstances it is certain that they will try their best to improve Hindi education. The Government has already done much for the improvement of our education by establishing schools everywhere, and if we do not appreciate it, the fault is ours. The only thing that will help us much is the selection of Hindi as second language. Previously it was at our discretion to choose any language we preferred, but since the issue of Resolution No. 1498A of 1878, we have been indirectly ordered not to read Hindi because it lays down that the possession of the middle class certificate is a sine quá non in getting an appointment, while there has been circulated another order that no man will get a certificate even if he may have passed the examination creditably if his second language is not Urdu. We would have appreciated these orders as a great boon, if we could derive more help from Urdu in learning English than from Hindi. But the reverse is the case. There is a vast difference in the ideas of Urdu and English scholars, while there is very little between those of Sanskrit and English ones, and thus the latter can assist us more in reading English than the former. The characters of Urdu are so akin to each other (in some the number and position of dots only make the difference) that it is very difficult to read the correct word at the first effort, while is no such thing in Hindi characters. It is very difficult to write in Urdu English words just as they are pronounced while we can do so in Nagri. Considerations like these highly induce us to recommend Hindi to be adopted as the medium of imparting education. In conclusion, we beg to state that it is our firm conviction that if Hindi be adopted as the medium of education in these provinces, an inherent love for education will rise in the hearts of men to be able to read their religious books, and to be free from the immoral effects of so many Urdu love stories. A love for union will follow, and peace and prosperty will reign everywhere, which is, we believe, the sole and main object of our human and benign Government in governing a people. Memorial from Meerut Association in favour of Hindi To THE HONOURABLE W. W. HUNTER, L.L.D., C.I.E., President of the Education Commission HONOURABLE SIR, The members of the Meerut Association beg to submit the following representation for the favourable consideration of the Commission. 239

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II. They feel very thankful to Government for its having taken up the question of diffusing education among the masses. That the only practical way of effecting this is to make the vernacular of the people the medium of instruction admits of no question. But unfortunately for the North-Western Provinces their vernacular, the Bhasha, or the spoken language, has been entirely ignored, and Urdu, an artificial language, has been forced upon them under the patronage of Government. To remove misconception on this point they embrace the favourable opportunity of urging the claims of the mother tongue of 26,569,074 Hindus of these provinces, with a view that the object of Government, which is the spread of primary education among the masses, especially when its diffusion is contemplated, may not be lost sight of by the continuation of the present injurious system. They now beg to lay before you the reasons to support their views as described below. 1. Urdu is not the vernacular of these provinces, and is only used by the official classes of the people on account of its being the court language, although there is no reason why Bhasha should not be compulsory in the official circles. Urdu cannot be intelligible to the masses owing to its being greatly mixed up with Persian and Arabic words, while the real vernacular, the Bhasha of these provinces, is the offspring of Sanskrit, once the spoken and written language of the people of the whole of this country. (As is evident from Beame, Trumpp, Rajendra Lal Mitra and other authorities on this subject.) 2. The masses of the people have not adopted Urdu, to foster which the Muhammadans and English rulers have made every possible effort. 3. To facilitate intercourse between the rulers and the ruled, Urdu was created during the Muhammadan rule, but it was never intended that it should displace the language which at that time flourished in private schools as freely as it does now. Urdu has as little penetrated into or influenced the masses as English has. All the apparent growth and vigour of Urdu may be attributed to the patronage of the late Muhammadan kings and the encouragement of the British Government. 4. The real vernacular of the North-Western Provinces is Hindi, which the Hindus speak, but Urdu is never spoken in their family circles. As the Deva Nágri characters are widely used in India, they should be equally used in books to be prescribed for the instruction of the masses in the North-Western Provinces. 5. The Deva Nágri characters, with some modifications, are used in other provinces of India, in all languages derived from Sanskrit, viz., Mahrathi, Gujrathi, Bengali, Kaythi, Hindi, Marwari, &c. 8. A beginner can learn Hindi more easily and rapidly than Urdu. 9. The whole of the Hindu community of the North Western Provinces and the Punjáb use and speak most commonly Bhasha. 10. The female members of Hindu families can learn only through the medium of Hindi as they are averse to read books written in Urdu, owing to religious prejudices. This instruction is as important and useful as that of the other sex. 11. A Hindu experiences more difficulty to learn the Arabic and Persian characters than a Muhammadan has to learn the Deva Nagri characters. The 240

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Muhammadans have no religious prejudices against learning the characters of the Hindus, but the Hindus are bound not to utter a single word of Persian or Arabic in their divine devotion. III. If however the retention of Urdu be considered absolutely necessary for the sake of the Muhammadan population the members of the Meerut Association most respectfully beg to urge that in any scheme which may be prescribed for the North Western Provinces, the education of the people through Deva Nagri characters should have at least equal claim if not greater than Urdu, especially where the majority are Hindu students. IV. Hindi is understood by the Punjabi, the Hindustani, the Bengali, the Mahrathi, the Gujrathi, the Sindhi, the Marwari, and by all nationalities of India, but Urdu is not. V. With a view that the above proposal be carried out, they beg to suggest that a rule be laid down, that in every primary school of the North-Western Provinces, Hindi, supplemented where found necessary by Urdu, should be the medium of instruction. In every inferior and superior zilla school, both Hindi and Sanskrit and the latter being their national classic, and all the Indian vernaculars being based upon it, should be taught as a compulsory second language to the Hindu boys, while the study of Persian or Arabic should remain an optional subject. VI. It may be said here that although Sanskrit is taught in some of the schools of the North Western Provinces, it is discouraging Sanskrit and Hindi when the students are to begin their education with Urdu and Persian and spend seven or eight of the best years of their life in learning those languages which are sufficient for their entrance into the University, they care very little to learn the optional language, Sanskrit, or to cultivate their mother tongue, the Hindi. VII. Unfortunately all the officers and subordinates of Public Instruction of these provinces who are totally ignorant of Sanskrit and not well versed in Hindi, are acquainted with Urdu and the foreign languages Persian and Arabic, on which this artificial language is based. Hence they have not yet been able to realize the necessity or the utility of giving instruction to the masses through their own vernacular. VIII. The native representative of the local Government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh in the Commission being a Muhammadan, who can scarcely be said to be well acquainted with the habits, customs and manners of the Hindus, justice can hardly be done to the interest of the Hindu community unless a Hindu be deputed to represent the Hindu population. IX. In conclusion the members of the Meerut Association hope that their humble proposal which alone can supply the great educational want of the people of the North-Western Provinces will meet with that favourable consideration and attention of the Commission which it deserves, and will not be set at naught through the influence of the official classes, who alone, for the sake of their own ease, have been fostering an artificial language to the detriment of the real interests of the people. 241

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X. Lastly, they humbly beg to submit that a liberal education be imparted to the young men of these provinces through the medium of the English language, as has hitherto been the case, and that the standard of English education be not reduced. Any attempt to diffuse the learning of the West through the vernacular current in these provinces cannot be highly successful, as few books have been translated into vernacular expounding the sciences of the West, nor is it practicable to translate them all satisfactorily. The Association moreover is humbly of opinion that the diffusion of primary education, the desirability of which cannot for a moment be gainsaid, should be encouraged but not at the sacrifice and expense of a high liberal education, the benefits of which are incalculable. THE MEERUT ASSOCIATION ROOMS, The 30th June 1882 Memorial from the Inhabitants of the City and District of Cawnpore in favour of Hindi To THE HONOURABLE W. W. HUNTER, L.L.D., C.I.E., President of the Educational Commission HONOURABLE SIR, WE, the inhabitants of the city and district of Cawnpore in the North Western Provinces, having been encouraged by your invitation to assist the Education Commission, set under your Presidency, with our opinion as to the ways and means of promoting mass education in India, beg respectfully to offer our mite in the following lines— Among the numerous points affecting the Education question of India, ably handled by our brethren from other parts of the country, we will only distinguish those two that attract our attention, and bring to the particular notice of the Commission, as indispensably necessary for the practical development of the Indian mind, these are, viz.— 1 The communication of the refined thoughts and ideas of the civilized West 2 The medium suitable for such communication For the first point, we trust the Commission will be unanimous with us to recognise the growing sympathy of the people of India towards it, as a desire to study European character in general, simultaneously with the knowledge of the national history of the ruling race, the life history of a people who though young yet now stand first with those precious means of happiness which once the most ancient nation on earth bad only possessed, is being visible and more or less manifest in every Native society in India, whether Hindu or Muhammadan. Even the rough genius of humblest husbandmen in the remotest villages now a days show symptoms of some curiosity to learn a little of the modern history of Europe, if they can 242

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only afford for it without disturbing the means of their livelihood. In fact it is evident that that time has arrived when a permanent way of communication between the ignorant masses of India and the enlightened people of Europe is necessary, and must be opened and kept open forever for their mutual satisfaction. How this communication is to be opened—a question which constitutes the second point is now under consideration of the Commission—and to enlighten them therefore as to making a choice between the two candidates present, we will do but justice only if we recommend for the most useful popular and economical one as named in the third of the answers to the several queries we put to ourselves on this head. We will give here these questions seriatim with the unhesitating and clear answers they have naturally elicited. QUESTIONS 1 What is the proper means of conveyance of our thoughts and ideas to another? 2 What language is most conducive to convey foreign thoughts to a nation? 3 What is the mother tongue of Hindustan proper—Hindi or Urdu?

4 What is Urdu?

5 Can it be called a mother tongue?

ANSWERS

}

Language.

} Their mother tongue } Hindi

{

A mixture of Hindi and Persian languages made in the reign of the Muhammadans. In the same way as the English speaking people are now making in Bengal, a new mixture of “Bengali and English tongue,” in which a sentence of five is often made of three English and two Bengali words No, Sir, never!

When Urdu is not accepted as the mother tongue of Hindustan, it cannot at the same time be accepted as the easy, safe and cheap medium of communication of foreign thoughts among them, though it is occasionally used in limited circles by a very limited number of men of the educated class, and as such it possesses no merit whatever to supersede the claims of Hindi which is in fact the language of the masses of Hindustan. Having disposed of these points, we now embrace the opportunity of expressing in the same way our opinion on the merits of Hindi. In our schools either English or vernacular, the inconvenience which both the teachers and the boys as well now feel, in undergoing the tasteless toil of a double process of frequently explaining and understanding the meaning of words, once in Urdu and again in Hindi can be easily avoided by the retention of Hindi alone, and this even reducing and not increasing the expenses of teaching. Urdu being often subject to translations is not only expensive but also repulsive, as it never takes its root so easily in the boy’s mind as Hindi the mother tongue does. 243

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Under these circumstances, we conclude, Honourable Sir, with our firm conviction, that the Commission, considering the claims of Hindi superior to Urdu will decide the matter of selection in favor of the former, which is equally beneficial to both Hindu and Muhammadan for the same and one common cause, the cultivation of western skill and wisdom for enlightenment and happiness. An Address from the Members of the Deputation representing the Bharat Barsha National Association at Aligarh in favour of Hindi and professional training. To THE HONOURABLE W. W. HUNTER, I.L.D., C.S.I., C.I.E., President of the Education Commission SIR, We, members of the Bharat Barshia National Association of Aligarh, beg leave to approach you with this address in the hope that it may be accepted by you, and will receive due consideration from yourself and the other gentlemen who compose the present Educational Commission appointed by His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor General of India. As the object and aim of our association are to encourage education in general, we feel it our duty to lay before you and your colleagues a few suggestions on educational questions. The association was established here chiefly through the influence of Munshi Nawalkishore, proprietor of the Oudh Akhbar, the only daily Urdu newspaper in these provinces and it is in its contemplation, in consideration of the present state of funds at its disposal, to establish a library consisting of books on literature, history, science, and arts in the English, Urdu, Persian, Sanskrit and Hindi languages, and as Aligarh, through the indefatigable exertion of our venerable contryman the Hon’ble Syed Ahmed Khan promises to be a seat of learning, such a collection of books is calculated to confer immense benefits on the reading public, besides supplying a crying want of a suitable place for holding meetings for educational and social purposes. We are privately, but reliably, informed, that Sir Alfred Lyall our able and enlightened Lieutenant Governor, highly approves of this proposal and attempt, and has condescended to allow us to call the proposed library after his name, we are therefore going to christen it as “the Lyall Library.” We have also sanguine hopes and strong reasons to believe that our noble Government will grant us a plot of ground for the purpose of constructing a building on it in connection with this library. It is hoped that as our means increase further manifestation will be shown towards the encouragement and furtherance of education generally and high English education particularly. It is not a matter of common gratification to us to see that an eminent gentleman of your intellectual attainments and scholastic abilities, sound learning and deep erudition, has been appointed a President of this Commission; there could not be a better selection, and it is really charming to see the right man in the right place, 244

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so to speak. This fact emboldens us to come forward with a few suggestions on the question of English education In general, and primary education in particular, as the latter seems to be one of the principal objects of Government, and, in our humble thinking, a matter of vital importance to the national progress and growth of a people. The question is specially important to the inhabitants of these provinces, who have at present to labour under peculiar difficulties and disadvantages in this respect. It will be in vain to deny the fact that English education has made little or no progress worth the name in these parts, and that our brethren here are considerably backward in comparison with the inhabitants of the other provinces of India. This state of things no doubt is a deplorable one, but not therefore irremediable. It still lies in the power of those in authority who are real friends of our education, social progress and national improvement, to devise sound and salutary means for the amelioration of our condition, and in our humble opinion the adoption of a very simple method will secure this noble and grand object in view. Our children meet with insurmountable difficulties in the way of their education by reason of the introduction and prevalence of the Urdu language in the courts and public offices of the whole of the North-Western Provinces including Oudh and the Punjáb. In order to acquire a competent knowledge of Urdu and get a mastery over it, they have to learn Persian, and sometimes Arabic, as without this they are not considered to be thoroughly conversant with Urdu required for the performance of works in the said courts and offices. It is not in the power of men of ordinary intellect and average abilities to acquire more than one foreign language besides their own vernacular, but the existence of the Urdu language here makes the case otherwise with us. The best portion of a boy’s student life is taken up with the study of these languages, and the consequence is that their English education is altogether neglected. If the Urdu language be done away with and our own vernacular, the Hindi Bhasha be introduced in its place, our students will be able to learn it in a short time with comparative ease and greater facility than at present, and devote a greater portion of their time to the study of English. High education will make steady and rapid progress on a sound and firm basis, and the complaint that it had made no such progress hitherto will be nothing of the past. Primary education or education for the masses of the people is undoubtedly desirable, but the cause of high education should under no circumstances be allowed to suffer on that account, i.e., primary education should not be given at the expense of high education, which has already done much good in India. It has thoroughly changed the moral atmosphere of our country and taught people to know what they are. It has improved the tone of the subordinate judicial and executive services and of the Native Bar—a result highly satisfactory to ourselves and our noble rulers. We feel it our duty also to mention here that high education has not received that support and encouragement from Government which it ought to get. At present a sort of general education is given to our countrymen, and they are afterwards left to look out for themselves. There is scarcely any institution here where 245

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they can receive professional or technical education. There are three branches or departments in the public service in which educated Natives can hope to get lucrative appointments. The first is law, which includes:— A—The independent profession of pleaders and vakils. B—The subordinate judicial service. C—The subordinate executive service. The second is the medical profession, which includes the appointments of:— A—Assistant Surgeons. B—Native Doctors. C—Hospital Assistants. The third is the Engineering Department, which includes the posts of:— A—Executive and Assistant Engineers. B—Sub-Engineers. C—Overseers. D—Sub-Overseers. E Miscellaneous appointments in the Public Works Department. Now with regard to the first, we beg to say that only the Muir Central College at Allahabad is affiliated to the Calcutta University in law, and one institution in a whole province is totally inadequate to supply the wants of the people in this respect. Besides B. L. degrees are not recognised by the Hon’ble High Court in these provinces, and they have got a special test and examination of their own. With regard to the second, it is enough to point out that the Agra Medical School is the only institution where medicine is taught, but only hospital assistants come out of this school and the want remains still unsatisfied. As regards the third or last it is true that an Engineering College exists at present in Roorkee, but the greatest advantage derived there is by the military classes, only a limited number of Native students is admitted every year and there is no guarantee for more than three appointments as Assistant Engineers. The college is at such a distance that people think it a great hardship to go there and study for a number of years without any certainty of getting appointments in the Public Works Department. These are the stumbling blocks in the path of high education in these provinces, and some means must be devised to remove them in order to make the path smooth and easy. Primary education meant for the lower classes, to our thinking should be given to them through the medium of their own vernacular, which is unquestionably Hindi in these provinces. Such an education in a foreign dialect will not only prove to be disadvantageous but almost impracticable. Moreover, the masses of the people cannot devote much time to their studies and the acquirement of a foreign language. These remarks apply with equal force to the education of the females which also is not less important.

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In conclusion, we offer you our hearty thanks for giving us this opportunity of expressing our humble views on the grand educational question. An Address from the Managing Committee of the Kayastha Pathsala of Allahabad. TO THE HONOURABLE W. W. HUNTER, LL.D., C.I.E., President of the Education Commission SIR,—We the members of the managing committee of the Kayastha Pathsala, Allahabad, beg leave to offer you a respectful welcome to this institution. 2. A brief history of the pathsala will perhaps not be uninteresting to you, and with your permission we give it. It was established in 1873 by Moonshi Kalyprosad, a resident of Shahzadpur in this district, at his expense, and without any aid from Government. The contributions made by this public spirited gentleman from time to time for the support of this institution amounted to no less a sum than Rs. 1,59,000, and to this amount, donations from other gentlemen, interested in the objects of the pathsala, were added amounting to Rs. 10,000. The pathsala is now maintained to a considerable extent by the founder, and also from the income derived from villages, rents of houses, interests, &c. The financial position of the pathsala is now so assured that it may be fairly regarded as a self-supporting institution. 3. The original intention of the generous founder of the pathsala was to give primary instructions to the boys of his community, whose parents were either unable to give proper education to their children or could not, for some reason or other, avail themselves of the advantages and facilities afforded by Government institutions. But in course of time the scope of the pathsala was enlarged, and students from all classes of the people are now admitted, and are classified either as foundation boarders, aided students or day scholars. At the end of 1881 there were 118 pupils on the roll, of whom 25 were Brahmins, 69 Kayasths, 12 Khatries and 12 Vaisyas. From July 1878, the status of the pathsala was also raised to that of Anglo vernacular middle school. English, Persian, Urdu, Sanskrit and Nagri are the languages through the media of which instruction is imparted in the institution, but special attention is paid to the culture of the English. There are six annual scholarships of the monthly values of Rs. 180 to Rs. 4 which have been founded. A library containing upwards of 2,000 volumes in different languages is also attached to the school. 4. Believing that one of the most important of the educational results arrived at by Government is the development of self help among the people, and to foster an independence of national character, we have no doubt, Sir, that the spirit which has called forth the pathsala into existence will be appreciated by the Education Commission, and by no one more so than by yourself, its learned and accomplished President. We are firmly convinced that it is by the gradual recognition by

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our countrymen of this principle of self reliance, however sectional a character it may assume at the commencement, that the problem of national education can be truly solved, and it is gratifying to us, who set so great a stress upon the principle in question, to find that spontaneous efforts for the dissemination of knowledge are multiplying in India. 5. With this humble statement of facts and expressions of our opinion we conclude this address, thanking you heartily for the honour you have done to the Kayasth pathsala by your visit to day—a day which we can assure you, Sir, will be gratefully remembered as an important event in the history of this institution. ALLAHABAD KAYASTHA PATHSALA, The 15th August 1882 Memorial from the Pandits of Benares in favour of Hindi and Deva-Nágri Character. TO THE HONOURABLE W. W. HUNTER, LL.D., C.I.E., President of the Education Commission SIR.—We, the members of the Sabha of Benares Pandits, beg leave to approach your honour with the following lines, and hope to be excused for the trouble we have given you on this occasion by the presentation of this petition from our society:— We tender our heartfelt thanks to His Excellency the Viceroy who has set this. Education Commission abroach owing to some observed discrepancy in the present system of education as given in India. In addition to this, we are very glad to state that a man really learned, energetic, and a well wisher of our fellow countrymen like yourself has been appointed chair man of the said assemblage. We are sure and certain that the system of education in India will be in a much better condition after the necessary emendations in the manner in which it is given now a-days will have been duly observed as sanctioned by the Commission above referred to. As your honour is fast intent on the bettering of the system of education in this country, we hope you will be kind enough to listen to a single suggestion of ours which we have the honour of discussing in the following lines:— Sir, it is our only suggestion that if Deva Ngari characters be used in the courts of these provinces, instead of Urdu (no matter if the official forms of the courts be not a bit changed), we think it would prove much advantageous to the general public. As to the support of our opinion we beg to insert the following lines:— By the prevalence of Urdu characters in the courts of these provinces, we every day meet with such phrases that can be read in lots of different ways. Urdu characters may be compared to a fictitious law called kamdhenu () supposed to have had the property of producing anything the owner wanted, according to 248

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our Hindu Mythology, i.e., in other words Urdu characters are so delusive that various readings can be deduced from them, while Deva-Nágri characters are not such, and consequently nobody will be a loser, if they be used in the courts, for misrepresentations can have no grasp whatever on them. Secondly, Deva Nagri characters are such that the wording of any language can be correctly reproduced in it, and distinctly pronounced, and that there are a very few languages which answers this purpose. Besides these, the superiority of Hindi over Urdu has been fully demonstrated in a memorial presented to your honour by the body politic of Benares, through Babu Harrisha Chandraji with the main points of which we fully agree. In conclusion we hope you will kindly think over the matter with a due regard and I pass your just sentence on it, for it constitutes a great blessing to our fellow countrymen who would stand indebted to your honour over and above for this act of gratitude.

Answers to the Commission’s questions, prepared by BABU BIRESHWAR MITTRA, Pleader, High Court, North-Western Provinces Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained? Ans. 1.—I was for some time a teacher in an aided school. I have served for a number of years as tutor to minor Rajas under the Bengal Court of Wards. I have been associated with the managing committee of the Bengalitolah Preparatory School at Benares for several years past. I have also had frequent opportunities of forming my opinion on educational matters by reason of the interest I took in the education of several of my relatives and friends. My experience has been gained mostly in the North-West. Ques. 2.—Do you think in your province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration or in the course of instruction? Ans. 2.—(a) I do not think that in the North-West the system of primary education has been established on a permanent footing. The present system of halkabandi schools, founded for the purpose of giving elementary instruction of a uniform character, having reference only to geographical areas, takes no cognizance of special local requirements. Certain districts or portions of districts are more backward or more advanced than others in the cause of education. Moreover, every distinct geographical area has its special claims. A system therefore which is equally applicable everywhere is not capable of healthy development. 249

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(b) In my opinion the sound basis for imparting primary education can be no other than the indigenous system, which, if brought under proper discipline, and regulated by a more enlightened method, will be capable of better and mere extensive development than the primary (halkabandi) schools. The course of instruction pursued in schools of the latter description finds no favour with the people. I shall deal with this subject more fully in my answer to the 4th question. Ques. 3.—In your province, is primary instruction sought for by the people in general, or by particular classes only? Do any classes specially hold aloof from it, and if so, why? Are any classes practically excluded from it, and if so, from what causes? What is the attitude of the influential classes towards the extension of elementary knowledge to every class of society? Ans. 3.—Primary instruction, as given in the halkabandi schools, has hitherto been availed of only by those who have come in contact with the influence of facts brought into existence by the exigencies of the British rule. The sons of Government servants and of those who have directly or indirectly something to do with the English community attend these primary schools. Just in the same manner and to the same extent as the system of English (allopathic) method of medical treatment is adopted by the Natives, so are the advantages of this new system of instruction received by the people for whom these schools are chiefly meant. The lower castes have generally held aloof from the benefits of the primary schools, and might almost be said to have been practically excluded from this system of elementary instruction. The reasons are twofold:—(1) The rigorous discipline of the halkabandi schools; and (2) the peculiar circumstances of these people, who are for the most part poor, and who can ill afford to permit their children to attend schools at a time when their labours would be required at home or in the field. I may here suggest that the hours of attendance in institutions meant for the agricultural and the poorer classes of the people should be fixed with special reference to their habits and mode of life. The attitude of the influential classes in the North Western Provinces, with very few exceptions in the case of enlightened landlords is one of stolid indifference with reference to the extension of elementary knowledge to all classes of society. I would however, add that there is scarcely a boy in the higher or middle classes of society who has not received education in some shape or other. Ques. 4.—To what extent do indigenous schools exist in your province? How far are they a relic of an ancient village system? Can you describe the subjects and character of the instruction given in them and the system of discipline in vogue? What fees are taken from the scholars? From what classes are the masters of such schools generally selected and what are their qualifications? Have any arrangements been made for training or providing masters in such schools? Under what circumstances do you consider that indigenous schools can be turned to good account as part of a system of national education, and what is the best method to adopt for this purpose? Are the masters willing to accept State aid and to conform to the rules under which such aid is given? How far has the grant-in-aid system been extended to indigenous schools and can it be further extended? 250

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Ans. 4.—(a) Indigenous schools do exist in the North Western Provinces, but not fully up to the requirements of the people. The encroachments of schools founded on new fangled methods have affected injuriously those institutions existing as an old established system. (b),(c),(d), and (e). In the hierarchy of the ancient village system, the priest of every large village had the charge of the education of the sons of those who were under his spiritual guidance. The pathsalas set up by these gurus (as the village schoolmaster was called), were supported by the well to do classes out of regard for the priesthood, who, if they did not teach themselves, had the task performed by their relatives or friends. This state of things has partly given way to what might be designated as the primary school system; and it is only due to the conservative character of the Hindus that pathsalas do still exist. The system as it exists, however, possesses the capacity of expansion and development, not only in the sense of increase in the number of such institutions, but also in the method of instruction given. The fees taken by the gurus were partly paid in kind and partly in money. The quantity of grain or other edibles given, and the amount of money paid as tuition fees depended on the degree of competency of the parents or guardians of the pupils. There is no arrangement, judged from the modern standard, for the training of these gurus, but they are as a class brought up in these schools themselves and acquire a smattering of Sanskrit in pathsalas kept up for the purpose by the more learned of the priesthood. I might here mention the existence of indigenous schools for the purpose of given elementary instruction in the Sanskrit language and literature, and teaching the numerous kinds of pujas, sacrifices and ceremonies. (g) (h),(i), and ( j). The improvement of these institutions can best be secured by recognizing their importance as a system of national agency for giving elementary instruction, and by affording to the existing schools the advantages of State aid and inspection. The supervision of these schools may be advantageously made over to the district committees, who will be able to place them under proper local control. The gurus can certainly be made willing to receive aid from Government and to conform to the rules imposed upon them as the condition on which such aid is given. I would suggest the adoption of the following measures— (1) By way of taking a preliminary step, it is, in my opinion, advisable to take a list of all indigenous schools existing in the province. This can only be done with any degree of accuracy if the members of the local committee of public instruction could be persuaded to take a personal interest in the matter. (2) The indigenous school system could not be properly developed in accordance with approved methods of education, unless pecuniary aid be given by the Government. This will, moreover, have the effect of bringing the whole system under State control. State aid should take the form of a capitation allowance on the average attendance of scholars in each pathsala or muktab. (3) The indigenous schools must submit to the rules and orders of the Director of Public Instruction with respect to— 251

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(a) periodical inspection by educational officers or representatives of district board; (b) the selection of text-books; (c) periodical examinations, and; (d) submission of returns and maintenance of registers as enjoined by the Department; Any further interference with the working of the system will act prejudicially. (4) The standard of instruction must be confined to elementary education, viz., reading, writing, and arithmetic. (5) The appointment and dismissal of the village schoolmasters as well as all other matters of internal economy, should be left as far as possible in the hands of a body of resident Native gentlemen owning property or possessing local influence in the village and who have a personal interest in the well being of the schools. I would strongly recommend (a) the improvement of the status and material of the indigenous schools, (b) the gradual assimilation of the primary on balkabandi schools with the older system; and (c) the establishment of both on a footing which will ensure the benefits of elementary instruction being brought within the reach of the greatest possible number of the people. Ques. 5.—What opinion does your experience lead you to hold of the extent and value of home instruction? How far is a boy educated at home able to compete on equal terms, at examinations qualifying for the public service, with boys educated at school? Ans. 5.—(a) Home instruction is confined to well to do classes of society. Up to a certain standard boys can and do I am more readily and rapidly at home than in the schools. The reason is obvious. There is at home more pains bestowed by the teacher or the guardian in the teaching of one lad, than in the case of a schoolmaster having charge of the teaching of a whole class. The limit or standard up to which boys are and can be educated privately varies, and must continue to vary, according to the nature of education the head of the family has himself received or according to his means. But the highest limit that can be reached by “home education” is the middle school standard. (b) There are no examinations, that I am aware of, which qualify for the public service, unless the middle class examinations be meant in the question. Here, certainly, the previous discipline and examinations which boys brought up in schools have to undergo, and the healthy competition in the midst of which they are educated, render their chances of success far greater than that of boys educated privately. Ques. 6.—How far can the Government depend on private effort, aided or unaided, for the supply of elementary instruction in rural districts? Can you enumerate the private agencies which exist for promoting primary instruction? Ans. 6.—(a) I have already answered the first part of the question in stating my answer to the 3rd and 4th questions. 252

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(b) The only agency which exists for promoting primary instruction in rural districts is the village hierarchy, which gave rise to the indigenous school system. This is about the only agency that can be relied upon. Ques. 7.—How far, in your opinion, can funds assigned for primary education in rural districts be advantageously administered by district committees or local boards? What are the proper limits of the control to be exercised by such bodies? Ans. 7.—The funds assigned for primary education in rural districts should be administered by district committees or local boards, and devoted chiefly to the purpose of giving a capitation allowance on the average attendance of boys in the primary schools, or by providing these institutions with certificated schoolmasters. (b) The proper limits of control to be exercised by local committees or district boards should be the same as stated in the 3rd paragraph of my answer to clauses (g), (h), (i), and (j) of the 4th question. Ques. 8.—What classes of schools should, in your opinion, be entrusted to Municipal committees for support and management? Assuming that the provision of elementary instruction in towns is to be a charge against Municipal funds what security would you suggest against the possibility of Municipal committees failing to make sufficient provision? Ans. 8.—(a) A certain number of primary and middle class schools sufficient for the requirements of the population of the towns must be maintained by the Municipal committees. (b) A certain percentage of town duties should be specially appropriated for the purpose of supporting these educational institutions. Ques. 9.—Have you any suggestions to make on the system in force for providing teachers in primary schools? What is the present social status of village schoolmasters? Do they exert a beneficial influence among the villagers? Can you suggest measures, other than increase of pay, for improving their position? Ans. 9.—(a) The present system of Normal schools, as being the only machinery for providing teachers in primary schools, has, so far as my experience goes, worked satisfactorily. The only suggestion I have to make is that the curriculum of studies in these schools should embrace a little of classics (viz., Sanskrit and Arabic) in order to supply materials for a healthy development of vernacular literature. (b) The present social status of a village schoolmaster, though by no means inferior to that of a guru, is not generally recognised and acknowledged in villages, where the people, by reason of old standing prejudices, are more than ordinarily intolerant of reforms from without. (c) The influence which a teacher in the primary schools can exert among the villagers depends greatly on the caste to which he belongs, and to his address and intellectual acquirements. (d) The only measure I can think of (and I state it with great reluctance) is the appointment of schoolmasters of good caste, except in the case of institutions where the majority of scholars are other than those on whom the prejudices and traditional observances of the caste system exert little or no building influence. I will add that the possession of knowledge likely to be useful to the people among 253

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whom he is called upon to exercise the calling of a teacher will help the village schoolmaster in gaining popularity and influence in the village. Ques. 10.—What subjects of instruction, if introduced into primary schools, would make them more acceptable to the community at large, and especially to the agricultural classes? Should any special means be adopted for making the instruction in such subjects efficient? Ans. 10.—(a) Besides the elements of knowledge (the three R’s), lessons on improved method of agriculture would be both acceptable to the community and useful to the villagers. (b) I would suggest the publication of a book divided into two parts—one treating on agriculture, and the other on the relations which should exist between a landlord and his tenants. In order to create a desire for receiving instruction in those subjects, I would recommend that a copy of this book be given gratis to two or three of the best boys attending the village schools, indigenous or halkabandi. Ques. 11.—Is the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools of your province the dialect of the people? and if not, are the schools on that account less useful and popular? Ans. 11.—(a) The question of the vernacular is a very delicate one in the NorthWestern Provinces. The recognition of Urdu as the written and spoken language of the courts in this province has a direct influence on the vernacular. Undoubtedly the highest aim of an ordinary Hindu villager is to be able to recite and understand the Ramayana (or works of equal sanctity). But the language of the Ramayana is not the language which the Government recognises as the vernacular of the people, and the study of this language is becoming to be the least profitable. Here lies the difficulty. Spasmodic efforts have been made, but with little or no success, to overcome this difficulty by reconciling the forces arranged in favour of and against Hindi. The battle between Hindi and Urdu has been fought in Behar, and the victory was justly gained by the partisans of Hindi. The result is that Hindi is the written language of the courts in that province. The wealthy landlords in the several districts of Bebar appreciate thankfully the change. I can state this as a positive fact by reason of my acquaintance with gentlemen connected with the management of the richest estates there. The Maharajas of Bettiah, Dumraon, Durbhunga, and Hatwa are fully sensible of the advantages resulting from the Resolution of the late Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal in respect of Hindi being declared to be the written character of the courts. The same conditions which operated in favour of Hindi in Behar, exist in almost all the districts in the North-West, excepting perhaps the districts of Moradabad and Bareilly. I think I may safely state that Hindi is the written and spoken language of at least nine-tenths of the people who have occasion to come to the courts. It will be out of place here for me to recapitulate all the arguments which have been, and can reasonably be, adduced in favour of Hindi. I will satisfy myself by saying that the recognition of Urdu as the language of the courts is regarded by the people as a pure and simple survival of the old Moslem tyranny in India. How far the change of the language at present in use in the courts is feasible, however, for the whole of the North-West or in any 254

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portion of the province, I will not undertake to say, by reason of my predilection in favour of Hindi and prejudice against Urdu. The question of the form of the several written characters passing under the name of Hindi, is allied to the subject under consideration. Giving due weight to all arguments urged on both sides of the question, I consider that the Roman character could, with advantage to all parties concerned, be adopted as the written character of judicial proceedings and processes. The system of transliteration, on the well-laid and approved method of Dr. Hunter, can very easily be learnt. The plan I have the honor to recommend has, moreover, the manifest advantage of enabling European judicial officers to read the records of cases themselves, and how far this will materially help in the task of administering justice I will leave the Civilian Members of the Commission to represent and decide. So far as the interests of education are concerned, I must say that the adoption of this plan will leave the vernacular of the people of the North-West under normal conditions of growth, which is certainly impeded to an incalculable extent by the preference given by the Government to Urdu, very properly regarded as the language of Muhammadan foreigners in the country. I will take leave to add that the rapid, rich, and luxuriant growth of the vernacular literature in the adjacent province of Bengal, even after making due allowance to the circumstances of education having had the first start in that province, is greatly due to the fact that the real vernacular of the people there has not had to compete with any foreign element in point of use and profit. (b) I have mentioned above that efforts have been made to effect a compromise between the rival and opposing forces of Hindi and Urdu. The result of this compromise is that a number of books have been written in a language which is supposed to be the “language of the camp,” though not the real vernacular of the Hindus in this province. A degree of unpopularity attends the study of books which are not written in the language of the forefathers of the people. Ques. 12.—Is the system of payment by results suitable, in your opinion, for the promotion of education amongst a poor ignorant people? Ans. 12.—The system of payment by results is suitable for promotion of education amongst a poor and ignorant people. The great end in view, in the present state of “mass education” in the country, should be the extension of the benefits of elementary education to the largest possible number of the people. Ques. 13.—Have you any suggestion to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? Ans. 13.—The only change I would allow, with reference to the taking of fees in primary schools, is, that boys may be permitted to pay for their instruction in kind as well as in money. How far this will do for halkabandi schools I am unable to determine. I am certain, however, that the change will find favour with the people in the rural districts. Ques. 14.—Will you favour the Commission with your views—first, as to how the number of primary schools can be increased, and secondly, how they can be gradually rendered more efficient? 255

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Ans. 14.—In answer to this question I would refer to all that I have stated in answer to the 4th question. I am not quite sure whether the scheme of “compulsory education” is in advance of the period of history in which we find ourselves. I may, however, state that a great deal can be done towards the increase of schools intended for giving elementary instruction, and for rendering them efficient, by the district officers taking an increased interest in the development of primary—I may say mass—education in the country. If the zamindars could be impressed with the belief that they will receive certain considerations at the hands of the Government by helping in the cause of the education of their countrymen, good results will certainly ensue. Ques. 15.—Do you know of any instances in which Government educational institutions of the higher order have been closed or transferred to the management of local bodies as contemplated in paragraph 62 of the Despatch of 1854? And and what do you regard as the chief reasons why more effect has not been given to that provision? Ans. 15.—I am not aware of any instance in which a Government educational institution in this province was transferred to the management of a “local body.” The reason is that there are not “local bodies” who have expressed a desire for, or possess the capacity of, taking the management of such institutions. I do not think that the contents of paragraph 62 of the Educational Despatch of 1854 are known to the general public. Ques. 16.—Do you know of any cases in which a Government institution of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, with or without aid, without injury to education or to any interests which it is the duty of Government to protect? Ans. 16.—I am not aware of any instance in which a Government institution of the higher order could be closed without injury to the cause of education and national progress. So far as I am aware, ‘private bodies’ do not exist to whom the management of such institutions could be transferred. The state of things contemplated in this question might possibly exist in Bengal, but certainly not in the North-West. Ques. 17.—In the province with which you are acquainted, are any gentlemen able and ready to come forward and aid, even more extensively than heretofore, in the establishment of schools and colleges upon the grant in aid system? Ans. 17.—I do not think that in the North-West there are gentlemen who will aid in the establishment of colleges upon the grant-in aid system. With regard to schools, I will state my opinion in my answer to the 36th question. Ques. 18.—If the Government, or any local authority having control of public money, were to announce its determination to withdraw after a given term of years from the maintenance of any higher educational institution, what measures would be best adapted to stimulate private effort in the interim, so as to secure the maintenance of such institution on a private footing? Ans. 18.—Under the circumstances stated in the question, I would recommend that before the actual withdrawal of the State from the maintenance of a higher 256

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educational institution, such school or college should for a certain number of years be made over to a body of residents qualified for the purpose of taking the support and management of the institution into their hands, to be maintained by them on trial under Government supervision. If, after the expiration of the probationary period, it be found that such body of gentlemen can satisfactorily manage the institution, it might be transferred to their care and control. But no such school or college should be transferred without the guarantee of a permanent fund, which would yield an income of at least half the expenditure on which the institution could be maintained on an efficient footing. This fund should be entrusted to intelligent and respectable trustees from among the body of gentlemen charged with the management of such institution. Care should be taken that the principle of strict religious neutrality is duly observed, unless the institution be expressly intended for a class of people professing a certain religious system. Ques. 19.—Have you any remarks to offer on the principles of the grant-in aid system, or the details of its administration? Are the grants adequate in the case of (a) colleges, (b) boys’ schools, (c) girls’ schools, (d) Normal schools? Ans. 19.—(a) I would suggest that the observance of the rules on which grantsin-aid are given might be relaxed in favour of districts, or special classes of people, more than ordinarily backward in the cause of education. (b) There are certainly complaints with respect to the adequacy of grants in the case of girls’ schools. I would recommend that in the present state of female education in this country, the grants to girls’ schools should be on a more liberal scale than the Resolution of the Government on the subject of grants in aid will permit of. Ques. 20.—How far is the whole educational system, as at present administered, one of practical neutrality, i.e., one in which a school or a college has no advantage or disadvantage as regards Government aid and inspection from any religious principles that are taught or not taught in it? Ans. 20.—The whole educational system, as at present administered, is certainly one of practical neutrality with reference to religious principles which may or may not be taught in any school or college. I have not heard of any complaints made, even in the case of Missionary schools or colleges, where, notwithstanding the object with which they were established, secular education is given, which is the condition on which they receive State aid. Ques. 21.—What classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children? How far is the complaint well founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? What is the rate of fees payable for higher education in your province, and do you consider it adequate? Ans. 21.—(a) The colleges and schools of the higher order are principally availed of by the middle class, who justly and reasonably look to the future advancement of their children by affording them the advantages of a liberal education. (b) The complaint that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for the education of their children is certainly a very general one. The reason for it, apart from the 257

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fact that the advantages of education are not fully appreciated by the rich, is to be found in there not being a more graduated scale of fees in colleges and schools. (c) I am not prepared to state accurately the rate of fees payable for “higher education” in this province. I believe that the scale of fees ranges within a minimum of eight annas and a maximum of three rupees. In the Missionary schools the boys pay less. In my opinion the scale of fees could be raised to a maximum of ten rupees, payable by the sons of rich parents. In Government colleges there might be a uniform scale of fees, the amount being regulated by the capacity of the college to impart instruction, and the advantages the State may have to offer to young men who have completed their college education. In the Presidency College of the Calcutta University all the students pay a fee of ten rupees in the arts classes. But the instructive staff of that college is immeasurably superior to the staff of any college in the North West, and then moreover, you have not similar advantages in the North West to offer to graduates with respect to State appointments. I beg leave to be allowed to add that the so called lecturers and professors in some of the Government colleges in this province are appointed on what cannot but be regarded as a “cheap and nasty” principle. While, on the one hand, I am strongly opposed to the supply of the benefits of the education given in colleges at cheap rates, I maintain, on the other, that sufficient consideration must be held out for charging high fees in those institutions. Ques. 22.—Can you adduce any instance of a proprietary school or college supported entirely by fees? Ans. 22.—I do not know of any instance of a proprietary school or college being supported entirely by fees in the North West, and maintained for the purpose of giving instruction to the Natives. Ques. 23.—Is it, in your opinion, possible for a non Government institution of the higher order to become influential and stable when in direct competition with a similar Government institution? If so, under what conditions do you consider that it might become so? Ans. 23.—It is possible for a non-Government institution of the higher order to become stable and influential, notwithstanding its being placed in competition with Government institutions. Take the Canning College at Lucknow for instance. It is a mistake to suppose that this college is availed of only by scholars living within the province of Oudh. I know of several cases of under graduates who have left the Government College at Benaros in order to prosecute their studies in that college. Provided that the college be richly supported and be able to maintain a good instructive staff like the principal and professors of the Conning College, a nonGovernment institution may be able to hold its own against Government Colleges. Ques. 24.—Is the cause of higher education in your province injured by any unhealthy competition? and if so, what remedy, if any, would you apply? Ans. 24.—The cause of higher education is to a certain extent injured by unhealthy competition. This “unhealthy competition” is to a great extent brought about by the existence of Missionary colleges, especially in places where similar 258

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Government institutions are provided. The greatest injury which these Missionary colleges cause to the interest of high education is by charging fees on a very low scale. I would suggest that no State aid be given to any higher educational institution in places where a similar institution is maintained by the Government. So far as the North West is concerned, cases must be very rare indeed, where in any town, however large, one college is not sufficient for the requirements of the people. I would also suggest that in every case in which State aid is given to any college, the aid should be given on the expressly stated condition that the scale of tuition fees payable by students in such aided institution shall under no circumstances be lower than that payable in Government colleges. Ques. 25.—Do educated Natives in your province readily find remunerative employment? Ans. 25.—In my opinion educated Natives do not “readily” find remunerative employment. So far as Government service is concerned, the amlah and heads of offices have a strong aversion to the employment of educated young men to serve under them. Then, again, notwithstanding the existence of such a large number of graduates from the colleges in North-Western Provinces and Oudh, you will find scarcely one in the subordinate executive service, or serving as head of an office establishment in the judicial, revenue, or any other departments of the public service. The recent circular with reference to the appointment of candidates to ministerial posts will have a salutary effect, so far as primary and middle class education are concerned. Until, however, a well digested and more comprehensive scheme for throwing open all the highly paid posts in the Government service to competition by educated Natives is put in operation, the present state of things will continue, so far as relates to the progress of high education in the province. It is not absolutely necessary to declare graduates or any special class of educated young men to be the only eligible candidates. But the scheme should be so laid as to operate against the intrusion of incompetent men into the ranks of the uncovenanted service. A move in this direction will be far more generally useful to the people than any scheme for appointing Natives to posts specially reserved for the covenanted civil service, which can but create unpleasant relations between the rulers and the ruled. At present the prevailing principle on which Natives are selected to fill well paid appointments falls, in most cases, very little short of rank favouritism. Power and responsibility in the hands of ill educated men will incur the danger of being grossly abused. The sooner, therefore, the influences of interest and ‘patronage’ in making appointments give way to a more enlightened and honourable system, the better for the cause of high education and the public service. Ques. 26.—Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information? Ans. 26.—The course of instruction adopted in secondary schools is fairly calculated to store the minds of scholars who may not pursue their studies any 259

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further, with useful and practical information. Any violent and radical change in the subjects of instruction will be in advance of the times, and inconsistent with the conservative and almost traditional theory of education. Text books for teaching the method of keeping accounts, short treatises on meteorology, and even science primers on the plan of the English school series, can with advantage be introduced into all middle class schools, and special prizes and scholarships or other rewards might be given for the encouragement of the study of, and proficiency in, those subjects. Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the entrance examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—I am certainly of opinion that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the University entrance examination in almost all schools teaching up to that standard. This circumstance certainly impairs the value of instruction received by scholars who do not extend their studies beyond the secondary stage of education. I would strongly advocate the wholesale separation of the middle-class schools intended for the purpose of giving secondary instruction from high class schools which are legitimately intended to serve as feeders to high educational institutions. I will refer more fully to this subject in my answer to the 47th question. Ques. 28.—Do you think that the number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the University entrance examination is unduly large when compared with the requirements of the country? If you think so, what do you regard as the causes of this state of things, and what remedies would you suggest? Ans. 28.—In addition to what I have stated in my answer to the preceding question, I will only add that the number of pupils in secondary schools who present themselves for the University entrance examination is not large when compared to the requirements of the country, but certainly large when compared to the number of students who prosecute their studies further in a college. Ques. 29.—What system prevails in your province with reference to scholarship, and have you any remarks to make on the subject? Is the scholarship system impartially administered as between Government and aided schools? Ans. 29.—(a) There exists a chain of scholarships which will lead a deserving scholar from secondary intruction to the highest standard of education which colleges in this province have to offer. (b) I am unable to state whether the scholarship system is impartially administered as between Government and aided schools. I have heard no compaints on the subject, beyond what may be regarded as due to the maintenance of a more efficient teaching staff in the Government schools. Ques. 30.—Is Municipal support at present extended to grant in aid schools, whether belonging to Missionary or other bodies, and how far is this support likely to be permanent? 260

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Ans. 30.—So far as I am aware, municipal support is given to grant in aid schools, whether kept up by Missionaries or other bodies. In order to make this support permanent, a portion of the funds set apart for educational purposes might be devoted to giving aid to deserving middle class schools established within the limits of the Municipality. Ques. 31.—Does the University curriculum afford a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools, or are special Normal schools needed for the purpose? Ans. 31.—Speaking generally, I would say that the University curriculm of studies does give a sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools. In my opinion special Normal schools are not needed for the purpose. Ques. 32.—What is the system of school inspection pursued in your province? In what respect is it capable of improvement? Ans. 32.—The task of school inspection is for the most part confined to the educational authorities and not efficiently performed by them. It would be better if the co-operation of educated residents in towns and villages were secured to aid in this work. The members of the district boards might severally be entrusted with the inspection of schools which are situate within a convenient distance of their residence. Ques. 33.—Can you suggest any method of securing efficient voluntary agency in the work of inspection and examination? Ans. 33.—In addition to what I have stated in my answer to the preceding question, I would suggest that the privileges of inspecting and examining schools might advantageously be accorded to Government officers, pleaders and to educated men in general. Ques. 34.—How far do you consider the text books in use in all schools suitable? Ans. 34.—The text books in use in English schools are not, in my opinion well chosen. The old series of Readers known (if my memory serves me right) as “Bengal Readers” are far more suitable for Native youths. Ques. 35.—Are the present arrangements of the Education Department in regard to examinations or text books, or in any other way, such as unnecessarily interfere with the free development of private institutions? Do they in any wise tend to check the development of natural character and ability, or to interfere with the production of useful vernacular literature? Ans. 35.—I do not think that the present arrangement of the Education Department, with respect to examinations and text-books, unnecessarily interferes with the free development of private institutions. I am of opinion, however, that the language of text books (Hindi) not being the real vernacular of the people, the use of such books is detrimental to the healthy development of vernacular literature, properly so regarded. Ques. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India what part can, in your opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? Ans. 36.—The State should, under the peculiar circumstances of the country, undertake the direct control and management of elementary and high education. It is to the manifest advantage of the State that a larger number of the people 261

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should be literate. It is equally advantageous to the State that there should be a body of men who will by imbibing ideas of Western science and learning, help in the task of civilising the country, and in bringing their countrymen to an intelligent appreciation of the blessings resulting from, and to sympathise with, the British rule. If the two extremities were secured, then, as a natural outcome, the institutions for giving secondary education will, by an irresistible force of circumstances, be cared for by other than Government agency. Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? Ans. 37.—The effect of the withdrawal by Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges will, under the present circumstances not only impair their efficiency, but affect injuriously the cause of education in this country. The immediate effect of such withdrawal will be that the task of education will be taken up very greatly by the several denominations of Christian Missionaries in India. The extensive increase in the number of Missionary colleges or schools which will inevitably ensue might not be deemed quite consistent with the principle of strict religious neutrality which the Government is so anxious to maintain. The present state of educational affairs in this province does not warrant the growth of a spirit of reliance “upon local exertions and combination for local purposes.” Ques. 38.—In the event of the Government withdrawing to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges, do you apprehend that the standard of instruction in any class of institutions would deteriorate? If you think so, what measures would you suggest in order to prevent this result? Ans. 38.—(a) I believe that the standard of instruction will deteriorate in colleges and high schools if Government were suddenly to withdraw from the direct management of those institutions. There will, in that case, not be the same class of teachers and professors in those institutions. (b) The cause of high education will suffer irreparably if Government were to withdraw from the control and support of colleges. The interests of secondary education will not be injured if Government were gradually to withdraw from the management of middle class schools, and transfer them to competent local bodies under State supervision. Ques. 39.—Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestion to make on this subject? Ans. 39.—(a) Definite instructions “in duty and the principles of moral conduct” will be out of place in a collegiate institution. Nothing of the kind is done in Government schools. (b) I would suggest the introduction of such books as “the moral class book” into the curriculum of studies in schools. 262

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Ques. 40.—Are any steps taken for promoting the physical well being of students in the schools or colleges in your province? Have you any suggestions to make on the subject? Ans. 40.—(a) So far as I am aware, no steps are taken in the colleges and schools in this province for promoting the physical well being of the students. The only exceptions are in the cases of Muir Central College and the Benares College, where students are encouraged to play cricket, foot ball, &c. (b) I would propose that a certain allowance be made towards the furtherance of this object to every Government school or college. The care of this branch of instruction might be entrusted to a teacher who, by reason of his training and habits of life, is likely to take a personal interest in the physical well being of the students. Ques. 41.—Is there indigenous instruction for girls in the province with which you are acquainted, and if so, what is its character? Ans. 41.—There are no indigenous girls’ schools in this province that I know of Ques. 42.—What progress has been made by the Department in instituting schools for girls, and what is the character of the instruction imparted in them? What improvements can you suggest? Ans. 42.—(a) The progress made by the Educational Department in instituting schools for girls has been very little, compared to the actual requirements of the country. The Government schools that do exist for the education of girls give elementary instruction. I am not aware of the existence of any Government school teaching up to the standard of high or middle class schools for boys. The aided schools for the latter purpose are, if my information be correct, mostly meant for Christian girls. (b) I would suggest that in every district a certain number of Native gentlemen be appointed to form a committee for the spread of female education. Ques. 43.—Have you any remarks to make on the subject of mixed schools? Ans. 43.—Mixed schools are, and for years to come must continue to be, in advance of the ideas of the people with regard to female education and, generally speaking, repugnant to their social habits and customs. Ques. 44.—What is the best method of providing teachers for girls? Ans. 44.—The most feasible plan for providing teachers for girls’ schools will be to appoint Native Christian, Eurasian, and East Indian ladies for the purpose. There are Normal schools in Calcutta, where young ladies are trained as teachers, and whence a supply of efficient teachers can be obtained. Ques. 45.—Are the grants to girls’ schools larger in amount, and given on less onerous terms, than those to boys’ schools, and is the distinction sufficiently marked? Ans. 45.—I am unable to answer this question satisfactorily. In my opinion schools for girls should be far more liberally dealt with in the matter of grants in aid than schools for boys. Ques. 46.—In the promotion of female education, what share has already been taken by European ladies, and how far would it be possible to increase the interest which ladies might take in this cause? 263

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Ans. 46.—With honourable exceptions here and there, European ladies (unconnected with Missionary bodies) have taken no interest whatever in the promotion of female education in their province. Ladies connected with the Zenana Mission Society, and others whose husbands are Missionaries have exerted themselves in instituting girls’ schools, but such institutions are unfortunately attended only by girls of the lowest castes, who are persuaded to come by reason of the pecuniary inducements held out to them. I would suggest the adoption of the following measures:— (1) The appointment of ladies’ committees in every large town, or wherever possible, for the purpose of instituting, visiting, and examining girls’ schools. In the case of ladies who have to accompany their husbands into the interior of the districts, the task of inspection and examination of schools established in rural districts might be entrusted to them. A great deal of good could be done by European ladies having no connection with any religious society taking an active personal in the spread of female education. (2) The appointment of European ladies as honorary visitors of girls’ schools. Ques. 47.—What do you regard as the chief defects, other than any to which you have already referred, that experience has brought to light in the educational system as it has been hitherto administered? What suggestions have you to make for the remedy of such defects? Ans. 47.—I have to find fault with the system of instruction which prevails in the English schools in this country. Whether these schools be viewed as feeders for colleges or as institutions for the purpose of imparting secondary education, they have failed to achieve either of these objects, and the failure is, in my opinion, attributable to the method of instruction pursued in them. Let me explain myself. Take an ordinary institution like the Benares Collegiate School, with which I am most familiar, having been educated there. There are 9 or 10 classes which take students through a course of seven years’ study before they can hope to present themselves to the University entrance examination. This period of seven years, it may be stated, applies to the case of a boy of fair ability who takes a class at the end of each session. The result of this seven years’ study is, in my opinion, not commensurate with the time spent in a school. This accounts very greatly for the fact that a comparatively small number of undergraduates are successful in their University career. The whole curriculum of studies prescribed for the several classes of a Government school might be divided into two sections. (1) English language and literature, and (2) general subjects of instruction viz., history, geography, and mathematics. The method adopted for teaching boys “English” is to take them through a course of so called Readers, from the first of the series, which is a primer, to the most advanced, containing poetical and prose pieces from well known authors. The mode in which the boys are taught is, with the exception of three or four higher classes, this—Every sentence in the book is translated by the teacher into the vernacular, and this translation is committed to memory, parrot-like, by the pupils. In some cases, the teachers 264

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have translations of the text books ready, which is dictated to the boys and taken down in writing by them as each day’s lesson is set. This translation is repeated the next day after the reading of the lesson in English is over. I know of instances in which these translations are printed, and each boy provides himself with a copy of these books in order to save himself the irksome task of writing out the translation of each day’s lesson in English from the teacher’s dictation. Then, again, some of these Readers are most inartificially compiled, and not suited to the capacity of Native youths in whose hands they are placed. In one of the number of the series of Readers will be found such pieces as Hamlet’s Soliloquy, Adam’s Prayer from Milton, and others of a similar character. The boys are utterly incapable of understanding what they are made to read through, and I venture to submit that no efforts on the part of a translator, however accurate a scholar he may be, will enable a Native lad to comprehend and recognise the beauty of such highly artistic pieces of composition in the English language. We will now take English grammar. From a work which professes to teach the elementary rules within the compass of 10 or 12 pages to the elaborate work written by Professor Angus on the English tongue, there are several intermediate text books. In the lower forms, the boys have to repeat the definitions without in the least comprehending them; and the examiner at the end of the session is perfectly satisfied with what might be properly regarded as the test of memory rather than the boys’ understanding. Take an ordinary boy of the middle form, viz., the fifth class in a school consisting of 9 classes, and examine him in English grammar. Ask him to define an intransitive verb. He will give you readily the rigmarole definition of a verb in which the “action does not pass from the doer to the object.” Ask him to explain what he understands of this definition in his own words, either in English or in his own vernacular, and you will at once observe that the signification of the terms intransitive “action,” ‘doer,’ and ‘object,’ is one beyond his power of comprehension. The boy will give you the pluperfect tense, third person singular number of the verb “to write,” but ask him to make use of that word in composing an easy sentence, and the poor boy will be at his wits’ end. I hope I shall not be deemed guilty of exaggerating facts it I add that in most cases a boy brought up in one of these schools, begins to learn English grammar before he knows anything of the construction of his own language. History and geography are taught much in the same way. In the case of mathematics things are just a little better, but the same method of instruction is applied with more or less force in all branches of study. The reason for the anomalous state of things I complain of seems to me to be obvious. The rudimentary portion of a boy’s education must be imparted to him in his own vernacular, in the language in which he thinks. It seems to me to be mere waste of time and energy to seek to teach a boy general subjects of instruction in a language which he can only understand by means of translation into another language which is his mother tongue. The result of this method of instruction seems to be highly deplorable. A large number of boys have to leave 265

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these schools unable to prosecute their studies beyond a certain point, and they go away having acquired only a useless smattering of the English language. The best portion of their time has been frittered away, not in storing their mind with facts, which might properly be said to constitute the elements of real education, but in a vain endeavour to unlearn that which is most natural in order to seek to learn that which can only be learnt by a highly artificial process. They are thus neither prepared for receiving the benefits of University education, nor can they be said to have done much in the way of acquiring general knowledge of some practical value. One of the great principles to be observed in the art of teaching—in fact the most important principle—is to impart instruction in the manner in which the facts taught can be most easily conveyed to the comprehension of young minds. That which is readily understood will be easily and long retained. The solution of the problem, whether it is easier to suggest facts to a boy’s understanding in his own vernacular or in a foreign language admits of no difficulty. What I ask for is that the Department of Public Instruction and persons charged with the task of educating youths in this country, do once for all recognise the exact importance of the principle I have tried to elucidate. If the instruction sought to be imparted to the boys in classes teaching up to the standard of middle class schools, is to be of any real value and permanent advantage to them, whether in their after life in the world, or in their college career, I submit that the vehicle of instruction must be in the vernacular, so as to ensure the easy comprehension and retention of facts taught to them. For instance, you want to teach a lad of 10 or 11 years of age, and of average intelligence, the facts of Indian history. Now, if you teach him those facts in English, what do you do? You lead the youth, however gently, to dash from his mind impressions as they come uppermost in his own vernacular, in order that he should receive those very ideas in a form in which they were not naturally presented to his mind before. Repeat the same process and what happens—an idea pure and simple in itself is made complex in the course of its formation, before it is conveyed to the young mind in the shape you wish it to be received. It is not sufficient answer to say that a certain degree of success has been achieved by the English schools. A little observation and reflection will enable any unprejudiced person to perceive that if the facts constituting the average quantum of knowledge taught in these schools be remembered by the boys at all, the reproduction of the impressions of those facts will, in the case of those who have not the capacity to think in English, be in their vernacular. I may also add that only so much of the total quantity of facts taught will be remembered by them as the boys have learnt to understand and retain in their own language. I beg respectfully to commend the above observations to the serious consideration of the Education Commission. If the objections I have urged against the English school system be deemed valid, I would suggest the adoption of the following measures:— First—The enforcement of a uniform rule that the teaching of all subjects of general instruction shall be in the vernacular, in all institutions and classes 266

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educating up to the standard of the middle class schools. This will render necessary the abolition of all junior classes in English schools except the first two or three, to be kept up for the purpose of preparing boys for the University entrance examination. In all middle class schools English will be taught as a language. There will thus be no necessity for keeping in English schools more than a certain number of classes absolutely necessary for teaching the subjects required for matriculation. I would even go so far as to suggest that the rules of English grammar might, in the first instance, be taught to the boys in the vernacular, and when they are able to understand the construction of easy sentences, then they should be entrused with the study of English grammar in English. My idea is principally derived from the method of teaching Latin grammar and composition so generally adopted in the schools in England. English composition can very easily be learnt from text books written on the plan of Henry’s Series of Latin Books. The nearest approach to such text books have been made in this province by Mr. Stapley, and Babu Mathura Prasada Misra, but there is great room for improvement. Secondly—The separation of the English schools from the middle class schools throughout the country. In the former class of institutions general instruction will be given in English, a second language being taught at the option of the boys, whereas in the latter, general instruction will be given in the vernacular, English being treated as a second language. In that case, boys who have no ambition to enter on a college career will regard their education as completed as soon as they have reached the highest stage of knowledge attainable in the middle class schools. High education in the sense in which it is at present understood, must for years to come be given in English. Hence the necessity of maintaining English schools. These schools should not therefore be regarded as places for giving secondary instruction. Let them be rated at their real worth. Regard them as feeders for high education and nothing else. I would divide all educational institutions into three classes and define their objects thus:— 1st. Primary Schools.—The object of these schools is to impart elementary instruction (reading, writing and arithmetic) to the largest possible number of the people. 2nd. Middle Class Schools.—These might either be purely vernacular or Anglo vernacular, according as English is or is not taught in these schools. These institutions are chiefly intended for the bulk of the middle class. Here the standard of instruction given should be of such a character as to convey a knowledge of facts generally useful in all the practical concerns of life. 3rd. High Educational Institutions.—viz., all colleges teaching the subjects prescribed by the University and English schools kept up for the purpose of preparing young men to enter into the college. In my opinion both the college and the English school should be regarded as one institution. In places where Government maintains a college, the English school might be attached to such college, and the whole institution could be then supervised and controlled by one agency. This measure can be recommended on the ground of economy. 267

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The above three classes of institutions should be treated, as far as possible, as distinct systems of instruction. Ques. 48.—Is any part of the expenditure incurred by the Government on high education in your province unnecessary? Ans. 48.—The expenditure incurred by the North West Government in maintaining the three colleges at Agra, Allahabad and Benares (with its Sanskrit department) is necessary. But the expenditure incurred in giving grants for the support of private institutions teaching the University or college classes is certainly unnecessary and 11 cases in which these institutions are situate in those three towns or in adjacent places, the grant in aid has the effect of impairing the efficiency of the Government colleges, and of being prejudicial to the cause of high education in this province. Ques. 49.—Have Government institutions been set up in localities where places of instruction already existed, which might by grants in aid or other assistance adequately supply the educational wants of the people? Ans. 49.—I am not aware of any instance in which Government institutions have been set up in the North West in localities where places of instruction previously existed. What I would complain of is (vide my answer to the preceding question) the giving of State aid to private institutions set up in or near localities where Government institutions exist, and which adequately supply the educational wants of the people. Ques. 50.—Is there any foundation for the statement that officers of the Education Department take too exclusive an interest in higher education? Would beneficial results be obtained by introducing into the Department more men of practical training in the art of teaching and school management? Ans. 50.—It is not true that officers of the Educational Department take too exclusive an interest in higher education. I do not consider that there exists any necessity for introducing into the Department “more men of practical training in the art of teaching and school management.” The existing staff carry on the duties of teaching and school management satisfactorily. Ques. 51.—Is the system of pupil teachers or monitors in force in your province? If so, please state how it works. Ans. 51.—I am not aware of the existence of the system of pupil teachers or monitors in the Government institutions in the North West. The system might exist in schools established by Missionaries or other bodies, but I cannot state to what extent it exists, or how it works. Ques. 52.—Is there any tendency to raise primary into secondary schools unnecessarily or prematurely? Should measures be taken to check such a tendency? If so, what measures? Ans. 52.—(a) There is to a certain extent a tendency to prematurely raise primary into secondary schools. (b) Measures should be taken to check this tendency only in cases where the existing number of middle class schools is sufficient to meet the requirements of the people. 268

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(c) The most effective method of checking this tendency would be by withdrawing State aid. If that prove ineffectual, let matters alone. The raising of the status is due to normal and healthy causes. Ques. 53.—Should the rate of fees in any class of schools or colleges vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil? Ans. 53.—The rate of fees in all primary and secondary (or middle class) schools should vary according to the means of the parents or guardians of the pupil. In the colleges a uniform rate of tuition fees should, in my opinion, be maintained. Ques. 54.—Has the demand for high education in your province reached such a stage as to make the profession of teaching a profitable one? Have schools been opened by men of good position as a means of maintaining themselves? Ans. 54.—(a) The demand for high education in the North West has not reached such a stage as to make the profession of the teaching a remunerative one. (b) I am not aware of schools having been opened in this province by men of good position and education with the view of earning a livelihood. Ques. 55.—To what classes of institutions do you think that the system of assigning grants according to the results of periodical examinations should be applied? What do you regard as the chief conditions for making this system equitable and useful? Ans. 55.—The system of assigning grants according to the results of periodical examinations should be applied to middle-class schools only. The grant should be made with reference to both the number of students sent up for middle class examinations, and also to the number who actually pass. Ques. 56.—To what classes of institutions do you think that the system of assigning grants in aid of the salaries of certificated teachers can be best applied? Under what conditions do you regard this system as a good one? Ans. 56.—The system of assigning grants in aid of the salaries of certificated teachers can be best applied to (1) primary schools for boys, and (2) girls’ schools. The system should be brought into operation in—(1) cases in which certain districts or portion of districts are backward in the cause of education, and (2) in cases in which such institutions are established among the poorer classes of the people. Ques. 57.—To what proportion of the gross expense do you think that the grant in aid should amount under ordinary circumstances in the case of colleges and schools of all grades? Ans. 57.—Under ordinary circumstances the grant-in-aid should amount to half the gross expenses incurred in maintaining colleges and schools of all descriptions. But in the cases of primary schools in places backward in the cause of education, and in that of girls’ schools generally, the grant in aid might amount to a minimum of two thirds of the gross expenditure. Ques. 58.—What do you consider to be the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught as a class by one instructor in the case of colleges and schools respectively? Ans. 58.—I consider that the maximum number of pupils that can be efficiently taught by one instructor may be as follows:— 269

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(1) In the case of primary schools—twenty. (2) In the case of secondary schools—thirty. (3) In the case of colleges where instruction is given by professors or lecturers— twenty-five. Ques. 59.—In your opinion, should fees in colleges be paid by the term or by the month? Ans. 59.—In my opinion fees in colleges should be taken by the month. Ques. 60.—Does a strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools? Ans. 60.—A strict interpretation of the principle of religious neutrality does not require the withdrawal of the Government from the direct management of colleges and schools. Whether the observance of the principle demands the withdrawal of State and from institutions where religious instruction is given may be regarded as an open question. Ques. 61.—Do you think that the institution of University professorships would have an important effect in improving the quality of high education? Ans. 61.—The institution of University professorships would certainly have an important effect in imparting a healthy tone to the character and quality of high education. But these professorships should be distributed among the different colleges affiliated to the Calcutta University. So far as the North-West is concerned there might be three professorships for the purpose of delivering lectures on three distinct branches of study, in the three Government Colleges at Agra, Allahabad, and Benares, in order to give a special character to each of those institutions. Suppose, for instance, the professorships of English language and literature to be attached to the Agra College, the professorship of science to Muir Central College, and that of mathematics to Benares, the result will be that undergraduates wishing to take honors in one or other of these subjects will attend the college where lectures are delivered by the University professor in the subject he has chosen. Ques. 62.—Is it desirable that promotions from class to class should depend, at any stage of school education, on the results of public examinations extending over the entire province? In what cases, if any, is it preferable that such promotions be left to the school authorities? Ans. 62.—Promotions from class to class should be left to the school authorities, with the exception of cases in which certain distinct stages of instruction are reached, to test which a uniform system of examination is provided for the whole province. Ques. 63.—Are there any arrangements between the colleges and schools of your province to prevent boys who are expelled from one institution, or who leave it improperly, from being received into another. What are the arrangements which you would suggest? Ans. 63.—(a) I believe that there are arrangements for preventing a boy expelled from one Government college or school from being received into another. But 270

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whether there are such arrangements in the case of schools kept up by Missionaries or other bodies I do not know. (b) The best plan would be not to admit a boy, who has previously been educated in one institution into another, unless he produces a certificate of character from the authorities of the former institution. No boy should be admitted into any institution without an enquiry being made into his character and antecedents. Ques. 64.—In the event of the Government withdrawing from the direct management of higher institutions generally, do you think it desirable that it should retain under direct management one college in each province as a model to other colleges, and if so, under what limitations or conditions? Ans. 64.—(a) It would be simply ruinous to the cause of high education in this province if Government were to withdraw from the maintenance of the existing colleges; should such withdrawal, however, be decided upon, it will be absolutely necessary to retain a model college for the province. (b) (1)—The model college should be located not necessarily at the head quarters of the province, but in the healthiest town in it. (2) Provision should be made for the “residence” of the undergraduates. If only one model college be retained in each province under the direct management of the Government, I would propose that the laws in force in the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge with regard to residence, discipline, keeping of terms, &c., be enforced in these provincial colleges, so far is the circumstances of the country will permit. (3) The provincial colleges should be richly endowed with scholarships. The number of these scholarships and the period for which they may be declared to be tenable, should (with the exception of scholarships given for proficiency in special subjects) be so regulated and fixed as to carry a deserving scholar through the whole of his University career. (4) The provincial colleges must maintain professorships for lecturing on all or most of the subjects of studies in which degrees are conferred by the University. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B. A. standard? Ans. 65.—In all colleges teaching up to the B. A. standard none but European professors should be employed to lecture on English language and literature. Natives of high academical attainments, and who have attained reputation as successful teachers, may be appointed as professors of mathematics, science, &c. I would, however, object to the employment of graduates, who have not gained any experience in the art of teaching, as professors in colleges. Ques. 66.—Are European professors employed, or likely to be employed, in colleges under Native management? Ans. 66.—European professors are likely to be employed in colleges under Native management for the purpose of giving lectures in “English” only. Ques. 67.—Are the circumstances of any class of the population in your province (e.g., the Muhammadans) such as to require exceptional treatment in the 271

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matter of English education? To what are these circumstances due and how far have they been provided for? Ans. 67.—I do not think that the circumstances of any class of population in the North-West are so peculiar as to require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education. The Muhammadans occupy a solitary position in putting forward claims to “exceptional treatment.” They have a sentiment against attending colleges and schools where instruction is given on what they regard as an infidel system. This is sheer prejudice; and it is greatly to be regretted that eminent Muhammadans, taking stock of such a prejudice, trade thereon with the almost sinister motive of keeping their co-religionists socially aloof from the general body of the people with whom by reason of their strong religious antipathy, they feel an unreasonable abhorrence to associate. There is a plausible ground for East Indians and Eurasians objecting to send their children to institutions attended by Hindus; but the Muhammadans can have no pretext whatever. They enjoy already more than their legitimate share of the “loaves and fishes” of the Government service without receiving the benefits of English education. It is their own fault if they do not send their children to institutions founded for the education of all classes of the people. In my opinion, anything that tends to raise the belief that Government will countenance their prejudices is not only untenable on the grounds of strict observance of the principles of religious neutrality in the matter of education and justice to all classes of people under the British rule, without distinction of race or creed, but may be politically dangerous. The decaying remnants of the old Moslem hauteur towards the Hindus must die out. Ques. 68.—How far would Government be justified in withdrawing from any existing school or college in places where any class of the population objects to attend the only alternative institution on the ground of its religious teaching? Ans. 68.—In my opinion Government would not be justified in withdrawing from the maintenance of any existing college or school if the only alternative institution is objected to by the people on the ground of its religious teaching. Ques. 69.—Can schools and colleges under Native management compete successfully with corresponding institutions under European management? Ans. 69.—In the present state of education and civilisation in this country, schools and colleges under Native management cannot hope to compete, with any degree of success, with corresponding institutions maintained under direct European management. Ques. 70.—Are the conditions on which grants in aid are given in your province more onerous and complicated than necessary? Ans. 70.—I have no remarks to make on the system of grants-in-aid in addition to what I have already said in my answers to questions touching on that subject. BENARES, The 8th August, 1882

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MEMORIALS RELATING TO

THE N. W. PROVINCES EDUCATION COMMISSION. Answers to some of the Commission’s questions prepared by BABU KEDAR NATH PALODHI Ques. 1.—Please state what opportunities you have had of forming an opinion on the subject of education in India, and in what province your experience has been gained. Ans. 1.—I was teacher of mathematics, physical sciences, and English in the Benares Government College for about 17 years; superintendent of the Wards’ Institution, Benares, for about 18 years, and manager, and subsequently a member of the managing committee of the Bengalitola Preparatory School for many years. My experience is confined to the North-Western Provinces. Ques. 2.—Do you think that in your province the system of primary education has been placed on a sound basis, and is capable of development up to the requirements of the community? Can you suggest any improvements in the system of administration or in the course of instruction? Ans. 2.—I do not think the system of primary education in these provinces is calculated to meet the requirements of the community, and it is not therefore popular. Primary schools should be after the model of the indigenous schools. The subjects taught should be chiefly reading, writing, penmanship, and elementary arithmetic. The hours of attendance should be from 6 A.M. to 10 A.M., instead of from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M. Discretion should be used in the choice of teachers. Ques. 5.—What opinion does your experience lead you to hold of the extent and value of home instruction? How far is a boy educated at home able to compete, on equal terms, at examinations qualifying for the public service, with boys educated at school? Ans. 5.—Home instruction, if conducted properly, is useful; but it can qualify boys for certain departments only of the public service. It is, besides, generally unfavourable to mental development. Ques. 9.—Have you any suggestions to make on the system in force for providing teachers in primary schools? What is the present social status of village schoolmasters? Do they exert a beneficial influence among the villagers? Can you suggest measures, other than increase of pay, for improving their position? Ans. 9.—If teachers of primary schools be chosen from the respectable classes of the community with due regard to their moral character, they will be respected by the villagers, and their influence over them will be beneficial. Ques. 11.—Is the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools of your province the dialect of the people; and, if not, are the schools on that account less useful and popular?

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Ans. 11.—The vernacular taught in the schools is not exactly the dialect of the people; but the schools are not on that account, the less useful or less popular. The dialects of the people of the different villages in the different parts of the country are so varied, that it is not possible to make the vernacular taught in schools quite agree with them, and it is neither necessary nor desirable to do so. Ques. 13.—Have you any suggestions to make regarding the taking of fees in primary schools? Ans. 13.—The fees charged in the primary schools should be sufficiently low to allow all classes of people to send their children to them. Ques. 14.—Will you favour the Commission with your views, first, as to how the number of primary schools can be increased, and secondly, how they can be gradually rendered more efficient? Ans. 14.—Primary schools may be increased in number by economy in the establishments, and in efficiency, by making the subjects of study really useful and practical. Ques. 16.—Do you know of any cases in which Government institutions of the higher order might be closed or transferred to private bodies, with or without aid, without injury to education or to any interests which it is the duty of Government to protect? Ans. 16.—In the present state of the native community, Government educational institutions of the higher order can neither be closed nor transferred to private bodies without considerable detriment to education. Ques. 20.—How far is the whole educational system, as at present administered, one of practical neutrality, i.e., one in which a school or a college has no advantage or disadvantage as regards Government aid and inspection from any religious principles that are taught or not taught in it? Ans. 20.—As regards Government aid and inspection, all schools and colleges receive equal attention. Ques. 21.—What classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children? How far is the complaint well founded that the wealthy classes do not pay enough for such education? What is the rate of fees payable for higher education in your province, and do you consider it adequate? Ans. 21.—The middle classes principally avail themselves of Government or aided schools and colleges for the education of their children. The wealther classes pay far less for the education of their children than the poorer classes, because their children attend schools only till they acquire enough of English to enable them to converse with Europeans, and read short letters in English. In these provinces the fees in the Government colleges vary from Rs. 2 to 5 a month according to different classes. In the Canning College and in Missionary institutions the fees are lower. The fees are rather too high for the poor and too low for the rich.

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Ques. 24.—Is the cause of higher education in your province injured by any unhealthy competition; and, if so, what remedy, if any, would you apply? Ans. 24.—As the credit of schools and colleges chiefly depends on the figures they cut at the University examinations, there is great temptation to cram the students and prepare them mechanically for the University examinations. Those institutions which do so have an advantage over those which discharge their duty conscientiously by trying to impart sound knowledge. Competition between institutions pursuing the opposite methods of teaching greatly injures the cause of education. Ques. 25.—Do educated Natives in your province readily find remunerative employment? Ans. 25.—Educated Natives find very great difficulty in securing remunerative employment. I know of an M. A. who was obliged to open a petty shop for his support. Except in the Education Department graduates cannot generally get employment. Ques. 26.—Is the instruction imparted in secondary schools calculated to store the minds of those who do not pursue their studies further with useful and practical information? Ans. 26.—The instruction imparted in secondary schools is not at all calculated to store the minds of the pupils with really useful and practical knowledge. It enables them to pass examinations, and this is its only use. Ques. 27.—Do you think there is any truth in the statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the entrance examination of the University? If so, are you of opinion that this circumstance impairs the practical value of the education in secondary schools for the requirements of ordinary life? Ans. 27.—The statement that the attention of teachers and pupils is unduly directed to the entrance examination of the University is, I am sorry to say, perfectly true. This circumstance of course impairs the intrinsic value of education. Ques. 28.—Do you think that the number of pupils in secondary schools, who present themselves for the University entrance examination is unduly large when compared with the requirements of the country? If you think so what do you regard as the cause of this state of things, and what remedies would you suggest? Ans. 28.—If the object of education is, as it should be, to prepare the pupils for the exigencies of after life and not only for employment as teachers and clerks the number is not unduly large. If this be the object, the curriculum of studies requires remodelling. Ques. 29.—What system prevails in your province with reference to scholarships, and have you any remarks to make on the subject? Is the scholarship system impartially administered as between Government and aided schools? Ans. 29.—Scholarships, in the North Western Provinces, are awarded to students who pass the University examinations in the first division only. This is not sufficiently encouraging. The scholarship system is impartially administered.

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Ques. 33.—Can you suggest any method of securing efficient voluntary agency in the work of inspection and examination? Ans. 33.—Local committees, such as existed before, consisting of Europeans and educated Natives, may be appointed. Ques. 34.—How far do you consider the text books in use in all schools suitable? Ans. 34.—The text books in English are generally good, but the vernacular ones require improvement. Ques. 36.—In a complete scheme of education for India what parts can, in your opinion, be most effectively taken by the State and by other agencies? Ans. 36.—The time has not yet arrived when Government can conscientiously withdraw itself from educational matters. It must patiently bear the trouble half a century more. Ques. 37.—What effect do you think that the withdrawal of Government to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges would have upon the spread of education, and the growth of a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes? Ans. 37.—The withdrawal of Government from the direct management of educational institutions of any kind will certainly nip education in the bud. Ques. 38.—In the event of the Government withdrawing to a large extent from the direct management of schools or colleges do you apprehend that the standard of instruction in any class of institutions would deteriorate? If you think so, what measures would you suggest in order to prevent this result? Ans. 38.—The standard of instruction will certainly deteriorate. If Government is anxious to withdraw itself from the virtuous but onerous task of managing directly or indirectly educational institutions, it must proceed slowly and cautiously, preparing the Native aristocracy for taking its place. Ques. 40.—Are any steps taken for promoting the physical well being of students in the schools or colleges in your province? Have you any suggestions to make on the subject? Ans. 40.—The physical well being of students deserves great attention, but no systematic step has as yet been taken in these provinces. In some of the colleges and schools manly sports are encouraged, but not sufficiently. In every college and school the pupils should have, compulsorily, European manly games and gymnastics for a couple of hours. Ques. 46.—In the promotion of female education, what share has already been taken by European ladies, and how far would it be possible to increase the interest which ladies might take in this cause? Ans. 46.—Missionary ladies take a prominent part in female education, but their motives are suspected. It is quite natural to expect this. It is possible to increase the interest taken by them to any extent by proper encouragement. Ques. 47.—What do you regard as the chief defects, other than any to which you have already referred, that experience has brought to light in the educational system as it has hitherto been administered? What suggestions have you to make for the remedy of such defects? 276

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[MISSING TEXT] ment one college in each province as a model to other colleges, and, if so, under what limitations or conditions? Ans. 64.—If Government is determined to give up the direct management of higher institutions generally, it is certainly desirable that it should retain under direct management one college in each province as a model to other colleges. Ques. 65.—How far do you consider it necessary for European professors to be employed in colleges educating up to the B. A. standard? Ans. 65.—In colleges educating up to the B.A. standard, professors of English should invariably be Englishmen, and professors of physical science, Europeans. Professors of mathematics should be Natives, and professors of other branches, either Europeans or Natives. Ques. 66.—Are European professors employed, or likely to be employed, in colleges under Native management? Ans. 66.—There are European professors in the Canning College only. Except for teaching English to advanced pupils, European professors are not likely to be appointed. Ques. 67.—Are the circumstances of any class of the population in your province (e.g., the Muhammadans) such as to require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education? To what are these circumstances due, and how far have they been provided for? Ans. 67.—The circumstances of no class of the population of these provinces require exceptional treatment in the matter of English education. The Muhammadans having been able to secure easily the higher and lucrative posts under Government without knowing English, did not care for English education. Now, finding some difficulty in securing them, they do not scruple to send their children to colleges and schools. An account of the Kayesth Pathshálá Allahabad, read at a meeting held on the 27th March, 1882, under the presidency of Sir Robert Stuart, Knight, Chief Justice of the High Court, North Western Provinces 1. This institution owes its origin to the learned and public spirited Munshi Kali Prasad a resident of Shahzadpur in the district of Allahabad and a leading member of the Oudh Bar. The object which the gentleman had originally in view was to provide primary and practical education for such boys of his own caste (Kayasths) whose parents from some cause or other were unable to give proper education to their children or to avail themselves of the training afforded by Government or other schools in some large station in the neighbourhood. To carry out this benevolent and noble intent on he founded this institution in 1873 at his own expense under the designation of the Kayastha Páthshálá. The contributions which he made from time to time for its support in cash and property now amount in value to more than Rs. 1,40,000 while those from other persons amount to nearly Rs. 10,000. Thus the funds out of which the costs of maintaining the institution are defrayed amount to a little more than Rs. 1,50,000.

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2. From the date of its establishment in 1873 up to June 1878 the status of the institution was that of a primary school and in July 1878 it was raised to that of an Anglo vernacular middle school. 3. The management of the páthshálá is vested in a governing body and a committee of management consisting of certain native gentlemen at the head of whom is Munshi Hanuman Prasad a leading pleader of the High Court of Judicature for the North Western Provinces. 4. Connected with the school is a boarding house intended for the accommodation of certain students which contains at present 18 foundationers and two boarders. Three of the teachers belonging to the school staff remain day and night within the páthshálá compound to look after the boarders. As a reward for this extra work, they get board and lodging free from the páthshálá. 5. Exclusive of other servants and those belonging to the boarding establishments the school staff consists of one head master and eight teachers. 6. There are four classes of students in the páthshálá— 1st.—The foundationers who are entirely supported by the páthshálá. 2nd.—The boarders who pay their expenses and live under the superintendence of the páthshálá. 3rd.—The aided students who get scholarships and necessary books from the institution; and 4th.—The day-scholars who pay their tuition fees. The following is the number of each class of students— Foundationers Boarders Aided students Day scholars TOTAL

18 2 37 61 118

The following statement shows the number of students according to their castes— 1 2 3

[ILLEGIBLE TEXT]

{

Brahmins Kayasthas Rajputs Kathis [Illegible Text]

63 0 12

}

TOTAL

25 81 12 118

The average daily attendance is 82 per cent. and no student is admitted into the school whose age exceeds 15 years.

Note by PROFESSOR RAJ KUMAR SARVADHIKARI I—On the Vernacular of the country—Hindi is the dialect of the people of Oudh, but the vernacular recognised and taught in the schools is Urdu. Urdu is the

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dialect of the Muhammadan inhabitants and Hindi of the Hindus. The proportion of Hindus to Muhammadans in this province is ten to one. Almost all the Hindus speak Hindi, and Urdu is a foreign tongue to them. In the districts very few people understand Urdu. No paper written in Urdu can be read by more than ten out of a hundred in the interior. The assistance of a munshi is called to read even the most ordinary letter written in Urdu. This farrogo of bad Arabic and Persian, which is known as Urdu, and which is so much favored and encouraged, was formed, says an eminent comparative philologist, among the motley soldiers composed of various races “suddenly gathered by the command of a Chengiz Khan or Timur like billows heaving and swelling at the call of a thunder-storm.” Judged by its grammatical structure, Urdu is a daughter of modernised Sanskrit. Its grammatical and formal elements are Hindi, but its body is formed from Arabic roots and Persian words inland with those of Sanskrit derivation. Its origin is comparatively of modern date. It was in the reign of Shahjahan that it assumed a visible shape. The Afghan conquerors, unable to express their thoughts in the language of the country to the Natives, carried on their intercourse with the people and conversed with their Indian wives and children in that composite dialect known as Urdu. With one exception, the vowel sounds of the language having no visible representation in its alphabet are expressed by diacritical marks which are often omitted in writing. Every one is aware how very difficult it is to read this language of consonants; how a series of letters uninterrupted by a vowel may convey many different meanings, and how the sense could be misconstrued by designing men, should it serve their purpose to do so. This in itself is a sufficient reason why its use should be discontinued in all legal documents, where on the interpretation of one word might depend the fate of families and the destiny of a kingdom. It boasts of no classics. It has no literature worth the name. The few books it has are either full of coarse love fables or the ridiculous stories of horrible jins and frightful ghosts.

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“One drawback to the success of village schools in this district (Unao),” says the inspector of schools, “is that the predominant vernacular of the inhabitants is Hindi rather than Urdu. The number of Brahmans and other high caste Hindus in the Unao district is unusually large. Their sympathies are for Hindi literature, while the court character or language, which is consequently the more useful of the two, is Urdu. Thus their literary tastes are not well in harmony with their material interests.” These remarks apply not only to the Unao district but to all the districts in the province. “The literary tastes of the people are not in harmony with their material interests.” Urdu is not the dialect of the people, but still they are obliged to study it simply because it has been aptly called a “bread earning” language. It is a mistake to encourage its cultivation.

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If you ask a man whether he would like to teach his son Urdu or Hindi, the invariable answer would be that he would prefer Urdu to Hindi. If the reason be asked for this unnatural preference his answer is that Urdu being the official language, the language of the courts the acquisition of it will be useful in transacting business, however useless it may be for the ordinary intercourse of life. If Urdu ceases to be the court language to day, it will cease to be cultivated to morrow, and no one will ever think of learning it.

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It has often been urged that Hindi in the Nágri character cannot be written so fast as Urdu. The Nágri character is said to be “too slow, too stiff, and too elaborate for the wants of the present day.” This objection does not seem to us to be of much weight. Practice gives facility, and I know by experience that Hindi in the Nágri character can be written as easily and as quickly as any other language. Let a trial be given to Hindi, and I am very much mistaken if within a short period from the time of its introduction it does not answer all the purposes of the courts of the united provinces, and supply all the “literary wants of the present day.” It should never be forgotten that all the immortal works of Sanskrit literature were written in the Nágri character, and surely volumes upon volumes would never have been written by the same author had the Nágri character really been “so slow and stiff” as it is represented to be. II—On Girls’ Schools—The number of primary girls schools, aided and unaided, in Oudh, teaching vernacular up to the 31st March, 1881, my be shown as follows:— Government Aided Unaided

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The number of pupils attending them was 1,682 This will show that as regards numbers a decided improvement has been made within the last 15 years. In 1867 there were only six schools and 83 pupils in the province. It is a matter of regret, however, that there was a reduction from 65 to 64 schools in 1876, to 59 in 1880, and to 49 in 1881. The schools which have been closed were, I am informed, “not only rather expensive but decidedly inefficient.” About one fifth of the students are Hindus and four fifths Muhammadans, the former being chiefly from the working classes, and the latter from the middle and more respectable classes. Half the students on the rolls on 31st March, 1881, were in the alphabet class.

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“The teachers themselves,” the inspector of schools says “are very ignorant and have as little taste for arithmetic (and I may add for reading and writing) as their pupils.” The progress made by the girls may be best described in the words of Mr. Nesfeld, the Inspector of Schools. “The great majority of the girls who attend these schools, whether Government, aided, or unaided, acquire only the merest rudiments of learning, and are as absolutely ignorant a few months after they have left school as if they had never been to school at all. About one half of the girls never advance beyond reading and copying easy words and writing numbers up to 100. One-third get as far as reading in a fashion, easy sentences and copying the same, and perhaps may learn to add and subtract numbers of four digits. About one-fourth of the girls go as far as reading through a dozen pages of a very simple book and writing to dictation, mostly with many mis spellings, a line or two of the lesson read, to which they may add a little power to multiply and divide in simple arithmetic. It is only a very select few who ever get to reading and writing with an approach to fluency and to working in the compound rules. The number who can read and write to dictation a passage unseen before is very small.” It is apparent from this, that the character of the instruction imparted in these schools is extremely unsatisfactory and requires improvement. It is an admitted fact that the country cannot be regenerated without female education, so long as the ladies of India do not share with their husbands the pleasures of the intellect, there is little chance for India regaining the eminent position she occupied in ancient times in the scale of nations. It requires no demonstration to show that female education is one of the essential elements of national progress. The Government should not only establish schools and colleges for the education of one half of the nation, but should also adopt speedy measures by which the other half may be equally benefited. Government has up to this time pursued no systematic plan for giving education to females. The object cannot be attained by establishing a few schools alone. The higher classes of the Native community, Brahmins and Chattris and Kayeths would never consent to send their daughters to these schools. The higher classes keep aloof from these schools, and it is no wonder therefore that they have borne no fruit. We often hear it said that the time has not yet arrived for introducing into this province female education in any shape whatever. I should like to know when the time would come. Those who object to any attempt being made at present for improving the females of the province should remember that the instruction which is given in the boys schools in Oudh will never produce any beneficial results till an active effort is made to communicate knowledge to the females of the province. In my humble opinion, simultaneous action should be taken for educating the boys and girls of Oudh. It should always be borne in mind that light and darkness can never live together. Hindu society is so constituted, and females take so important a part in all its concerns that, educate the men as you will, no permanent improvement of the social order can be effected unless the impulse come from within. The movement must be simultaneous, while you educate the men, you should also educate

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the women, or else all plans for reforming Hindu society will prove abortive. Those who are cognisant of the mystery of the Hindu zenana will bear me out in saying how very difficult it is for an educated member of the Hindu community to carry out any plans of improvement which the females disapprove of, and how many noble projects have failed for want of cordial support from the Hindu ladies. It is necessary that the Government should think seriously of this matter for another reason. We often have to deplore a growing tendency among the educated young men either to betake themselves to evil courses or give themselves up to despair and despondency, because they do not find at home that cultivation of the intellect and the feelings, and that intelligence and taste which have become almost the necessary conditions of their mental existence. They seek a refined gratification of their intellectual æsthetic faculties anywhere but at home. It may easily be fancied what this will lead to, and unless timely measures be taken to prevent it, the evil will, I am afraid, become incurable. With regard to the question as to who should defray the expenses, whether Government should take upon itself the whole burden, I would submit that wherever society is in so backward a state that it would not provide for itself any proper institutions for education, Government should undertake the task, should give the education gratis, and definy all the necessary expenses. I know many arguments may be advanced against this plan but I venture here to quote the following words of the great thinker who has exercised the deepest and the widest influence on the present generation in support of my views.—“Instruction, when it is really such, does not enervate, but strengthens as well as enlarges the active faculties, in whatever manner acquired, its effect on the mind is favourable to the spirit of independence, and when, unless bad gratuitously, it would not be had at all, help in this form has the opposite tendency to that which in so many other cases makes it objectionable, it is help towards doing without help.” Wherever aided schools are established, the grants to girls’ schools should in all cases be larger in amount and given on less onerous terms than those to boys’ schools. The tendency at present is to make the grant-in-aid rules rigorous and strict, and the consequence is that those who subscribe to set up a school feel discouraged, and in no long time the grants are withdrawn and the schools are abolished. Girls’ schools require fostering care, but no such care, I am afraid, is bestowed upon them. The educational authorities evidently do not consider it incumbent upon them to encourage the growth of girls’ schools. Difficulties and obstacles, disappointments and failures, there must be, but that is no reason why the work of female education should be given up as hopeless. We must hope against hope. If persistent efforts be made and the work be not performed in a perfunctory manner, I firmly believe that great improvement will soon be visible in this direction. Girls’ schools constituted on the same principle as boys’ schools cannot attract the girls of high caste Hindus. They may do very well for the girls of the working classes, but high-caste people would never send their girls to these schools. 282

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Female education in this country will never make any progress merely by establishing schools and summoning pupils to attend them. This system cannot succeed here. The maulvies of Lucknow informed the Director of Public Instruction for Oudh, nearly fifteen years ago, “that the only possible way of reaching the more respectable families is by sending teachers to the zenanas.” It is curious to observe how people would not understand such a simple fact as this. We are often apt to forget the lessons which history has taught us. Human beings are not abstract or universal but historical human beings, already shaped and made what they are by human society. Great mistakes are made by not taking into account the accumulated influence of past generations. If Hindus have certain prejudices in this matter, these should be respected and means should be found to remove them. Instead of doing this, the Government officers, as soon as they establish a few schools, expect to find its benches filled by the daughters of all the respectable families in the neighbourhood. If they do not find their expectations fulfilled they begin to cavil and despair of success, and do not for a moment waste their time in thinking that among savages alone the past has no influence over the present, and that among all civilized nations the social phenomena must be determined by their past history. Indian ladies, I repeat, can be educated by no other means than by sending female teachers to the zenana. If well trained high caste females be sent as teachers to the zenana, who would on no account mix up religion with the instruction they would impart, I have not the slightest doubt that female education would make rapid progress. At present female teachers properly qualified for the task cannot be obtained. It will be necessary therefore to establish female Normal schools throughout the cauntry to train high caste females for the work. There will be no difficulty in getting, on a small stipend, elderly Brahmin and Chattri or other high-caste widows to become students to qualify themselves to be zenana teachers. Care should be taken that the teachers appointed, for some time at least, be none but high caste females, as they alone are respected in Hindu families. There should be a central Normal school of a high order in each province, superintended by a well-educated European mistress. The education in the Normal schools should comprise a sound knowledge of the vernaculars, a good acquaintance with English and all branches of useful knowledge, all kinds of needle work, music and drawing. Instruction to be imparted through the vernaculars and afterwards through the English language. The greatest efforts should be made to inculcate habits of cleanliness and for the neat and tidy arrangement of a house. Domestic economy to form a particular matter of instruction. The term for training to be averaged at five years, but not to be less than three years. In the promotion of female education, the share which has hitherto been taken by European ladies of the different zenana missions is very little if anything. As far as my experience goes, these ladies, educated as they are, are not properly qualified to undertake the task of educating our females. In the first place they are looked upon with suspicion, and most people believe that their main object 283

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is to inculcate the principles of their own religion into the tender minds of young Hindu females. If there be the least suspicion of this kind, then whatever they teach is received with a large amount of incredulity, and once the teacher fails to inspire implicit confidence in her, her most strenuous efforts to impart instruction are of no avail. European ladies are not fit to teach the rudiments of knowledge to Native ladies. In the elementary stage of instruction, therefore, they cannot afford much assistance. Their knowledge of the vernaculars is so imperfect that it is not possible for them to be good teachers of Native females. In the higher stages of education their assistance may be of real benefit. But if they mix up religion with the instruction they impart, no Hindu gentleman would ever allow his wives and sisters and daughters to be placed under their care. The instruction they impart should be secular. It will be mere waste of money to subsidise the zenana missions. I am of opinion that Normal schools of a high order should be established to provide teachers for girls. The next question is what should the Government teach them? Indian girls are married at an early age, and they cannot therefore be taught much in the school room. Very few girls would attend the school after the age of 10. If the system of sending teachers to the zenana, however, be adopted, Hindu females may be persuaded to carry on their studies to an advanced age, and means may thus be easily found to give them an education worth the name. What are we to teach them? Owing to the absence of any recognised principles on this subject, a great deal of time, expense, and labour may go for nothing. The ultimate end of education is to secure happiness, and to attain that end we should put our ladies in the way of developing all the active faculties of their minds. They should be taught to find sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surround them, “in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, incidents of history, the ways of men past and present and their future prospects.” Teach them the principles of science and how they are applied in practice. Take hold of their imagination by showing them the wonderful productions of art, and make them learn how to wield the powers of nature to their benefit. Instruct them in music and the ornamental arts, and then mark what result is produced in a few years. I am very much mistaken if the knowledge which is thus communicated does not revolutionise all their thoughts and feelings, vitalise all our social institutions, and thereby elevate Hindu character and regenerate Hindu society. I would entreat the educational officers never to be satisfied by giving the girls a mere smattering of geography and history, or teaching them how to con a few fables of a story book selected at trandom from a mass of rubbish. This does more mischief than good, as they are taught in his way to have an access to those abominable books with which the vernacular literature abounds. The importance of teaching English to our females cannot be overrated, as its vivifying influence alone can draw their attention to their own defects, and furnish them with the keys to the wide domains of every department of human knowledge.

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III.—The Grant in aid system.—The introduction of a system of grants in aid under which the efforts of private individuals and of local committees would be stimulated and encouraged by pecuniary grants from Government in consideration of a good secular education being afforded in the aided schools, was one of the main objects contemplated in the Education Despatch of 1854. It was in view of the impossibility of Government alone doing all that must be done to provide adequate means for the education of the Natives of India that the grant in aid system was elaborated and developed by the Despatch of 1854, “and it is to the wider extension of this system, especially in connection with high and middle education, that the Government look to set free funds which may then be made applicable to the promotion of the education of the masses.” The Government of India has declared its intention of following the lines of policy contained in the Despatch of 1854, and is desirous of giving full effect to the principles upon which that policy is based. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, to examine into the general results of the operation of the grant in aid system which is expected to stimulate independent effort in the establishment of schools and thus afford pecuniary relief to Government. It has been justly said that a mere critical review or analysis of the returns and reports of the different provinces would fail to impart a thoroughly satisfactory knowledge of the actual state of things in the districts, and that there are many points which only an acquaintance with local circumstances can adequately estimate or explain. There are great many things in the back-ground which never come to the knowledge of the educational authorities. The managers of the aided schools are charged with “ill management, minute peculation, and petty frauds,” and the governors of the different provinces deplore the state of society which allows persons notoriously to commit these frauds without fear of loss of character. Proceedings also were instituted in criminal courts against secretaries of aided schools. It has been publicly said that the grant-in-aid system, as it is administered at present, encourages and conceals dishonesty and fraud in the managers of schools to an extent which is extremely demoralising. Thus fault is found with the present administration of the grant-in-aid system. But no one cares to look below the surface of things, and to scrutinise the efficiency of the machinery that has been set on foot to carry out the grant-in-aid policy of the Government. The abuses of aided schools have been described and decried ad nauseam; but unless the rules upon which grants are given be radically amended, there is very slight hope of these abuses being rooted out and the resources of the State being set free for a wider extension of the present educational system. The abuses of aided schools have thus been formulated:— 1. Inefficiency of the local committee of management. 2. Inefficiency of the teaching staff. 3. Delays of payment of teachers’ salaries. 4. Uncertainty of tenure. 5. Fraud and oppression.

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Complaint is general that the committees appointed under the grant-in aid rules for the local management of schools have not realised the expectations of those who framed that system. These commitees have signally failed in exercising an efficient control over the schools under their charge. They are incapable of originating plans of improvement or of remedying defects of management. It has been authoritatively stated that these committees do not perform their legitimate functions and obligations with anything like efficiency, and it is no wonder therefore that the grant in aid schools are not in a state of vigorous health, with the exception of some few schools exceptionally situated and circumstanced, all of them are in a sickly condition and drag on a miserable existence. In Bengal there has been an overhauling for several years of a large number of aided schools which have been declared to be “inefficient and incapable of improvement.” The large margin of inefficient schools or as it is called in official language the “inefficient margin,” clearly points to the fact that the grant in-aid system is not working well and that a radical change of system is urgently called for, year after year we hear it said that grants are withdrawn from a large number of old “inefficient schools,” and that these grants are given to “new schools” which are struggling into existence. Inspectors have been repeatedly reminded that a grant in aid is not a “benefice” to be held by a school irrespectively of its merits or success. There has been a wholesale cancelling of grants, because these aided schools signally failed to satisfy the grant-in aid conditions. The teaching staff of these aided schools is described as incompetent and worthless. Good men of sterling worth cannot be induced to join these schools. The success of a school depends more upon good teachers than upon its committee of management. “I have been a teacher myself,” said the late Mr. Woodrow, “and I am a member of several school committees, but my experience tells me that a committee of management does most good when it interferes the least. The wisest exercise of its functions is to get good teachers, to treat them well and to pay them regularly. It is looking for an impossibility to expect good results if the teachers are in arrears of pay or are inefficient men. The efficiency of teachers is a sine quá non of success. The true remedy therefore is the appointment of the best teachers available.” “Ninety-nine out of a hundred of the abuses,” says one of the most experienced of the inspectors of schools, “will disappear if we can once secure the appointment of competent teachers. To do this, however, is not so easy as may appear at first sight. The real difficulty lies in the paucity of good teachers.” No good teachers will join or continue to remain in aided schools unless they are well paid and have good prospects. To pay them well requires ample funds, and the aided schools cannot afford to pay good teachers. “Many aided schools in the country,” says the Director of Public Instruction of Bengal, “find it difficult, even with the help of a grant, to make both ends meet.” How is it possible, then, to maintain a competent staff of teachers and thus to ensure the permanent success of a school? Various expedients are resorted to, and the managing committees are continually warned that the grants would be withdrawn if all qualified masters are employed. The maintenance of an efficient staff, they are distinctly told, is the only condition the 286

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fulfilment of which will entitle to the continuance of the grant. But all to no purpose “A competent staff of teachers” is a very rare commodity, and simple adjurations unaccompanied by a distinct promise of substantial benefits will not be able to secure it. “The low standard of English middle schools,” said Sir George Campbell, “arises from the deficiency of the teaching staff. The Director remarks that schools of this class are very popular, and it must be added that in general they are also very worthless. “The teaching which they give is in no sense education, and can scarcely even be called instruction. Its prominent feature is the attempt made by untrained masters, themselves very imperfectly acquainted with English, to impart a smattering of English to boys who have never studied their own vernacular, and have never been grounded in any useful branches of learning.” The complaints made from the North-West are more serious. “The loss of 125 schools and 6,629 pupils with a saving to the Government of Rs. 43,550,” says Mr. Kempson, the late Director of Public Instruction, “needs some explanation. A comparison with the summary of 1875–76 discloses the points where the shears have been applied. The grants-in-aid were withdrawn from 75 Anglo vernacular schools of the middle class, from 37 vernacular schools for boys, and from 17 vernacular schools for girls. Even under the most careful inspection there was always a feeling of uncertainty as to whether the teachers received their share of pay from the subscription funds, or whether the free entries in the accounts were boná fide transactions. The teachers dare not complain, because if the school was closed they lost their living, and they preferred a false affidavit to ruining themselves or compromising the tabsildar or other people by whose influence the schools were established. It is to the credit of the èleves of our schools and colleges that they were always unwilling to accept those teacherships, but the consequence was that inferior men had to be put in, and hence the instruction was rarely satisfactory.” In no branch of the Educational Department, said the late Lieutenant-Governor, “could retrenchments have been more justly made than in the large class of institutions known as aided schools. It was notorious that the smattering of English which many of the (so called) Angle vernacular schools imparted was worse than useless from an educational point of view.” It will thus be seen that the Bengal Government and the North West Government are at one with regard to the efficiency of the teaching staff of the aided schools. One of the inspectors, after a careful examination of the aided high schools of one of the most important divisions of the North West, reports that “the failure was signal. The classes are below the average and the teaching defective. The teachers in some of the schools are willing and industrious, but wanting in experience.” I have summarised his remarks. It will thus be seen what urgent necessity exists for using greater exertions to raise the character and improve the instruction of these schools. If we read carefully the reports submitted by the district committees and the local boards, we are struck with the fact that almost all the aided schools have been suffering greatly from the absence of a competent staff of teachers. I will attempt to give a brief summary of some of these reports on this head. 287

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There is undoubtedly a great call for better paid teachers. The committee was addressed last year by the inspector of the circle as to the feasibility of increasing the pay of the teachers and the consequent closing of a certain number of schools so as not to exceed the budget grant and the committee were of opinion that some 20 schools could be closed during the year. At present it is impossible to induce good men to become teachers. In dismissing one teacher for inefficiency it is quite certain that his successor will be equally as bad and thus one is led almost to despair of any improvement (Agra) As there has always been a difficulty in getting efficient teachers the number of schools has been reduced from 147 to 125 and new rates of pay have been introduced. Even with the increased rates of pay it is very hard to get competent teachers. There is none to be found in the district itself and very few outsiders are attracted (Cawnpore). Several schools were closed for months for want of qualified persons to take their teacherships. The majority of the leathers were dismissed on the score of incompetency some for repeated absence and others for disobedience of orders and misconduct. The chief blot in these schools was that the teachers thought that the number of boys on the rolls was the only test of their efficiency (Allahabad).

It is needless to multiply these extracts. Some of these remarks apply not only to aided schools, but also to Government schools in the interior, when the want of good teachers is thus severely felt even in Government schools. With their manifold advantages, how keenly the aided schools, which do not enjoy the hundredth part of the privileges of the Government institutions, feel the absence of an efficient staff of teachers can be more easily imagined than described. The evil complained of in the smaller schools is intensified in the high schools and collegiate institutions. Any one who takes the trouble to read the annual educational reports will at once perceive that the high schools and colleges are all suffering from this incurable chronic disease in the shape of incompetent teachers, or sullen and grumbling masters, who, if not conscientious, will do more harm than ignorant and inefficient men. Such is the actual state of affairs in the aided schools. It would be unjust to say that all this mischief has been done by the people. That they are quite ready and willing to come forward and aid in the establishment of schools upon the grant in-aid system is apparent from the facts and figures submitted to Government year after year by the different Directors of Public Instruction. ‘The most encouraging feature in the educational history of the year 1878–79 says His Honor the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal “is that the contributions from private sources to the total cost of education has exceeded the Government grant a result to which as the Director observes the experience of the last few years has steadily pointed. The departmental figures show that out of a total expenditure on education of Rs. 15,15,000 the Government contribution amounted to Rs. 21,72,000 while the people paid Rs. 23,73,000 their contributions in the previous year having been Rs. 21,43,000. During the year 1879–80 the proportion of the Government expenditure has been still further reduced—namely, from 47¼ per cent, to 46 per cent. Of the cost of collegiate education the Government share has fallen from 52½ to 51⅔ per cent., in secondary education, the Government share has fallen from 30 to 34½ per cent, and in primary education from 28½ to 25½ per cent. These figures refer only to those colleges and schools which receive

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aid from the State. If the maintenance of unaided institutions be taken into account, the proportion of the Government expenditure to the total cost will be very much less.”

The figures are no less satisfactory in the returns of the North West Provinces. Excluding the cost of special and technical instruction in which the Government share is naturally much higher, we find that the Government expenditure has been in 1880–81, Rs. 4,92,557, while the contribution from private sources amounted to Rs. 11,05,906. This shows that the people are all stirring and the demand for education is great. The contributions from the people could be doubled and trebled, if only the feelings of the people were consulted and a spirit of independence were fostered. There is a blot, however, in the present administration of the grant in and system, which mars their best efforts and damps their enthusiasm. That the grant in aid system has failed to achieve the success which it deserves is not the fault of the great principle laid down in the Education Despatch, but is due to the retrograde action of the Education Department, and the hard and inelastic rules framed by it. The superstructure does not correspond to the design. The framers of the system intended that it should spread in an ever widening circle, and that the educational scheme of the whole country should be organised and systematised; that all private agencies should be utilised and that a spirit of independence should be encouraged and fostered. The machinery that has been set on foot for bringing about those ends has been found wanting, and, unless timely measures are taken to remedy the present state of affairs, the objects contemplated by the Education Despatch will be entirely defeated. Before I venture to make suggestions for the improvement of the present administration, I should wish to show in what light the efforts of the people to establish schools on the grant in aid system is viewed by the educational authorities. The origin of a grant-in-aid school is thus described “some of the leading men of a village are seized with the desire of a middle class school. They consult the deputy inspector, who advises them as to the necessary scale of establishment and the amount of aid for which they should apply. Some enthusiasm is aroused. A committee is formed, a subscription list is circulated, and teachers appointed. All goes well for a year or two, when dissensions arise among the members of the committee. A party breaks off and their subscriptions cease. The pay of the teachers falls into arrears and the head master, seeing no hope of realizing it, resigns his appointment. An inferior man takes his place, well knowing the precarious state of his salary. Dissatisfaction with the school increases, pupils leave and their fees with them, the secretary no longer makes those advances by which he had endeavoured to satisfy the teachers and to keep the school going, and finally the deputy inspector or the inspector learns something of the state of affairs and comes down suddenly on the school. If it is found, as it is not seldom found, that the accounts of the school have been inaccurately represented to the inspector, the grant is withdrawn. From schools, aided under conditions similar to these, grants are being continually withdrawn.” This is a one-sided picture. The

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only impression one gets from it is that the originators of these schools are wanting in public spirit, that they are a set of lazy, indolent, dishonest persons who are utterly incapable of administering public funds. The enthusiasm which the people evinced and the efforts which they made are of no value whatever “The effort,” says another Director of Public Instruction, “was unwillingly sustained or fraudulently counterfeited.” Such enthusiasm should be repressed and such effort should be discouraged! This is surely not fostering independent effort! I should be the last person to deny that the local committees are not perfection. Faillings they have, but most of these failings arise from ignorance of the idiosyncracies of the educational officers under whom the schools are placed, and should therefore be tolerated. Instead of displaying tact in smoothing down differences and endeavouring with gentleness to correct whatever venial failings the managers may show, the inspectors try to exact to the letter the rigorous terms of the grant in aid rules, and by their constant and harrassing interference disgust the real friends of the school, and the consequence is the subscriptions are discontinued, the grant is withdrawn, the school disappears, and “the independent effort of the people is seldom revived.” The fact is these aided schools are looked upon by the educational authorities as excrescences which as to be removed, and the sooner the better. “It is easy to trace,” said Sir George Campbell, “the causes of the decline both in the numbers of the middle schools and in the character of the instruction given in them; but it is more difficult to suggest a remedy.” His Honour believed that the true causes of the decline of the aided schools had been fully traced. He was not aware that the real cause had not been discovered and that it was for this reason that an effective remedy was difficult to be found. The fact of the matter is the Government grants are placed on an eleemosynary basis, the members of the managing committees are treated as recipients of Government charity, and the aided schools are looked upon as charity schools. They are the pariahs of the Education Department and are looked down upon with contempt.

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I once asked a friend who was maintaining a school out of his slender means why he did not apply for a Government grant. His answer was “I shall not be able to bear their scornful conduct and their constant and harassing interference.” “But you cannot get good teachers, and there may be a thousand and one accidents by which the school may suffer a grievous loss.” “Well, I must abolish the school, but I would not take Government aid. You know the feeling of our people on the 290

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subject.” Yes, I know very well the feeling of our people on the subject. They would have nothing to do with charity schools, for the support of which they pay their own money, and are considered into the bargain as recipients of charity, doled out by Government officials, They are looked upon as persons whose first business in life is to defraud Government. Everything they do in connection with the school is looked upon with suspicion. If any plans for improvement are submitted and an increased grant is applied for, these are viewed as ingenious contrivances or flimsy pretexts for extorting Government money under false pretences. The managers of the aided schools are like the alms men at a Sraddha (the feast of the dead), or like the beggars of the street, who, if they tease and trouble you, can be prosecuted under the Vagrant Act. “These local committees,” says an inspector of schools, “constituted as they are of the most influential gentlemen of the place, are no doubt as good representative bodies as can be produced under the circumstances, but however liberal as private individuals the members may be in contributing from their private resources for the support of the schools, there seems to be no call yet felt by them to supervise educational administration in their public capacity.” These “influential gentlemen” suffer their names to be retained on the committee, but can it be wondered at that they do not take an active interest in the management of the schools? No respectable person would ever serve on a committee in which every member is reckoned as an almsman and a beggar. The aided schools are not within the charmed Government circle, they are outside its limits, they must look on with envy and admiration upon the favoured group within, and if any crumbs of bread, any wipings of the hand, are thrown out to them, they must raise a chorus of applause and be grateful for the benefaction they receive. Thus it will be seen that the present grant-in aid system has a repressive influence on independent effort, and the results which are expected to flow from it will never be attained if the present system be pursued. The aided schools may drag on their miserable existence for a short time and then disappear. Fresh schools will be started and fresh grants will be given to them, and after a time they will share the fate of their predecessors. The educational authorities seem to be under the impression that if the funds set apart for grants-in-aid are distributed during the year, if old grants are withdrawn and new grants are given, so as to show that a fixed sum of money is placed on an eleemosynary basis, if the retrenchment shears are actively employed and a large saving is shown in this ill fated grant-in aid allotment—their work is done, and they are entitled to the thanks of the Government and the gratitude of the Native public. I have attempted to show that the working of the present grant-in-aid system is unsatisfactory, and that it does not possess within it those elements of expansiveness will out which no real pecuniary relief could be afforded to Government, and the character of the education given cannot be materially improved. The suggestion of a remedy does not seem to me to be very difficult. The solution of the difficulty, to my mind, lies in a nut shell. All the Government institutions and all the aided schools and colleges—more especially those which possess 291

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within them elements of permanent success, the permanency of whose income, I mean, can be counted upon—should be made parts of the same system, links of the same chain. The stigma that now attaches to “subscription schools” will be removed and there will be no occasion then for the contemptuous remarks that are now made with regard to these schools. The aided schools and colleges which now exist, instead of being isolated and stationary, will become organised and progressive, and their permanency and extended usefulness will be secured. The educational authorities, instead of looking upon them as morbid outgrowths, will look upon them as young plants having vigorous life in them, watered from the same founts a head as the Government institutions, and entitled to the same fostering care as those schools and colleges which are supported entirely by Government. Let them not be considered as aliens, but the children of the same soil, which will grow with the growth of the department. On the one hand, we have schools and colleges which look to Government entirely for their means of support, and on the other hand we have institutions which pay the greater part of their own expenses, and only ask the Government to take care of them in time of trouble and distress. Some of the children of the father are entirely dependent upon him for support, while others can earn their own livelihood and only look to him for aid when they are laid up by sickness or have unforeseen contingencies to meet. Paternal care, according to our Hindu notions, should be equally extended to all the children. The aided institutions are the “earning” members of a Hindu joint-family, and if they are denied a greater, they should at least have an equal share of happiness and comforts with those who do not earn anything, but are entirely dependent upon the managing head of the house community. If the whole educational scheme of the country be systematised if the aided institutions be considered as parts of one and the same organisation, and if thus the grant in aid system be so shaped as really to stimulate independent effort, solid pecuniary relief will be afforded to the Government of India, the country will be studded with aided institutions on the grant-in aid system, and the contemplated development of primary education will not be a work of the distant future. What I venture to suggest is that Government schools and colleges and the aided institutions—especially those whose income is permanent should be placed on the same footing, and that the system of transfer and pensions should be equally applicable to both classes of institutions. If this be once done, the development of the grant-in aid system will be so rapid, so many private individuals and public bodies will gladly come forward to take advantage of the system, that in no long time Government will be entirely relieved of the dead burden which is now weighing upon it in supporting the State schools and colleges. Note by PRAN NATH PANDIT, Third Master, Canning College 1. I have been a teacher in the Canning College for the last 15 years and have always taken an interest in the diffusion of education and enlightenment among my Hindu and Muhammadan countrymen in Lucknow. I am intimately connected 292

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with the Jalsa i-Tahzib and Rafab i Am Committee. Besides contributing largely to the Morasila Cashmir on social questions, I started a miscellany, called Mitatu l Hind for the enlightenment of the native public and have hitherto maintained it in a respectable order. My experience has been gained mostly in Oudh. 2. The native community of this province consists of so many different elements that one and the same course of instruction will not do for all. Then, again, the requirements of city and town communities differ very much from those of village or rural communities. I know not what form local self-government is to take in Oudh. Much of the education of the province will depend on the particular form of self government. The whole vernacular education of the province should be handed over to our district and Municipal committees and local boards provided they be according to the Resolution of the Government of India on local self-government. The services of the deputy inspectors may be dispensed with, and those of the kanungos, to be hereafter appointed may be utilised instead. Rai Durga Parshad may be appointed their head in educational matters. Geometry, geography, and history should be eliminated from the course of village schools, and small books on practical agriculture and the preparation of village papers and maps be substituted. Whereever there is a patwari there ought to be a village school and every patwari should be an ex-officio superintendent of that school. In towns and cities local boards and Municipalities should be required to meet the wants of the people in educational matters. 3. Instruction is rather forced upon the village community. It is sought for by Bengalis, Kayaths, Khatris, Baniyas, and Brahmans. Muhammadans especially hold aloof from it, for they consider English education inconsistent with their religion, and even vernacular education given in our schools is supposed to be tainted with infidelity. Their luxurious habits produce indolence and their religious doctrines and traditions make them blind to their real interest in this world. They will not apply themselves to anything requiring great exertion. They cannot compete with the Hindus under the present system of education. They have an aptitude for learning languages, history, logic, and medicine. They can even get up different theories in mathematics, but they invariably break down in the practical part of it. Race pride alone prevents Eurasians and poor Europeans from availing themselves of instruction in Government schools. I do not know whether “Influential classes” includes Europeans or applies solely to Natives. Race and caste prejudices makes the Natives averse to giving even elementary knowledge to every class of society. They think that knowledge is intended simply for the upper classes and that by extending it to the lower classes knowledge itself is degraded. 4. Wherever there are Kayaths, Baniyas, and Muhammadans, there is an indigenous school of some kind or other. In villages as well as in town and cities they are now supplanted by Government schools. The Bampas and Mahajans pay no great attention to Hindi literature. They find the ancient village system of teaching arithmetical tables and various practical rules and formulæ called “Gur” by heart answer their purpose very well. This enables them to settle their mercantile and other daily accounts verbally and without the help of pen and paper. These 293

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are purely Hindu indigenous schools. Besides the above, there are Muhammadan and mixed schools too. By mixed schools I do not mean schools where boys and girls read together, as in America, but where Hindu and Muhammadan boys study Persian literature together. They are now being deserted for English schools, but formerly the education given directly in Persian and indirectly in Urdu was much more efficient and advanced than the present standard of middle class. Elementary books containing moral lessons in prose and poetry were taught to beginners, a few rules of arithmetic, important to men in their daily life, were sometimes included in the study of such schools. There are also schools of private individuals giving gratuitous instruction to people simply for the public benefit. The great name of some Sanskrit Pandit or Arabic Maulvie attracts a large number of pupils from distant parts of the country. They impart instruction in Sanskrit and Arabic to a most advanced standard and teach the highest branches of literature and philosophy. Some indigenous schools are established by private funds or charitable endowments. Muhammadans and Cashmiri Pandits of Lucknow have had such institutions, where a number of teachers are entertained and students are not only gratuitously taught, but some provision is occasionally made for their maintenance also. Religious instruction is the main object of such schools, The Martimere School, too, comes under the same category, but its usefulness is now restricted to Europeans and Eurasians only. The fees charged in most schools vary from one anna to one rupee, but the teachers get presents in money and articles of food on various occasions. Muhammadans teach Arabic and Persian; Brahmins, Sanskrit, Hindi and verbal arithmetic, and Kayaths teach bookkeeping or written accounts in Persian. They are very well qualified in the subjects they profess to teach. There is no system for training or providing masters in such schools. To further the objects of primary and middle education in vernacular the indigenous schools can easily be utilized as a part of the educational system— (1) by allowing them the freedom of retaining their own languages and subjects, (2) by adding a little arithmetic, history, and geography to their existing subjects of study, (3) by inducing them to submit to inspection by educational officers, (4) by requiring the teachers to submit short monthly returns showing the number of students and other necessary particulars. No attempt should be made to displace any of the exisiting teachers, as the prosperity of these schools entirely depends upon their personal influence and character. But schools giving religious instruction alone cannot be thus utilised. Most of the teachers will be found willing to accept State aid and to conform to the rules under which such aid is given, if the existing rules be a little modified in their favor. 294

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5. Very few boys educated at home only can have any pretension to liberal education. But though intellectually inferior to school taught boys, they are superior in moral character. At examinations qualifying for the public service they have little chance of success against boys educated at school. But when home instruction is combined with school education the result is admirable. Most of our successful students have had this advantage. 6. Unless self-government is made a reality and members of local boards, &c, begin to take an intelligent interest in mass education, the withdrawal of Government agency is sure to make the whole thing fall back to its primitive state. Influential Natives do not like to give nor are the masses willing to receive education, however elementary it may be. 7. The present social status of village schoolmasters mostly depends on their pay. Teachers trying to assist the villagers in sundry ways exercise a beneficial influence among them but when they set themselves up as little “hákims,” enforcing the attendance of boys and payment of schooling fees simply by the aid of the tahsíldar, then they are feared not simply by the boys but by their parents too. It is not an easy matter to get good schoolmasters, but if local bodies be allowed a voice in their selection, and the teachers themselves have better prospects, the whole thing may be much improved. To improve their position, let a definite number of patwaris and kanúngos in each district be yearly recruited from their ranks. 8. The agricultural classes are decidedly opposed to all sorts of instruction. They think that their children are taken away from field labor or attendance on cattle. The experiment of night schools in some villages might be tried. The only instruction acceptable to villagers is what will enable them to have, not ultimately, but immediately, two meals a day instead of one. School study is supposed to unfit boys for hard field labor. What they require is practical instruction in agricultural and mechanical arts in the open air. They want industrial schools. Give the poor little boys something in the shape of wages for the work they do, and they will all flock to such schools. 9. Both in Urdu and Hindi the book language is generally different from the actual vernacular of the masses. In primary schools much time and energy are wasted in teaching such a language. Books for primary instruction in the real vernacular of this province are much needed. The difference between Urdu and Hindi in primary schools should not be that of language, but of characters simply. 10. The principle of forcing education upon poor villagers and at the same time charging fees for it is quite unintelligible to me. This is quite disagreeable to the people, and is one of the reasons why primary instruction is not yet acceptable to poor rural communities. The tahsíldar is sometimes requested to enforce payment of fees from almost starving people, sometimes the ill paid village teacher has to make up the account from his own small pay. The headman of each village already pays for the education of his village boys at the rate of one per cent as educational cess. During the Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton, when local Governments wanted to make reductions in the Education Department, it raised the rate of fees and hundreds of schools ceased to exist simply on that account. 295

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11. There is no use of increasing the number of primary schools at present. I have already given my views as to how the existing schools may gradually be rendered more efficient. 12. There is no fixed scale of grant-in-aid laid down for colleges. For English schools grants in aid are regulated by the number of students receiving instruction. The rules require that the average attendance of boys who learn English should not be less than one for every Rs. 1-8 of the monthly grant. Missionaries with cheap agencies avail themselves of the above rule. But under the present state of conditions no Native, however enterprising, can expect to keep up an English school in an efficient state under this rule. If the Government wants educated Natives to come forward to establish high schools, the grants should not be regulated by the number of students, but by the quality of the instruction imparted. A better quality of instruction necessarily involves a higher expenditure. It is much better to impart sound instruction to a limited number than to furnish a large number of students with an imperfect education. I should therefore suggest that the grant-in-aid be regulated by the amount of expenditure of the school for which such aid is solicited. 13. On the whole, the Government could not be more neutral than it is. The religious prejudices of all Indian communities are more or less breaking down in proportion to the Western light they receive. Even mission schools are now found to be full of Hindu and Muhammadan boys. The danger is to be met with in another direction. There is a growing cry of moral looseness against school boys. 14. If by secondary school be meant middle school, the present course neither stores the mind with useful and practical information nor does it prepare boys for the entrance examination of the University. The course of study and the mode of examination both are defective. Should the Commission call for the correspondence between Mr. Nesfield and the Director of Public Instruction on the subject in question, it will give them valuable information in regard to this point. 15. In our schools I cannot say whether our attention is unduly directed to the entrance examination, but stuffing little boys with Sanskrit and Persian in our branch school looks very much like it. If the time were altogether given to English and vernacular, time and energy would both be more usefully economized. In our anxiety for a few boys in the first arts we force hundreds of boys to give up their easy vernacular for much more difficult languages which are of no practical good to them in their struggle for livelihood—nay, more than this, they do not know sufficiently of their vernacular even for ordinary requirements. 16. The University curriculum does not afford sufficient training for teachers in secondary schools. If funds afford, a special Normal school will become very useful for training teachers. In the absence of such schools a system of apprenticeship under good teachers may answer the purpose nearly as well. 17. The present system of school inspection in Oudh is more costly than effective. The kanúngos will be a cheaper agency than deputy inspectors, who are altogether a foreign element in the village school system. As each post-office is also a savings bank so each kanungo in this tour of inspection of village papers 296

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may as well inspect village schools. As the kanungo is very intimately connected with the several village communities in his circuit, he will be able to look after village schools much better. The co-operation of Native gentlemen also should be secured. Some education I officers look upon this co-operation as a curtailment of their powers just as some executive officers seem to dread the inauguration or extension of local self government. 18. The middle class Anglo vernacular examination greatly interferes with the further progress of our boys. Let purely vernacular schools alone compete for the middle examination. In the latter case it will help to produce a useful vernacular literature. 19. Excluding Bengal Proper and Bombay, the cause of English education would for some time suffer in India. But as out of evil God brings out some good, so a spirit of reliance upon local exertions and combination for local purposes is sure to be the result under the fostering care of a liberal Government that offers local self government to India. 20. Definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct does not occupy a separate or prominent place in Government schools and colleges. Government can hardly take any definite steps towards imparting such instruction without treading upon religious ground. Only such institutions as are established by the Natives themselves can do much to improve the social and moral feelings of students. The influence of English literature and higher instruction in arts and sciences also goes far to advance the cause of morality and sense of duty. 21. No steps worthy of mention are taken for promoting the physical well being of students in Oudh. We look to Municipal and district committees for the encouragement of physical exercise among students. 22. Only some of our youths having themselves received the benefits of English education have commenced to teach vernacular, and sometimes a little of English too, to their young female relations. But there is no system in all this. Each individual follows his own whim, and that too for a short time only. As all classes of respectable Native females are pardanashin, it is not easy for any one to ascertain the extent of progress they make. Among Cashmiri pandits all girls can read and write Hindi very freely. Though our vernacular is Urdu there are very few of our females that can read Urdu books. They read a few Sanskrit religious books and can recite Sanskrit slokas without understanding their meaning. Among Muhammadans some females read the Koran, others Urdu translations of some religious works in Arabic, and some, though very few, compose even Urdu verses. This sort of indigenous instruction is found only in the upper strata of Hindu and Muhammadan society. Mothers teach their daughters sewing and cooking, and elder sisters or cousins teach a little of the first two R’s to their younger cousins before marriage, after which event it all rests with the taste of their husbands. 23. The Department of Education always assists the zenana missions in establishing schools for girls. Where there are no zenana missions it assists and encourages Natives in establishing such schools, and under encouraging conditions it establishes small Government schools too. A little of the three R’s and 297

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something of needle-work is all that is taught in such schools. Our females and their male relations have their own peculiar notions of morality and respectability. None of the above schools have ever enlisted the sympathy of Native gentry nor commanded their respect. The schools are filled generally by low born girls of a degraded class, or by poverty-stricken famished girls, or some of very doubtful social position are attracted to such schools by pecuniary inducements. Enlightened Natives find themselves altogether powerless in the matter of female education. Young husbands can do much towards educating their wives, and when these enlightened wives become mothers, their children are sure to be wiser and better in every way. Then alone can there be a systematic female education in India. 24. If “mixed schools” mean institutions where boys and girls are instructed together, it would be sheer madness to start such a school for the Natives of India. 25. To steal a march on native prejudices, respectable Saidanis (wives of Sayyids) for Muhammadan girls, and Brahmin widows of good moral character should be selected as teachers for Hindu girls. We require a normal school to train such teachers. 26. Yes, the terms are less onerous, because strictness in the case of girls’ schools would be worse than useless. 27. Female education in India under the British Government owes almost everything to European and American ladies. The name of Miss Carpenter is remembered by us with gratitude. Lady Phear and a number of other distinguished ladies did their best in promoting the cause of female education in India. To increase the interest which ladies might take in this cause, let our gracious Empress confer the orders of the Indian Empire on some ladies that especially distinguished themselves in this direction, and let the services of others be otherwise recognized by conferring lesser honours on them. Instead of trying to enter the Parliament and the Senate house or otherwise to have equal privileges with the stronger sex, Western ladies would thus find a scope for the exercise of their energies in India. 28. More care ought to be exercised in the selection of teachers. Men that have given sufficient proof of good character and can command the respect and attention of pupils should be preferred to raw youths fresh from their college studies. Hitherto, anybody producing an University certificate is taken in, no matter whether he has any aptitude for giving instruction or not. 29. In Oudh we have two highly paid officers, an inspector and an assistant inspector. As under the new arrangements much of the work of inspection is likely to be taken away from them, their services may be otherwise utilised. The Punjab University has already given certificates of proficiency to many oriental scholars in Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit. They may now be employed at much smaller pay. In colleges native professors like Babu Lachmi Shankar in the Benares College, and Maulvi Zakaulla in the Allahabad College, may be substituted for Europeans to teach the science course.

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30. Higher education is generally more cared for than primary and secondary education. The department would no doubt gain much by having more men of practical training in the art of teaching and school management. 31. Yes. Under the supervision of able and experienced teachers the system works well. I was myself for some time a pupil teacher. 32. If Boards of Examiners that thoroughly understand their work and command the confidence of the people be appointed by the Department of Education, this system may be applied to all classes of aided institutions. They should be judged, not by results of examinations each year, but by results extending over a period of some five or six years. Attendance, discipline, and popularity of an institution are not to be overlooked. A distinction ought to be made between Missionary institutions and those established by the people, for the latter cannot compete with the former on equal terms. 33. If the examinations be well supervised and the results be altogether aboveboard, it does not matter whether the teachers be certificated or not. I do not see anything particularly good in this system under any conditions whatsoever. 34. The aid should in no case be less than half of the total expenditure of the institution. 36. If Europeans of superior qualifications be thus attracted to India to fill the several chairs of Indian Universities, the cause of high education cannot but improve. It is impossible for really able men to remain anywhere without improving all those that come in contact with them. 37. From the entrance class upward promotion from class to class should depend upon the results of University examinations as hithertofore. In primary and middle schools it is preferable that such promotions be left to the school authorities. 38. Where there is already a well conducted aided college like our Cunning College in Oudh it is unnecessary for the Government to have a Government institution too, unless required by the wants of the province. Where it is found necessary to have one Government college as a model, it should not compete with private or aided institutions by charging smaller or even equal fees, nor should a distinction be made in conferring scholarships and Government situations. 39. The circumstances of the Muhammadans still require a somewhat exceptional treatment in the matter of English education in Lucknow. These circumstances are due chiefly to change of government religious bigotry and luxurious and loose habits of life. Their aversion to English education is now declining. The liberal minded members of the Rafah-i-Am Committee are trying their best to invite the attention of their co-religionists in Lucknow to the advantages of English education. As an undue pride, self conceit and vanity were supposed to prevent the children of the Muhammadan aristocracy of Lucknow from reading in schools which included among their pupils boys of inferior social position, the Cunning college committee has made provisions for that feeling by opening a special class for the children of the Lucknow nobility and Oudh landed aristocracy.

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ANNEXURE. A Memorandum on the Education of the Sons of Landlords, by UDAY PRATAP SINGH, Raja of Bhinga, Oudh. A SUITABLE institution, with the comforts of a home and the advantages of mixing in good society, is an all important want for the sons of the landed aristocracy of Oudh and of the contiguous provinces. The education imparted in Government schools and colleges does not meet the requirements of the case, it being unfitted to prepare young men in general, and the sons of the upper class in particular, for the faithful discharge of the duties which may devolve on them in after life. Under the present system a man who attains notoriety by dabbling in newspapers and heaping volumes of abuse on the devoted head of any person who has the misfortune to differ from him in opinion is considered a grant in intellect and a model of manliness. As it is not desirable to bring the sons of this class up to this high stage of culture, a system better than the existing one is a necessity. The sons of noblemen, like all other classes of Her Majesty’s subjects, should be taught to represent their grievances, and stand up for their rights in a respectful and straightforward manner, but measures should be taken to make them peaceful citizens rather than noisy agitators. It is a well known fact that the Wards’ institutions which have been organised from time to time, have egregiously failed in effecting the good they were intended to bring about. It is instructive to note the causes of their failure. The complaints generally raised against these institutions are, 1st, the inmates have had both their morals and manners corrupted, 2nd, their intellectual improvement has scarcely been secured, 3rd they have not been taught to manage their estates with efficiency. In defence of these institutions it may be said that these young men would have been in a worse predicament if such institutions had not existed. The fact, however, is this:—These young men, deprived of the home training calculated, to some extent, to prepare them for their work as landlords, are brought in contact with such influences of city life as rob them of their simplicity and leave them deteriorated in manners and debauched in morals. The conclusion from all this is not that education itself is demoralising but that wrong systems of education should be avoided. A system of education based on correct principles is sure to benefit those brought under its influence. The failure of these Wards institutions is, therefore, an argument in favour of their displacement by an institution better organised than they were. No stress should be laid on what is commonly urged against the expediency of communicating English education to the sons of the landlords. The exclusion of English education under present circumstances is tantamount to the exclusion of all which deserves the name of education. The object of every good system of education should be to expand the mind and influence the heart by means of the advanced thought of the age and these intellectual riches are treasured up only in the languages of Europe, and if these languages be excluded, 300

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then the object is completely defeated. Till the languages of this country are enriched by the transference of such thought to them, in their weakness, they cannot, without such adventitious help, possibly meet the requirements of a liberal education. Why should our countrymen object to borrow from the rich information stored up in the English language? The history of the world cannot point out a period when all the nations of the world were equally enlightened at the same time, or when any one nation was so rich in the glories of culture that it did not stand in need of borrowing from the intellectual treasures of other nations. The English language, which is admittedly one of the most powerfully expressive languages at present spoken, and is fast becoming a universal language, owes its richness mainly to the wealth which it has so unstintingly borrowed from other languages, both living and dead. The oriental languages made great progress in ancient times, but they unhappily came to a stand still, and while they have continued stationary, the English language has been keeping pace with the strides of intellectual development. Hence the poverty of the one and the richness of the other. The English language has taken centuries of culture under the guidance of the master minds of England to raise itself to its present stage of sturdiness, and the Indian languages must pass through the same refining and recuperative courses of training to arrive at the same stage of perfection, and, till they do not do so we must have recourse to the English tongue for that excellence of mental culture which they in their present state fail to secure. The necessity of having a well-organised boarding institution for the sons of noblemen will appear when we take into consideration the fact that they, like the other classes of Her Majesty’s subjects in India, are in a transition state, which we have no guarantee will culminate in good, and, therefore, unless suitable steps be opportunely taken, no one can predict what evils may not follow. In a political point of view also the education of the rising generation of landlords would be an advantage, inasmuch as it would enable them to appreciate the benefits of British rule, to introduce needed improvements and reforms into their estates, and to promote the welfare of the country by adding to the enlightenment and comforts of their dependants and tenants. The disaffection and discontent resulting from disappointment in the case of educated Natives running in a body after the loaves and fishes of the public service, would not of course appear in their case Nay, this feeling would diminish considerably in the country at large in consequence of the numerous employments sure to be thrown open for such place hunters by educated landlords. Education in such an institution should be religious, moral, intellectual, æsthetic, and physical— (i)

Some provision should be made for the religious instruction of the pupils. Both Hindu and Muhammadan pupils should be intelligently and dogmatically taught the principles of their respective faiths by pious Pandits and Maulvis. Boys must be instructed in the religions of 301

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(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

their forefathers, and nothing should be done or said to shake their faith therein, while it would be left to their option in after life to mould their religious convictions as they like. Thus, for the religious instruction of the Mussulman youths the two Maulvis hereinafter mentioned will have to be of the two sects, one to teach the Shias, and the other the Sunnis. So also there will have to be employed two Pandits to teach the tenets of the two Vedas—namely, the Sam Veda Samhita of Kauthumi School with the Gobbda Grihiyá Sutrá, and the Shukla Ejur Veda Samhita of the Madhenyani School with the Kátiyam Grihiyá Sutrá. No instruction has been prospectively provided for the other two Vedic sections and for the dissenting branches of the two above-mentioned Vedas, because the Hindus of this part of the country are, as a rule, followers of the above two said schools of the two Vedas. Other suitable religious instruction may be imparted to those alumns to whom the above books are prohibited by the laws of Mánu; but for the sons of “The Twice Born” (i.e., the sons of Brahmans and Kahatryas) no other books will be found more useful than those already named. Moral education should be imparted through the medium of some treatise on the practical rules of morality, illustrated by examples taken from the lives of great and good men and women in any age or of any country. A book of this kind can be easily compiled if no such be already forthcoming. In imparting intellectual education care should be taken to discipline the mind, as well as to convey useful information, and its value should be determined, not by the number of books taught, but by the amount and quality of information imparted and digested. Æsthetic culture should be secured, and the pupils taught to appreciate and make progress in the fine arts so that each of them may be furnished with a fund of refined enjoyment fitted to counteract all tendency to pleasures of a demoralising stamp. It is a well known fact that the characters of persons are often ruined more on account of their want of such sources of refining and mind-elevating pleasures than on account of a natural proclivity to vice. The necessity then of teaching ethics is at once apparent. Intellectual education should be coupled with physical education, and gymnastic exercises should be resorted to by the pupils for the purpose of counteracting the wear and tear of mental labour.

As to the location of such an institution, a retired place or one free from the bustle and demoralising influences of city life should be selected; and a suitable building consisting of dormitories bath rooms, and three or four big class rooms, around a central hall, with a commodious drawing room attached, should be raised along with apartments for the resident teachers and room for billiards. Outside the main buildings there should be a line of small dining rooms for 302

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Hindu boarders and a dining hall for Muhammadans, stables out-houses &c. We might at first have the nucleus of a building to be enlarged and expanded as occasion may demand and the proposition suggests itself that the landlords themselves would in all probability readily come forward with substantial donation towards the funds required for raising the building were they only certain the Government favoured their enterprise. There are many suitable buildings which Government could be asked to place temporarily at the disposal of the institution at the onset. The staff of the institution should consist of a Superintendent of Rs. 400 per mensem, two senior masters of Rs. 200 each; and two junior masters of Rs. 100 each; besides two Pandits and two Maulvis on Rs. 25 each—the whole expenditure, including Rs. 100 for medical aid and about Rs. 100 for contingencies not to exceed Rs. 400 a month. If the institution secured about fifty pupils paying according to the incomes of their respective estates that is, at the rate of about Rs. 40 per head on an average, its income would more than cover its expenses. In selecting teachers care should be taken to exclude men who are disaffected towards Government for personal reasons, and who may sow the seeds of discontent among the pupils and thereby defeat one of the great objects of the institution, namely, the promotion of loyalty in aristocratic circles. Persons well educated, well behaved, of unimpeachable character and respectability, able not only to read, write, and speak English with accuracy and eloquence, but especially to pronounce English words according to the usages of good society, ought to be appointed. The programme of studies should consist of good reading books, small elementary treatises on health, agriculture, political economy, geography, grammar arithmetic, land measuring history, and letter writing, with a compendium on good manners—and on this latter head Chesterfield’s Advice to his Son may be read with advantage. For advanced pupils, such books as Bentham a Theory of Legislation; Spencer a Sociology; Mill a Treatise on Representative Government, Subjection of Women, and Liberty, together with Fawcett a Political Economy, and standard works on history may be selected. Some ideas of the laws of the land, civil and criminal, should also be given to all classes of pupils. If pupils, after having finished the course evince a desire to go up for the University Examinations, they may take up the course taught in the colleges to one of which the institution may be affiliated. The institution ought to be separate from the other educational establishments at work, because the sons of the upper class are likely in tender years to be corrupted by a free intercourse with city gamins. There can, of course, be no serious objection to richer boys associating with poorer ones in the class room when their character is to some extent formed. It will on the contrary, do them good to compete with pupils of all classes for University honours on an equal footing. As to the routine of business for the pupils, the following directions will suffice:—Pupils should rise at six, walk or ride one hour, have athletic exercises 303

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between seven and eight, bathe and breakfast between eight and nine, attend classes between 9 A.M. and 1 P.M., spend the interval till 3 P.M. in relaxation and in light reading lunch to be partaken of during this latter interval. Lessons in drawing and in music should be given between 3 and 4 P.M., and exercises in elocution and composition till 5 P.M. Walking and riding between 5 and 6 P.M. On their return they would have an hour for dinner, after which they would repair to the drawing room, where the Superintendent would in a pleasant manner invite them to instructive conversation on the biographies of great men, living and dead, politics etiquette, &c. In this way false ideas would be eradicated from out of the minds of students and correct ones substituted in their stead. Retiring hours 10 P.M. The hours must, of course, change with the seasons. Each of the pupils should have no more than five servants, including a groom, and no pupil should be allowed to have a private tutor to tempt him to idleness. Among miscellaneous things to be taught great attention should be paid to the rules of etiquette to enable them to move in high circles, both amongst Europeans and their own countrymen, to the approved mode of keeping accounts, managing establishments, and distributing work amongst subordinates. Pupils should be taught to have more confidence in European officers, who are likely to be disinterested councillors, than in their own illiterate underlings, who have none but interested motives to subserve. They should be encouraged between vacation times to enlarge their minds by visiting places of interest. Corporal punishment, which has a most deteriorating effect on the mind, and by a frequency of its administration makes the receiver shameless ought not to be inflicted except in extreme cases of flagrancy. The boys must be taught to value, above all measure, their individual self-respect, so that they may be heartily ashamed at all times of doing anything which is wrong mean, or vile. It may be said that the reluctance of the aristocracy to send their sons for education would stand in the way of the success of such an institution. But experience amply shows that they would gladly send their sons if they were made aware of the deep interest taken by the authorities in schemes having for their object the proper education of their sons. Should the inducement of the well wishers of the people fail to impress on their minds the great advantages of education, then compulsory measures recommend themselves, and decidedly a law, which will make education compulsory among the higher classes, will be acceptable to them who have the welfare of their country at heart.

Addendum to the Evidence of RAJA UDAY PERTAP SINGH, Raja of Bhinga. I find it necessary to alter my answer to question No. 68, which I find I have misconstrued. My answer accordingly is—that it would be prejudicial to high 304

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education for Government, under any circumstances, to withdraw its aid; especially so, if it were to close its own institutions and leave the work to another where the people object to send their children on account of its religious teaching. I would now beg to make the following suggestions:— That, after having passed a successful examination in the subjects prescribed, the alumni be encouraged, by the offer of prizes and scholarships, to follow a course of reading which will improve their general knowledge and enlarge their minds with advanced ideas and thoughts. As matters unfortunately now stand, students, on leaving their schools and colleges, seldom try to add to the stock of their acquirements. With the view to meet the difficulties set forth in my answer to question No. 67, regarding Kshatriya youths, I would point out that some especial encouragement should be given to the said youths; and that such men as try to promote their education should have a ready support from Government. I submit the following questions for the consideration of the Education Commission:— What proportion do Kshatriya boys undergoing education in the schools and colleges bear to the students of other castes? And likewise, in Government and other public offices, what is the ratio of Kshatriya employés to others? In conclusion, I beg to reiterate my opinion more clearly, that, whatever be the standard of education in schools and colleges, the acquirement of the English language should be of leading importance. Apart from all the advantages which a knowledge of it is calculated to give, it is in every way probable that English will one day become the vernacular of the country.

Note 1. I have not taken into account such indigenous schools which taught the Kurân only. But there were indigenous schools which taught secular books along with the Kuran. In such schools it was customary to read the Kurán in the earlier part of the day, and secular books in the afternoon.

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The University and Vernacular Education.

The vernacular department of the University was not worked very satisfactorily. Telugu, Tamil and Mahratta were taught only superficially. The main object, however, which the Government had in view was to raise up a class of good vernacular linguists, who, by the attainment of a thorough and critical knowledge of their own language, might as teachers in schools, or as the writers or translators of useful books, be enabled to render their acquirements available to their countrymen, and in the words of the Court of Directors, “communicate to the native literature and to the minds of the native community that improved spirit which it is to be hoped they will themselves have imbibed from the influence of European ideas and sentiments.” This object, however, was not realized, though a considerable portion of the time assigned to the vernacular studies was devoted to translation from and into English, and a prize was awarded each year for the vernacular exposition of a portion of a standard English author. The great difficulty was to secure competent vernacular teachers who were at the same time possessed of a sufficient knowledge of English. The appointment of a vernacular superintendent was proposed with a view to introduce an improved system of vernacular instruction and the establishment of a training class for vernacular teachers. Among the duties proposed for the vernacular superintendent was the preparation and supervision of translations of approved English works into the vernacular languages, and of the publication of an improved series of vernacular books. The University Board, however, were fully sensible of the poverty of vernacular literature and they pointed out to Government the difficulty of translating satisfactorily scientific and philosophic works. “In truth, only those English works,” they reported, “which deal in simple narrative, in which little occasion arises for the use of abstract terms, which relate palpable occurrences, sometimes surprising; sometimes interesting to the feelings, sometimes ludicrous, appear to admit of efficient translations. At all events such are the only works which, in translation, are attractive. They are such as amuse the idle hour, and delight children 306

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until their minds become more highly cultivated. But they are not the kind of class books through which it is desired to communicate substantial knowledge.” Under these circumstances, it appeared to the Board that the course to be encouraged was that of “a full and free exposition, rather than a translation, of all the subject matter contained in any English work, by the assistance of, or entirely by, such natives as have attained a full comprehension of the subject matter, and also a proficiency in the English language.” It would not be out of place here to draw attention to an important scheme drawn up by Lord Auckland on the subject of the preparation of vernacular class books. It was proposed by him, as far back as in 1839, that the Governments of the different Presidencies should “co-operate through the bodies charged with the control of public instruction under their superintendence, in the common object of aiding the preparation of any useful and comprehensive set of class books, to be afterwards rendered into the vernacular tongues of the several Provinces.” The practical outcome of this scheme was, however, very disappointing. It was only in 1866 that the subject of female education came under the serious consideration of Government, though previous to that year the several Missions had taken practical steps towards the establishment of elementary schools for girls. The subject, of course, naturally, for many years past, engaged the attention of educated natives, but, omitting the establishment of a few schools, in which elementary instruction was conveyed to girls of a tender age by male teachers, the result had been rather in words than in acts. A stimulus was afforded to female education by a visit from Miss Carpenter, whose philanthropic exertions in England to improve the more neglected sections of the community were well-known. At several meetings in which this lady took part, the following points were debated: (1) whether the time had arrived for Government to take a direct share in female education, and (2) if so, what is the direct work which it is advisable Government should undertake. In the discussions, very conflicting views were put forward. It appeared, however, that the general feeling was that Government should, at any rate, not do more than establish a Normal School for training female teachers. Even action, to this extent, which was what Miss Carpenter advocated, was not taken till after sometime owing to the heavy expenditure involved. The educational Department, however, set about collecting, as far as possible reliable information regarding girls studying in schools unconnected with the Department. On the 31st March 1868, there were 6,510 girls under instruction in schools connected with the Educational Department. The statistics received from non-departmental schools—which were mostly under Mission management— shewed 4,295 girls under instruction, of which number 399 were returned as Europeans and Eurasians, 2,420 as Native Christians, 1,365 as Hindus, 29 Muhammadans and 82 others. The larger proportion of Native Christians than Hindus is noteworthy. Out of the 4,295 only 700 were entered as learning English. The total number of girls that received instruction in the Madras Presidency in 1868 may be taken as exceeding 10,500. The figures, however, were considered to be more or less inaccurate. Speaking of the nature of instruction imparted to the girls, the Director of Public Instruction remarked:—“In almost all cases the instruction conveyed was of a very 307

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elementary stamp; and in too many instances, I fear the teaching is productive of no permanent effect beyond rendering the pupils better disposed towards female education, and so paving the way for the instruction of a succeeding generation.” Omitting Madras and Tinnevelly, where female education was most extended, the districts which showed the largest attendance were Malabar and Tanjore. It is right to notice here the efforts that the Maharajah of Vizianagrara made to encourage female education on his estates. In 1868 he established a school at Vizianagram for Rajpoot and Brahman girls, at an annual cost of about 12,000 Rupees. The school though unconnected with the Department was under Government inspection. In an order, dated 26th November, 1868, His Excellency the Governor made the following remark:— “The Government of Madras have frequently acknowledged the enlightened and liberal spirit in which the Maharajah of Vizianagrara fulfils the responsible obligations of his position as a great landed proprietor, and they now receive with the greatest satisfaction this further evidence of the Maharajah’s desire to promote the welfare of his countrymen, as shewn in the practical and generous aid which he has given to the cause of female education in India.” In 1868 the Government of India was pleased to assign, as an experimental measure, an annual sum of Rs. 12,000 for five years, for the support of a Government Female Normal School at each of the three Presidency Towns. The Hindu community were required to make provision for a few stipends and the guarantee of money for stipends was made conditional upon Hindu caste females being alone admitted to this school. At first there was some difficulty experienced in securing pupils but this difficulty was overcome gradually. The school was formally opened in December 1870, with Miss Bain, now Mrs. Brander, as the first Superintendent. Mrs. Brander, as first Superintendent of the Female Normal School, and afterwards as Inspectress of Girls’ Schools, has contributed no mean share to the development of female education in this Presidency. At the close of 1870–71 the number of girls’ schools in the Presidency was returned as 138 of which 91 had middle departments and one a high department and the number of pupils was 10,185. According to the census of 1871, of the Native Christian females of school going age only 1 out of 10, and of Hindu females only 1 out of 509, had received any education. But of a population of 1,880,720 Muhammadans, very few girls had received instruction in schools. During the decade ending March 31st, 1881, some desirable progress was made in Female Education. The number of girls receiving instruction rose, during this period, from 10,185 to 32,355. Of High schools for girls there were at the close of 1881 eight with 38 pupils, while of Middle schools there were twenty-five English and seven Vernacular with 316 and 58 pupils, respectively. In his report of 1880–81, Mr. H. B. Grigg, the Director of Public Instruction, expressed his strong conviction that for progress in Female Education there were essential (a) Normal Schools, (b) Government agency. The following extract from his Report on Elementary Education shews the extent of elementary education for girls in 1880–81:— “So far little has been done by Government directly for the education of girls, but about ten years ago a Normal school was established at Madras for the education of teachers for

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native Girls’ schools, but it has become in great measure a high school for East Indians and Europeans, and during its existence has only educated 60 Hindu and native Christian teachers. Some five or six years ago the Government undertook the charge of a few elementary schools for girls which had been established by some Local Fund Boards and Municipalities. With one or two exceptions they are all doing fair work, but are mostly in a very elementary condition. Only four of these twelve schools are situated in towns of any importance. In addition to the Girls’ schools maintained by Government, there were in 1879–80 ten Girls’ schools maintained by Municipalities and thirteen by Local Fund Boards. But although the Government have done as yet little by direct action for female education, they have aided liberally private enterprise, but as yet with the exception of the towns of Madras and Tinnevelly, Rajahmundry and Cocanada, private effort has not been very successful. But at the same time there are but few large towns in the Presidency in which a mission society is not offering facilities for female education, and in many cases of late, more especially, the education of the girls of the higher caste. In Tinnevelly, in particular, in pursuance of the policy inaugurated by Mr. Lash of the Church Missionary Society, who developed the Sarah Tucker female training school into an institution mainly for the training of girls of the respectable classes, who would be suitable for teachers in caste schools, between two and three thousand girls are studying in small elementary schools, maintained by the Church Missionary Society in different parts of the district, mostly under the management of a trained mistress assisted by her husband. The Sarah Tucker institution turned out in 1879–80 no less than 35 school-mistresses of the second and third grades. Mistresses educated in this institution are in demand through the Tamil districts, both in mission and secular schools, but it is difficult to induce them to take service far from their houses, except at comparatively speaking high salaries. To supply the demand for female teachers in the central Tamil districts, a training school is about to be opened at Trichinopoly, under the auspices of the S. P. G. Society. There is a Normal Class attached to the Free Church Female Christian Institution, Madras, which produces some five or six teachers annually to the first, second, and third grades; and in the Northern Circars I understand that the agents of the Church Missionary Society have in contemplation the establishment of a Normal Class or school in connection with their boarding institution for girls at Masulipatam. In most parts of the Presidency there is a general desire for the elementary education of young girls springing up, and this desire is being stimulated by the action of Municipalities; but until the supply of trained female teachers is adequate to the demand, the progress of female education cannot be very rapid. In many Girls’ Schools, and some of them the most important in the Presidency, viz., the Maharaja of Vizianagaram Schools at Madras and at Rajamundry, the teaching and management are practically entrusted to male teachers, and some of them are admirably managed, especially the Maharaja’s School at Rajamundry, But the employment of male teachers has the great disadvantage of checking the tendency of permitting girls to remain at school after they have come to a marriageable age. Still male agency is not suddenly to be discarded, and years must elapse before native female teachers of sufficient age, standing and character are available for the charge of important institutions for the education of girls. Owing to the system of early marriage, and the risks to female life in this country, the proportion of female teaching power produced each year, which will not be ultimately available for teaching, is very large.”

In 1880, the Secretary of State sanctioned the appointment of an Inspectress of Girls’ Schools on a salary of Rs. 400, rising by biennial increments of Rs. 20 to Rs. 500. This appointment was rendered necessary not only in the 309

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interests of female education generally, but also to relieve the Inspector of the Presidency Division, whose work, including the inspection of upwards of fifty Girls’ schools, had become too heavy for one officer to perform efficiently. It was also hoped that by the aid of such an official some of the difficulties in the way of promoting the education of ladies of zenanas and their daughters might be removed, especially as several influential native gentlemen had expressed a strong desire for such instruction. Mrs. Isabel Brander, who was nominated to the newly-created post, assumed charge of her office on the 3rd June 1880. Mr. Grigg, writing in 1881 of her work, said:—“The deep interest which she takes in the cause of female education, the efficient manner in which she has been discharging her inspectorial duties, and the sympathy she is eliciting among a section of the Madras Native community in the important branch of educational activity entrusted to her care, fully justify the creationof the appointment, and will, I trust, in time warrant the extension of the sphere of her usefulness.” The successful career of Mrs. Brander as an educational officer for the past 15 years shews that the above expectations have been more than realized. At first she was in charge of the Girls’ schools in the town of Madras, and after sometime the Girls’ schools in the Nellore and Chinglepnt Districts were transferred to her. The Teachers’ certificate examinations were found in some respects very inappropriate tests for girls in secondary schools and hence Col. Macdonald in 1870 proposed the institution of an examination styled the Higher Examination for Women, which was to be on a level with the Matriculation Examination. This examination was first held in 1881 and was abolished in 1892. During the twelve years it was in existence it did a great deal to stimulate the secondary education of girls in the Presidency. Moral Training in Colleges.

The remarks of the Commission on the subject of moral training—a subject to which considerable attention has of late been given by the Government of India and the local Governments are of special interest and value. The Report says:— “The subject of moral training in colleges is replete with difficulties—difficulties, however, that are mainly practical. For there is no difference of opinion as to moral training being as necessary as intellectual or physical training, and no dissent from the principle that a system in which moral training was wholly neglected would be unworthy of the name of education. Nor, again, is there any difference of opinion as to the moral value of the love of law and order, of the respect for superiors, of the obedience, regularity and attendance to duty which every well-conducted college is calculated to promote. All these have, by the nearly universal consent of the witnesses, done a great deal to elevate the moral tone and improve the daily practice of the great bulk of those who have been trained in the colleges of India. The degree in which different colleges have exerted a moral influence of this kind is probably as various as the degree of success that has attended the intellectual training given in them and has doubtless been different in all colleges at different times, depending as it does so largely on the character and personal influence of the Principal and Professors who may form the staff at any given period. So far all the witnesses, and probably all 310

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intelligent men, are substantially agreed. Difficulties begin when the question is raised whether good can be dune by distinct moral teaching, over and above the moral supervision which all admit to be good and useful, and which all desire to see made more thorough than it is at present. In colleges supported by Missionary Societies, in the Anglo-Muhammadan College, Aligarh, and in at least one other college under native management, the attempt has been made to give such moral teaching on the basis of religion. In Government colleges there has been no attempt at direct moral teaching. In them, entire reliance has, as a rule, been placed on such moral supervision as can be exerted during college hours, and on such opportunities for indirect moral lessons as are afforded by the study of the ordinary text-books and by the occurrences of ordinary academic life. Religious education, and the possibility of connecting it with Government colleges, we shall consider separately. The present point is the possibility or wisdom of introducing distinct moral teaching in places where there is no religious instruction. The question that was put to bring out the views of our witnesses on the point stood thus:—“Does definite instruction in duty and the principles of moral conduct occupy any place in the course of Government colleges and schools? Have you any suggestions to make on this subject?” None of the witnesses raised any objection in principle to such instruction being given. A considerable number held that there is no need for such instruction, and two of these, the Principals of Government colleges in Bombay and Madras, held that no good result can flow from devoting a distinct portion of time to the teaching of duty and the principles of moral conduct. Some also held that the practical difficulties in the way of introducing moral instruction into Government colleges are so great that it is expedient to leave matters as they are. The great majority, however, of the witnesses that dealt with the question at all, expressed a strong desire that definite moral instruction should form part of the college course. . . . . . A review of the evidence seems to show that moral instruction may be introduced into the course of Government colleges without objection any where, and in some Provinces with strong moral approval. Those who wish definite moral instruction to be introduced generally advocate the teaching of some moral text-book. No one, however, has pointed to any text-book that he is prepared to recommend for immediate introduction. . . . . . In all colleges, and under all courses of instruction, the most effective moral training consists in inculcating habits of order, diligence, truthfulness, and due self-respect combined with submission to authority, all of which lessons a good teacher finds useful opportunities of imparting. The formation of such habits is promoted by the study of the lives and actions of great men, such as the student finds in the course of his English reading; and, it may also be hoped, by the silent influence upon his character of constant intercourse with teachers, whom he is able to regard with respect and affection. Nor, again, is there reason to believe that collegiate education of the present type has any injurious effect upon the life and character of the students. On the contrary, the nearly unanimous testimony of those who have had the best opportunities of observing goes to shew that in integrity, in self-respect, in stability of purpose, 311

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and generally in those solid qualities which constitute an honourable and useful character, the University graduate is generally superior to those who have not employed the advantages which college training confers.”

APPENDIX J. MISSIONARY EDUCATION. DANISH MISSION. The Danish Missionaries arrived in Madras in the early part of the year 1717, when, according to the Proceedings Book of the Madras Government, Monday, 27th May, “the President lays before the Board a paper of proposals delivered him by Mr. Grundler, one of the Danish missionaries lately arrived from Tranquebar, for erecting two Charity schools in this city. It is agreed that liberty be sriven for erecting two Charity schools—one for Portuguese in the English town, and another for Malabars in the Black Town.” Thus the first public effort to educate the “Malabar” or Tamil people was at the handsof missionaries. The pyal schools had received no State or Municipal recognition. When these schools were established, the factors and other residents of Madras disapproved of the teachers being foreigners, and repeated prote its were made to the Home Authorities. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge replied that no Englishman could be persuaded to go out. In 1746 English was employed as the language of the mission, being introduced by the missionary Geister. This was not effected without opposition on the part of the other German and Danish missionaries. However, not long after this the German language was forgotten, and the missionaries themselves becoame Anglicised, founding the well-known families of the Kohlhoffs, Breithaupts, Pæzolds, Pohles, and others. Emulating the activity of Ziogenbalgand his colleagues the Company established in 1717 a school for native children at Cuddalore. This was the beginning of the great system of Anglo-Vernacular education maintained under the patronage of Government in this Presidency. Mr. Ord had confined his labours to English children. The second schoolmaster whose name survives was named Radewitz, who was for many years the teacher of the Portuguese school established by Ziegenbalg in the Fort. He died in 1732. The Malabar, or native school, opened by Ziegenbalg, or under his direction, soon ceased to exist, for there was no pnblic appreciation of the value of education, and the natives held aloof from the school because of its Christian character. When the Missionary Schnltze settled in Madras in 1726, here-opened this school, and, under his energetic direction, it soon filled with scholars, and was the origin of the present Vepery Anglo-Vernacnlar school, which has enjoyed an almost continuous existence ever since the original school 312

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was first located in Black Town. The different schools thus founded were maintained for many years entirely from funds provided by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. Established in 1699 during the reign of William III. for the purpose of spreading Christian Knowledge, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge very soon found itself engaged in semi-missionary operations. To allow purely mission work to be carried on without interfering with the true work of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, its founders established in 1701 a new Society that for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and from that day to this the two Societies have worked hand-in-hand, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel providing missionaries, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge helping them with schools and furnishing books. One of the first objects of the Society’s concern has always been to promote the education of the young by liberally communicating its resources for the benefit of charity schools. In or about 1711 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge heard of the labonrs and requirements of the Tranquebar mission and sent them money, a printing press, paper, and other stores. In 1714 Ziegenbalg went to Europe for the purpose of promoting the cause he had engaged in He was presented to the King of Denmark at Stralsund; and on visiting England was admitted to the presence of George I. by whom he was warmly encouraged. The bishops and the public received him with much cordiality; and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in particular treated him with distinction, and aided him with presents of money, books, paper, and similar stores. After an absence of nearly two years, Ziegenbalg re-landed at Madras in August 1716. Here with the assistance of the Rev. William Stevenson, the garrison chaplain, schools were soon established at Madras and at Cnddalore. The latter of these places Ziegenbalg occasionally visited; it was here, too, that eventnally he died in February 1719 at the early age of 36. Mr. Stevenson went home. His schools fell off, and were finally closed Under these circumstances, in 1726, Schnltze resolved to remove to Madras. The Christian Knowledge Society approved of the under-taking and gave the necessary aid to promote it; the garrison chaplain entered into his views; the Governor and Council were enlisted in his favour: and under these favourable auspices Sohultze established in Black Town a house pnrchased in 1728 expressly for the use of the mission. In 1734 Mr. Schultze informed the Society that in a recent visit of Mr. Sartorious to Fort St. David, the Governor of that station had expressed his willingness to co-operate in the establishment of a mission in the neighbourhood. The Society immediately authorized Mr. Schultze to take the necessary steps for the execution of this plan; and to prove their readiness to promote the full efficiency of their new missions, sent at the same time a munificent contribution towards the erection of a church and two schools at Madras. The amount of money sent out by this Society in the 313

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years 1736 and 1737 was £3,200, which liberality enabled the missionaries to establish themselves effectually at Cuddalore, to which place Sartorius and Geister now removed. In 1746 the French under La Bourdonnais bombarded Madras; and having compelled Fort St. George to capitulate, they levelled a great part of Black Town for the purpose of improving the defences. Up to that time Black Town extended right across the esplanade to the Fort wall. In fact the burial ground, now remembered only by the monument to the daughter of Governor Yale still standing on the monument esplanade, was then in the heart of Black Town, and the best houses were those nearest the fort. Among them was the German mission-house, which was thus destroyed. The church was converted into a magazine. Mr. Fabracius removed to Pulicat, then a Dutch settlement, where he and his converts were well received. While Dnpleix was in possession of Madras and he believed the English could never return, he gave permission to a wealthy Armenian Roman Catholic merchant to build a church and mission buildings at Vepery on land which he assigned for the purpose. It was on the site of the present Vepery Charch, and, in fact, was the building which served as the Vepery Church until the present building was erected. When the English regained Madras, the Armenian merchant and the Catholics generally were held to be intriguing with the French at Pondicherry. The Vepery premises were therefore confiscated by Government. In 1752 the local Government presented them to the Protestant mission. In November 1760 Count Lally besieged Madras; and Mr. Fabricius at Vepery was a second time exposed to the dangers and difficulties incident to such a state of things. Before he could obtain protection from the French officers, the native cavalry which accompanied the force had plundered him and his colleague Breithaupt of nearly all they possessed. The risk incurred by remaining amidst such scenes of violence induced the missionaries to remove, as on the former occasion, to Pulicat, where, though accompanied by a crowd of destitute and helpless followers, they were again most hospitably received by the Dutch. In February 1761. Madras having been relieved and the siege raised, the missionaries returned to Vepery. The year 1761 was also made remarkable by the establishment of the first printing-press in Madras. It was found at Pondicherry when that place was captured The Government presented it to the mission, which thereupon set up the printing-press at Vepery which still remains one of the most perfect in this Presidency. In the year 1784 the Christian Knowledge Society having heard of the valuable institution in Bengal for the education in Christian principles of the children of English fathers by native mothers, voted a sum of £50 annually for the maintenance of a schoolmaster at Madras, who should be required to give instruction to that class of children. In 1786 Government made another step by aiding the foundation of the Military Female Orphan Asylum. The buildings were presented to the Asylum Committee by the Nawab of the Carnatic who purchased them for the purpose at a cost of Rupees 80,000. The Missionary Gerické was the first Superintendent. The institution was highly successful, and led two years afterwards to the foundation of the Military Male Orphan Asylum. The opening of 314

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the latter marked an era in the history of elementary education not only in Madras, but throughout the world. Its first Superintendent was the famous Dr. Bell, whose interest in education was so great that he served without a salary, so that funds might be provided for the improvement of the school. Want of means to provide for the great number of applicants for admission, combined with the fact that there were no competent teachers that could be engaged to assist him, led Dr. Bell to invent what has since been known as the monitorial system of education. Known at first as Dr. Bell’s or the Madras system, it at once revealed how education could be both efficient and inexpensive, and thus became the basis of all modern progress in elementary education. What are known as the Lancasterian, Pestalozzian, Glasgow, monitorial, and pupil-teacher systems have all grown out of this, and every public elementary school in England is now conducted on one or other modification or the Madras system. About the same time Mr. Sullivan, then Resident at Tanjore, invited Swartz to accompany him in the capacity of an interpreter on a visit to the Maravar country. At Ramnad, Mr. Sullivan acquainted Swartz with a plan he had devised for instructing the natives, and establishing schools in every province. This plan was that a seminary should be established at Tanjore, undor the missionary’s personal supervision, for the education of schoolmasters, who should afterwards be located in the several villages of the country at the expense of the petty princes. The Raja of Ramnad was spoken with on the subject, and thought “it would be an excellent plan,” wishing “there were such schools in every village.” His minister also approved it, and the Raja gave a written promise to settle a monthly sum, afterwards fixed at 24 pagodas to be paid to the school. At Sivaganga also the local ruler approved of the plan, and promised to give a village for the support of a schoolmaster. He subsequently gave two villages. The Governor of Madras and the Nawab of Arcot were next written to, and both highly commended the plan. The Raja of Tanjore promised 40 pagodas a month for the support of the school to be established in or near the fort. These provincial schools answered exceedingly well. In those at Tanjord and Kumbakonam there were already 40 scholars; while in the Tamil school at Tanjore there were 99 boys, of whom 35 were charity boys maintained and clothed by the mission. Two English schoolmasters were employed for the provincial schools, and four masters were engaged for the Tamil school. By the will of Mr. Gericke, who died in 1803, it appears that an English Orphan Asylum for children not eligible for the Millitary Asylums had existed in connexion with the Vepery Mission for many years previously. This orphanage was probably the origin of the present Civil Orphan Asylums. The school continued to flourish, and in 1793 the Raja of Tanjore sent his son and successor Sarbhoji to be educated there under the Missionary Gericke. Sarbhoji remained in the school from 1793 to 1797. Meanwhile the printing-press had not flourished, and in 1810 it had to be closed because there were no meaus of paying the workmen, although there were ample stores of paper, type, &c. This was the more to be regretted, because from the first the profits had been destined for the support of schools. Later the press was reorganised. This was owing to the 315

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establishment in 1815 of the District Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge which relieved the missionaries of the care of secular matters and infused new vigour into the whole work. Madras education is much indebted to the zealous work of this little known but very useful body. At Tinnevelly Mr. Hough reported that he had, under the auspices of the Society, established nine schools, in which were educated 283 children, the total annual expense amounting to only 357 rupees. In 1815 a change of organization was made. It had for some time been felt that the Christian Knowledge Society, from the nature of its constitution and its peculiar objects and principles, laboured under several disadvantages in its attempts to conduct so extensive a missionary establishment; and in the year 1825 the Society’s missions were by mutual agreement transferred to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a District Committee of which was established in Madras iu the year 1826. The terms on which this transfer was made appear to have been understood as follows:—That the Christian Knowledge Society should continue to maintain those missionaries, who, from their having been for some years in their service, could not with propriety be unceremoniously transferred to another Society; that it should retain its right to the property purchased and acquired in the several missions during its administrations of their affairs; and tint by means of its press at Vepery and its grants of books, stationery, &c., it should maintain or supply schools for the education of the natives; and thus by furnishing them with European knowledge it should facilitate the operations of the sister Society, which henceforth undertook the whole management and direction of the missions. From this time, therefore, the history of the missions belongs to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The press was still managed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and became each year more successful. The paper, presses, English type, ink, binding materials, &c., were supplied from England at great expense, while the types for the several eastern languages were cut and founded in the establishment itself. The benefits derivable to the natives from this institution were great and various. Elementary school books in a variety of languages were supplied most liberally to the several missions: the money proceeds of the establishment, after payment of the workmen, went to form a fund called the “Native Education Fund” dedicated, as its name imports, solely to the maintenance of native schools in various parts of the Madras Presidency. Under the direction of the Committee, the Vepery Grammar School was repeatedly enlarged, and became, till the establishment of the Free Church Mission, the chief educational agency in Madras. There were also two “Charity schools,” for the Christian children, boys and girls, of Vepery, and, lastly, schools where native children of both sexes were taught without charge. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge were thus the pioneers of female education. The proportion of female scholars at Vepery at this time is especially striking; being 654 to 4,290 boys, or 1 girl for every 6½ boys. Bishop Corrie’s school was opened as the “Madras Grammar School” on the 1st July 1836, under the advice of Bishop Corrie and with the aid of the Christian Knowledge Society. 316

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THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. In 1805 the London Missionary Society commenced its work in Madras. The labours of the missionaries at Serampore had drawn the attention of the Society to India, and, as soon as there was any liberty of entrance, a missionary was sent to Madras, and he at once opened a school. From that day to this the London Mission has honourably distinguished itself in education. In recent years it has not aimed at academical distinction, but its schools are efficient and popular, and the central institution in Armenian street was for several years a leading institution in Madras. It has, however, been recently closed.

THE WESLEYAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. The Wesleyan Mission commenced operations in Madras in 1819 when Messrs. Squance, Lynch, and Close came from Ceylon to establish a mission there. In Ceylon schools had formed a most important part of the mission work, and have continued to flourish there from that day to this. In 1819 when the Madras mission opened, the Society maintained no less than 87 schools in Ceylon, attended by 5,014 children, of whom many were girls. Probably no other mission to the east ever maintained so perfect a school system as that which existed in Ceylon. The great institution at Jaffna was in after-years a sort of University, from which issued large numbers of Native Christians, who have since risen to eminence in both Ceylon and Southern India. It was to be expected, therefore, that schools should form an important part of the early work of the Wesleyan Mission in Madras Before the Society had been a year in Madras it had established two schools, one at Rayapet and the other in Black Town. The former was the origin of the present Rayapet College, which has enjoyed a continuous existence, though not always in the same premises, from that day to this, and is, therefore, only second to the Vepery Anglo-Vernacular school in point of age. In 1823 two new schools were opened at Negapatam. No other missionary body established schools for a long period after the London and Wesleyan Missionary Societies were in the field. Attention may be turned here to the operations of the State in connection with education. The Protestant mission, conducted successively by Messrs. Ziegenbalg, Gerické, Kiernander, and Swartz, under the patronage, as has been seen, of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, had opened schools at Madras, Cuddalore, Tanjore and Trichinopoly, in which they instructed the natives, and in aid of which they obtained occasional grants from the local Governments, and permission from the Court of Directors to receive from the Society in England various supplies free of freight. In 1787 the Court of Directors authorised a permanent annual grant towards the support of three schools which had been established with the sanction of the respective Rajas at Tanjore, Ramnad and Sivaganga, of 250 pagodas each. These schools were under the direction of Mr. Swartz. The Court further directed that a similar allowance should be granted to any other schools which might be opened for the same purpose. According to 317

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the books of establishment, the charge on this account was for two Protestant schools at Tanjore and Kumbakonam Rupees 4,200 per annum, together with a pension or allowance to Mr Kolhoop, a retired teacher, of Rupees 420, making a total of Rupees 4,620 per annum. In 1824 the widow Swartz enjoyed a pension from the British Government of two pagodas per month at Negapatam, and an unmarried woman of the same name a monthly allowance of one fanam. In January 1812 a Sunday School was established at St. Thomas’ Mount, at the suggestion and under the direction of the Military Chaplain at that cantonment, and by the voluntary contributions of several Europeans at the Presidency. The object of this school was to afford elementary instruction on the Lancasterian plan to the half-caste and native children of the military and others resident there. The object as well as the plan of tuition being highly approved of by the Government, an endowment of 300 pagodas per annum was granted from the 1st January 1812.

THE SCOTTISH MISSIONS. The Scottish Mission entered the field in April 1837 the date on which Mr. Anderson opened his school. This was an era in the history of Madras education, and it is necessary to note here the progress of what was first known as the mission of the Church of Scotland and afterwards as the Free Church Mission. This educational agency was one of the last to come into the field, but mainly owing to the great energy and ability of two missionaries, the Revs. John Anderson and William Miller, has grown to be one of the most important in the Presidency. In June 1835 the Rev. Messrs. Bowie and Lawrie, Scotch Chaplains, had established at Madras the St. Andrew’s school; and, after collecting funds from friends in the Presidency, they had applied to the Church of Scotland for a missionary, with the view to the establishment of an institution like that commenced at Calcutta by Dr. Duff in 1830. In response to this invitation the Rev. J. Anderson was sent from Scotland in 1836. He proce eded first to Calcutta in order to observe the modes of instruction and discipline at Dr. Duff’s institution at that city. After a short stay there he came to Madras in February 1837, and at once set to work. St. Andrew’s school was carried on near a house, in St. Andrew’s Church, Poonamallee Road. Mr. Anderson urged its removal into the city, with a view to benefit more effectually the dense native community. A suitable two-storied house was hired in Armenian street; and here, on April 3, 1837, he began his labours with 59 Hindu boys and young men. In January 1839, Mr. Johnstone came to assist Mr. Anderson. His arrival was the sisrnal for an extension of the work, and a branch school was opened at Conjeeveram, in May 1839, with eleven pupils. Mr. Frederick Cooper, Company’s Medical Officer at Nellore, had established, some years before, a school for Telugn and English, and having intimated a desire to connect it with the mission, Mr. Anderson went to Nellore to judge how far it would be advisable to accept the proposal. This led to the annexation of the Nellore school and property to the Mission in August. In this year the mission made yet another step. In 1841 a school was established at Triplicane. Mr. Anderson was invited by 318

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Mr. W. A. Morehead, then Judge at Chingleput, to supply a teacher to the school which he had induced the natives of the place to set up. This led to the adoption of Chingleput as a new branch station. Up to this time the mission had been connected with the Established Church of Scotland, but in 1843 when the Free Church seceded on the question of patronage and State interference, all the Indian missionaries joined the seceding Free Church, and carried with them, after an amicable discussion, the whole of the mission work. It is, therefore, only from 1843 that the Free Church dates, although there was no break in the continuity of the mission. By the end of 1843 the schools had altogether recovered, and their numbers exceeded those of any former year. In February 1845 the Established Church of Scotland re-opened their own mission with a large school, the origin of the institution now on the North Beach, with branch institutions at Vellore and Arkonam. This soon became full of scholars without in any way diminishing the number at Anderson’s school, so that the cause of education was again benefitted. In 1853 Mr. Johnstone died, and similarly in 1855 Mr. Anderson. From that time a great declension fell upon the mission. None could be found to tread in the steps of the founders of the mission. Many took up the task, but the climate and the magnitude of the labours involved caused the retirement of one after another till it was difficult to get any to succeed them. Matters continued unsettled till the arrival of the Rev. W. Miller in 1863.

APPENDIX K. PACHAIYAPPA’S SCHOOLS. The founding of Pachniyappa’s schools marks indeed an era in the history of Madras education, is it was the first example of intelligent natives of various castes combining to aid the cause of popular instruction. Pachaiyappa, in whose name these institutions are founded, was a wealthy Hindu, who, dying in the last, century, left one lakh of pagodas by his will for the establishment of charities, chiefly of a religions character, but in part dedicated to objects of general benevolence. The Advocate-General, Sir Herbert Campton, having discovered that these charities were totally unperformed, and that the funds were spoliated by the successive executors of his will, filed an information in the Supreme Court, and obtained a general decree against the party finally liable for an account of the fund, to be paid with accumulated interest—amounting for many lákhs of rupees—and also for the performance of the charities. On the whole there were finally collected to the credit of the charities nearly eight lakhs of rupees. A scheme was prepared, whereby, in due accordance with the provisions of the will, and without trenching upon any specific religious or benevolent charities mentioned in the will, it was proposed that all the accumulated sums beyond one lakh of pagodas (that is, upwards of four lakhs of rupees with all accumulating interest) should be devoted 319

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to educational establishments in various parts of the Presidency, and particularly at Madras. The scheme provided all details for the quality, localities, subjects of instruction, and governance of these institutions; and they were all finally incorporated in a decree of the Court. After some years directions were given, under Lord Elphinstone’s Government, for the Board of Revenne making such orders as were necessary to carry out the decree of the Supreme Court and the wishes of the Court of Directors. A body of Hindu Trustees was formed and a school in Black Town was established in January 1842, for affording gratuitous education to the poorer classes of the native community in the elementary branches of English literature and science, coupled with instruction in Tamil and Telugu. The High school of the Mudras University was then in its infancy, and, as according to the rules of that institution, no boy was eligible for admission who could not read English with some fluency, the want of a school of this primary nature was urgently felt by the rich as well as the poor. Further, as the education was imparted gratis, according to the fundamental rules of the institution, the sphere of its usefulness became wider and wider, till its numerical strength surpassed all expectation, and the trustees found themselves necessitated, though unwillingly, to restrict the rapid influx of pupils, and to refuse to listen to pressing demands for admission A small monthly fee then began to be levied from each pupil. It was the original intention of the trustees to establish a few schools in the provinces contemporaneously with the central institution in the Presidency; but circumstances deterred them from engaging in the task. The central school was, therefore, first established and conducted under their immediate supervision. Emboldened by its success, a branch school was then opened at Conjeeveram in the year 1846, on a limited scale, to be extended in case it should work to their satisfaction. There were, in 1855, 64 boys studying in the new school, which imparted instruction in English, Tamil, and Telugu. The branch school at Chidambaram was opened in the year 1850. The number of scholars on the rolls of the institution at the end of 1854 was 65. About the same time that the central institution was established in Black Town an endowment was founded in the high school of the Madras University, with a view of providing education in the higher branches of literature and science to lads in poor circumstances, and deserving of encouragement. Those that enjoyed the benefit of this endowment were divided into two classes, called Pachaiyappa’s Free and Endowed Scholars; the former had their school fee paid from the endowment, and the latter were in receipt of monthly stipends. The Trustees also gave great aid to certain vernacular institutions established in and about Madras. These institutions are founded on systematic principles, and afford to the young useful instruction in Tamil and Telugu, in some instances combined with Sanskrit. The foundation-stone of the fine hall of this institution was laid by Mr. George Norton, Advocate-General and patron of these educational charities, in the midst of a vast concourse of the native inhabitants of Madras, on the 2nd October 1846. In 1850 the building was formally opened by Sir Henry Pottinger and the central institution was moved into it. From 1858 pupils have been appearing for the Matriculation Examination from this institution. In 1880 it was raised 320

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to the rank of a second-grade college, and in 1889 it was affiliated to the University up to the B. A. Degree examination. In 1846 the Pachaiyappa Trustees took over the charities of another rich native named Govindu Nayakar. In 1856 scholarships were given in this benefactor’s name at Pachaiyappa’s schools, and later on a separate primary school was opened from the same funds. The new institution was called “Govindu Nayakar’s Primary School,” and was opened in 1864. In the year 1869 a third school of equal importance was established by means of a bequest from C. Srinivasa Pillai, who had been for several years President of Pachaiyappa’s charities. This school which was chiefly intended for the education of Hindu girls has recently been transferred to the National Indian Association. In 1872, the Trustees received another benefaction of Rupees 20,000 from one Ponnambala Pillai, and with it a Sanscrit school was established at Chidambaram in 1874. The last and the most valuable bequest was that of P. T. Lee Chengalraya Nayakar, which enabled the Trustees in 1886 to develop the short-hand class formed in 1884 as a tentative measure in connexion with Pachaiyappa’s College, into a regular Commercial High school bearing the name of Chengalraya Nayakar. Over 150 students were learning Commercial subjects in 1892.

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10 GOPAL KRISHNA GOKHALE, ‘SPEECH IN THE IMPERIAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL ON THE PRIMARY EDUCATION BILL, 16TH MARCH 1911’, SPEECHES OF GOPAL KRISHNA GOKHALE, VOL. 2 (MADRAS: G. A. NATESAN, 1916, 2ND EDN), 718–803

THE ELEMENTARY EDUCATION BILL. [On 16th March 1911, Mr. Gokhale, in asking for leave in the Imperial Legislative Council to introduce a Bill to make better provision for the extension of elementary education in India, spoke as follows:—]

My Lord, I rise to ask for leave to introduce a Bill to make better provision for the extension of elementary education throughout India. Hon’ble Members will recollect that about this time last year, the Council considered a resolution which I had ventured to submit to its judgment, recommending that elementary education should gradually be made compulsory and free throughout the country, and that a mixed Commission of officials and non-officials should be appointed to frame definite proposals. In the debate, which ensued on the occasion, fifteen Members, including the Home Member, the Home Secretary and the DirectorGeneral of Education, took part. There was then no separate portfolio of Education, and educational interests rubbed shoulders with jails and the police, in the all-comprehensive charge of the Home Department. In the end, on an assurance being given by the Home Member that the whole question would be carefully examined by the Government, the resolution was withdrawn. Twelve months, my Lord, have elapsed since then, and the progress which the question has made during the interval has not been altogether disappointing. In one important particular, indeed, events have moved faster than I had ventured to hope or suggest. One of the proposals urged by me on the Government last year was that Education should, to begin with, have a separate Secretary, and that eventually there should be a separate Member for Education in the Governor General’s Executive Council. The Government however, have given us at one bound a full-fledged 322

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Department of Education, and the Hon’ble Mr. Butler has already been placed in charge of it. My Lord, the Hon’ble Member’s appointment to the new office has been received with general satisfaction, and it is recognised on all sides that he brings to his task a reputation for great practical capacity. What I value, however, even more than his practical capacity, is the fact that the Indian sun has not dried the Hon’ble Member and that he has not yet shed those enthusiasms with which perhaps we all start in life, and without which no high task for the improvement of humanity has ever been undertaken. I think, my Lord, the creation of a separate portfolio for Education brings us sensibly nearer the time when elementary education shall be universal throughout India. That there is a strong demand for this in the country—a demand, moreover, daily growing stronger—may be gathered from the fact that, since last year’s debate, the question has been kept well to the fore by the Indian Press, and that last December resolutions in favour of compulsory and free primary education were passed not only by the Indian National Congress at Allahabad, but also by the Moslem League, which held its sittings at Nagpur. On the Government side, too, the declaration made in the House of Commons last July by the Under-Secretary of State for India that one of the objects of the creation of the new Education Department was to spread education throughout the country, the significant language employed by Your Lordship on the subject of education in your reply to the Congress address at the beginning of this year, and the Educational Conference, summoned by the Hon’ble Mr. Butler last month at Allahabad—all point to the fact that the Government are alive to the necessity of moving faster and that it will not be long before vigorous measures are taken in hand to ensure a more rapid spread of mass education in the land. The present thus is a singularly favourable juncture for submitting to the Council and the country the desirability of a forward move, such as my Bill proposes, and I earnestly trust the Council will not withhold from me the leave I ask to introduce the Bill. My Lord, I expect the Government have now concluded their examination of my proposals of last year, and perhaps the Hon’ble Member will tell us to-day what conclusions have been arrived at. The part of the scheme to which I attached the greatest importance was that relating to the gradual introduction of the principle of compulsion into the system of elementary education in the country and that part is now embodied in the Bill which I wish to introduce to-day. My Lord, an American legislator, addressing his countrymen more than half a century ago, once said that if he had the Archangel’s trumpet, the blast of which could startle the living of all nations, he would sound it in their ears and say: ‘Educate your children-educate all your children, educate every one of your children. The deep wisdom and passionate humanity of this aspiration is now generally recognised, and in almost every civilised country, the State to-day accepts the education of the children as a primary duty resting upon it. Even if the advantages of an elementary education be put no higher than a capacity to read and write, its universal diffusion is a matter of prime importance, for literacy is better than illiteracy any day, and the banishment of a whole people’s illiteracy is no mean achievement. But elementary education for the mass of the people means something more than 323

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a mere capacity to read and write. It means for them a keener enjoyment of life and a more refined standard of living. It means the greater moral and economic efficiency of the individual. It means a higher level of intelligence for the whole community generally. He who reckons these advantages lightly may as well doubt the value of light or fresh air in the economy of human health. I think it is not unfair to say that one important test of the solicitude of a Government for the true well-being of its people is the extent to which, and the manner in which, it seeks to discharge its duty in the matter of mass education. And judged by this test, the Government of this country must wake up to its responsibilities much more than it has hitherto done, before it can take its proper place among the civilised Governments of the world. Whether we consider the extent of literacy among the population, or the proportion of those actually at school, or the system of education adopted, or the amount of money expended, on primary education, India is far, far behind other civilised countries. Take literacy. While in India, according to the figures of the census of 1901, less than 6 per cent. of the whole population could read and write, even in Russia, the most backward of European countries educationally, the proportion of literates at the last census was about 25 per cent., while in many European countries, as also the United States of America, and Canada and Australia, almost the entire population is now able to read and write. As regards attendance at school, I think it will be well to quote once more the statistics which I mentioned in moving my resolution of last year. They are as follows:—‘In the United States of America, 21 per cent. of the whole population is receiving elementary education; in Canada, in Australia, in Switzerland, and in Great Britain and Ireland, the proportion ranges from 20 to 17 per cent.; in Germany, in Austria-Hungary, in Norway and in the Netherlands the proportion is from 17 to 15 per cent.; in France it is slightly above 14 per cent.; in Sweden it is 14 per cent.; in Denmark it is 13 per cent.; in Belgium it is 12 per cent.; in Japan it is 11 per cent.; in Italy, Greece and Spain it ranges between 8 and 9 per cent.; in Portugal and Russia it is between 4 and 5 per cent.; whereas in British India it is only 1·9 per cent.’ Turning next to the systems of education adopted in different countries, we find that while in most of them elementary education is both compulsory and free, and in a few, though the principle of compulsion is not strictly enforced or has not yet been introduced, it is either wholly or for the most part gratuitous, in India alone it is neither compulsory nor free. Thus in Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and Japan, it is both compulsory and free, the period of compulsion being generally six years, though in some of the American States it is now as long as nine years. In Holland, elementary education is campulsory, but not free. In Spain, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Servia and Rumania, it is free, and, in theory, compulsory, though compulsion is not strictly enforced. In Turkey, too, it is free and nominally compulsory, and in Russia, though compulsion has not yet been introduced, it is for the most part gratuitous. Lastly, if we take the expenditure on elementary education in different countries per head of the population, even allowing for 324

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different money values in different countries, we find that India is simply nowhere in the comparison. The expenditure per head of the population is highest in the United States, being no less than 16s.; in Switzerland, it is 13s. 8d. per head; in Australia, 11s. 3d.; in England and Wales, 10s.; in Canada, 9s. 9d.; in Scotland, 9s. 7½d.; in Germany, 6s. 10d.; in Ireland, 6s. 5d.; in the Netherlands, 6s. 4½d.; in Sweden, 5s. 7d.; in Belgium, 5s. 4d.; in Norway, 5s. 1d.; in France, 4s. 10d.; in Austria, 3s. 1½d.; in Spain, 1s. 10d.; in Italy, 1s. 7½d.; in Servia and Japan, 1s. 2d.; in Russia, 7½d.; while, in India, it is barely one penny. My Lord, it may be urged, and with some show of reason, that as mass education is essentially a Western idea and India has not been under Western influences for more than a century, it is not fair to compare the progress made by her with the achievements of Western nations in that field. I am not sure that there is really much in this view, for even in most Western countries, mass education is a comparatively recent development, and even in the East, we have before us the example of Japan, which came under influence of the West less than half a century ago, and has already successfully adopted a system of universal education. Assuming, however, for the sake of argument, that it is not fair to compare India with Western countries in this matter, no such objection can, I believe, be urged against a comparison of Indian progress with that made in the Philippines, or Ceylon, or Baroda. The Philippines came under American rule only thirteen years ago; it cannot be said that in natural intelligence or desire for education, the Philipinos are superior to the people of India; and yet the progress in mass education made in the Islands during this short period had been so great that it constitutes a remarkable tribute to the energy and enthusiasm of American ideals. Under Spanish rule, there was no system of popular education in the Philippines. As soon as the Islands passed into the possession of the United States, a regular programme of primary education came to be planned and has been steadily adhered to. The aim is to make primary education universal. Instruction is free, and the education authorities advise compulsion, though no compulsory law has yet been enacted. So great, however, is the enthusiasm that has been aroused in the matter that many Municipalities have introduced compulsion by local ordinances. And though there is room for doubt if the ordinances are strictly legal, no question has been raised, and the people are acquiescing cheerfully in their enforcement. How rapidly things are advancing in the Philippines may be judged by the fact that in five years—from 1903 to 1908—the number of pupils attending school more than doubled itself, having risen from 150,000 to 360,000. The proportion of children receiving instruction to the whole population of the Islands is now nearly 6 per cent., as against 2 in British India. The conditions of Ceylon approximate closely to those of Southern India, and the fact that it is directly administered by England as a Crown Colony need not make any difference in its favour. In regard to mass education, however, Ceylon is far ahead to-day of India. Elementary instruction in Ceylon is imparted by two classes of schools, Government and Aided, the Government schools covering about one-third, and the Aided schools two-thirds of the area. In Government 325

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schools, a system of compulsory attendance has long been in force, the defaulting parent being brought by the teacher before a Village Tribunal, who can inflict small fines. In 1901, a Committee was appointed by the Government to advise what steps should be taken to extend primary education in the Island and the Committee strongly recommended ‘that Government should take steps to compel parents to five their children a good vernacular education.’ Again, in 1905, a Commission was appointed to make further enquiries into the matter, and the recommendations of this body were accepted in the main by the Colonial Secretary. These recommendations were: (1) that attendance at school should be compulsory for boys during a period of six years in areas proclaimed by the Governor; (2) that no fees should be charged; (3) that girls’ education should be pushed on vigorously; (4) that District and Divisional Committees should be constituted to look after the education of children in their areas; and (5) that the Road Tax should be handed over to these bodies to form the nucleus of an Education Fund. Action was first taken under the new scheme in 1908, when 16 Districts were proclaimed by the Governor; and the official report for 1909 thus speaks of its working: ‘There has been no difficulty so far, and there seems to be every reason to hope that none of the difficulties, which were anticipated by some of the managers of aided schools, will arise. It is hoped that in the course of the present year, it will be brought into working order in all the Districts.’ In 1909 the total number of pupils, attending primary schools in Ceylon, was 237,000 which gives a proportion of 6·6 per cent. to the whole population of the Island. Within the borders of India itself, the Maharaja of Baroda has set an example of enthusiasm in the cause of education, for [Illegible Text] is entitled to the lasting gratitude of the people of the country. His Highness began his first experiment in the matter of introducing compulsory and free education into his State eighteen years ago in ten villages of the Amreli Taluka. After watching the experiment for eight years, it was extended to the whole taluka in 1901, and finally, in 1906, primary education was made compulsory and free throughout the State for boys between the ages of 6 and 12, and for girls between the ages of 6 and 10. The agelimit for girls has since been raised from 10 to 11. The last two Education Reports of the State explain with considerable fullness the working of the measure, and furnish most interesting reading. In 1909, the total number of pupils at school was 165,000, which gives a proportion of 8·6 per cent. to the total population of the State. Taking the children of school-going age, we find that 79·6 per cent. of boys of such age were at school, as against 21·5 per cent. in British India; while the percentage of girls was 47·6, as against our 4 per cent. only. The total expenditure on primary schools in Baroda in 1909 was about 7½ lakhs of rupees, which gives a proportion of about 6½d. per head of the population, as against one penny in British India. The population of Baroda is drawn from the same classes as that of the adjoining British territories, and every day that passes sees the subjects of the Gaekwar outstanding more and more British subjects in the surrounding districts. My Lord, if the history of elementary education throughout the world establishes one fact more clearly than another, it is this, that without a resort to 326

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compulsion no State can ensure a general diffusion of education among its people. England, with her strong love of individualism, stood out against the principle of compulsion for as long as she could, but she had to give way in the end all the same. And when the Act of 1870, which introduced compulsion into England and Wales, was under discussion, Mr. Gladstone made a frank admission in the matter in language which I would like to quote to this Council. ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘there is another principle and undoubtedly of the gravest character, which I can even now hardly hope—though I do hope after all that we had seen—is accepted on the other side of the House—I mean the principle that compulsion must be applied in some effective manner to the promotion of education. I freely and frankly own that it was not without an effort that I myself accepted it. I deeply regret the necessity. I think that it is a scandal and a shame to the country that in the midst of our, as we think, advanced civilisation, and undoubtedly of our enormous wealth, we should at this time of day be obliged to entertain this principle of compulsion. Nevertheless, we have arrived deliberately at the conclusion that it must be entertained, and I do not hesitate to say that, being entertained, it ought to be entertained with every consideration, with every desire of avoiding haste and precipitancy, but in a manner that shall render it effectual . . . .’ A Royal Commission, appointed in 1836 to report on the working of the measure adopted to make attendance at school compulsory in England and Wales, bore ungrudging testimony to the great effect which compulsion had produced on school attendance. ‘It is to compulsion,’ they wrote, ‘that the increase of the numbers on the roll is largely attributable. Among the witnesses before us, Mr. Stewart appears to stand alone in his opinion that, provided the required accommodation had been furnished, the result would have been much the same if attendance had not been obligatory. But to estimate fairly the influence, which compulsion has had upon the great increase in the number of children attending school, we must speak of it under the three heads into which its operation may be divided. There is, first, the direct influence of compulsion. This is exerted over parents, who are indifferent to the moral and intellectual welfare of their children, who are very eager to obtain what advantage they can from their children’s earnings, but who never look beyond But, secondly, compulsion exercises an indirect influence. Many parents are apathetic, yield weakly to their children’s wish not to go to school . . . But they are keenly alive to the disgrace of being brought before a Magistrate, the fear of which supplies a stimulus sufficient to make them do their duty in this respect. In addition, the existence of a compulsory law has considerably affected public opinion and has done much to secure a larger school attendance by making people recognise that the State regards them as neglecting their duty, if their children remain uneducated. The Ceylon Commission of 1905, in dealing with the question whether attendance at school should be made compulsory, expressed themselves as follows:—‘With the exception of one or two districts of the Island, little good will be done by any system which does not enforce compulsory attendance. The Dutch, who had an extensive and successful system of Vernacular schools throughout the portions of the Island which were under their rule, found it 327

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necessary to enforce attendance by fines, and did so regularly. Parents, throughout a large portion of the Island, exercise very little control over their children, and will leave them to do as they like in the matter of school attendance. The result is that, where there is no compulsion, boys attend very irregularly and leave school very early. That compulsory attendance is desirable we have no doubt. My Lord, primary education has rested on a voluntary basis in this country for more than half a century, and what is the extent of the progress it has made during the time? For answer one has to look at the single fact that seven children out of eight are yet allowed to grow up in ignorance and darkness, and four villages out of five are without a school. During the last six or seven years, the pace has been slightly more accelerated than before, but, even so, how extremely slow it is, may be seen from what Mr. Orange says of it in the last quinquennial report, issued two years ago:—But the rate of increase for the last twenty-five years or for the last five is more slow than when compared with the distance that has to be travelled before primary education can be universally diffused. If the number of boys at school continued to increase even at the rate of increase that has taken place in the last five years, and even if there was no increase in population, even then several generations would still elapse before all the boys of school age were in school. My Lord, I respectfully submit that this state of things must be remedied; that India must follow in the wake of other civilized countries in the matter, if her children are to enjoy anything like the advantages which the people of those countries enjoy in the race of life; that a beginning at least should now be made in the direction of compulsion; and that the aim should be to cover the whole field in the lifetime of a generation. When England introduced compulsion in 1870, about 43 per cent. of her children of school-going age were at school, and ten years sufficed for her to bring all her children to school. When Japan took up compulsion, about 28 per cent. of her school-going population was at school, and Japan covered the whole field in about twenty years. Our difficulties are undoubtedly greater than those of any other country, and our progress, even with the principle of compulsion introduced, is bound to be slower. But if a beginning is made at once and we resolutely press forward towards the goal, the difficulties, great as they are, will vanish before long, and the rest of the journey will be comparatively simple and easy. My Lord, it is urged by those who are opposed to the introduction of compulsion in this country that though the Gaekwar, as an Indian Prince, could force compulsion on his subjects without serious opposition, the British Government, as a foreign Government, cannot afford to risk the unpopularity which the measure will entail. Personally I do not think that the fear which lies behind this view is justified, because the Government in Ceylon is as much a foreign Government as that in India, and in Ceylon the authorities have not shrunk from the introduction of compulsion. But to meet this objection, I am quite willing that the first steps in the direction of compulsion should be taken by our Local Bodies, which reproduce in British territory conditions similar to those which obtain in Feudatory States. And even here I am willing that the first experiment should be made in carefully selected and advanced areas only. When the public mind is 328

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familiarised with the idea of compulsion, the Government may take the succeeding steps without any hesitation or misgiving. In view, also, of the special difficulties, likely to be experienced in extending the principle of compulsion at once to girls, I am willing that, to begin with, it should be applied to boys only, though I share the opinion that the education of girls is with us even a greater necessity than that of boys, and I look forward to the time when compulsion will be extended to all children alike of either sex. To prevent injudicious zeal on the part of Local Bodies, even in so good a cause as the spread of elementary education, I am willing that ample powers of control should be retained by the Provincial and Imperial Governments in their own hands. What I earnestly and emphatically insist on, however, is that no more time should now be lost in making a beginning in this all-important matter. My Lord, I now come to the Bill, which I hope the Council will let me introduce to-day, and I ask the indulgence of the Council while I explain briefly its main provisions. The Bill, I may state at once, has been framed with a strict regard to the limitations of the position, to which I have already referred. It is a purely premissive Bill, and it merely proposes to empower Municipalities and District Boards, under certain circumstances, to introduce compulsion within their areas, in the first instance, in the case of boys, and later, when the time is ripe, in the case of girls. Before a Local Body aspires to avail itself of the powers contemplated by the Bill, it will have to fulfil such conditions as the Government of India may by rule lay down as regards the extent to which education is already diffused within its area. Last year, in moving my resolution on this subject, I urged that where one-third of the boys of school-going age were already at school, the question of introducing compulsion might be taken up for consideration by the Local Body. I think this is a fair limit, but if the Government of India so choose they might impose a higher limit. In practice, a limit of 33 per cent. will exclude for several years to come all District Boards, and bring within the range only a few of the more advanced Municipalities in the larger towns in the different Provinces. Moreover, a Local Body, even when it satisfies the limit laid down by the Government of India, can come under the Bill only after obtaining previously the sanction of the Local Government. I submit, my Lord, that these are ample safeguards to prevent any ill-considered or precipitate action on the part of a Local Body. Then the Bill provides for a compulsory period of school attendance of four years only. Most countries have a period of six years, and even Ceylon and Baroda provide six years; Italy, which began with three, and Japan, which began with four years, have also raised their period to six years. But considering that the burden of additional expenditure involved will in many cases be the principal determining factor in this matter, I am content to begin with a compulsory period of four years only. The next point to which I would invite the attention of the Council is that the Bill makes ample provision for exemption from compulsory attendance on reasonable grounds, such as sickness, domestic necessity or the seasonal needs of agriculture. A parent may also claim exemption for his child on the ground that there is no school within a reasonable distance from his residence, to which 329

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he can send the child without exposing him to religious instruction to which he objects; and a distance of one mile is laid down as a reasonable distance. This, however, is a matter of detail, which, perhaps, may better be left to Local Governments. When a Local Body comes under the Bill, the responsibility is thrown upon it to provide suitable school accommodation for the children within its area, in accordance with standards which may be laid down by the Education Department of the Local Government. On the question of fees, while I am of opinion that where attendance is made compulsory, instruction should be gratuitous, the Bill provides for gratuitous instruction only in the case of those children whose parents are extremely poor, not earning more than Rs. 10 a month, all above that line being required to pay or not in the discretion of the Local Body. This is obviously a compromise, rendered necessary by the opposition offered by so many Local Governments to the proposal of abolishing fees in primary schools, on the ground that it means an unnecessary sacrifice of a necessary and useful income. Coming to the machinery for working the compulsory provisions, the Bill provides for the creation of special school attendance committees, whose duty it will be to make careful enquiries and prepare and maintain lists of children who should be at school within their respective areas, and take whatever steps may be necessary to ensure the attendance of children at school, including the putting into operation of the penal clauses of the Bill against defaulting parents. The penal provisions, it will be seen, are necessarily light. To ensure the object of the Bill being fulfilled, the employment of child labour below the age of ten is prohibited, and penalty is provided for any infringement of the provision. Lastly, it is provided that the Government of India should lay down by rule the proportion in which the heavy cost of compulsory education should be divided between the Local Government and the Local Body concerned, it being assumed that the Supreme Government will place additional resources at the disposal of the Local Government, to enable it to defray its share, the Local Body being on its side empowered to levy a special Education. Rate, if unnecessary, to meet its share of the expenditure. It is obvious that the whole working of this Bill must depend in the first instance upon the share, which the Government is prepared to bear, of the cost of compulsory education, wherever it is introduced. I find that in England the Parliamentary grant covers about two-thirds of the total expenditure on elementary schools. In Scotland it amounts to more than that proportion, whereas in Ireland it meets practically the whole cost. I think we are entitled to ask that in India at least two thirds of the new expenditure should be borne by the State. This, my Lord, is briefly the whole of my Bill. It is a small and humble attempt to suggest the first steps of a journey, which is bound to prove long and tedious, but which must be performed, if the mass of our people are to emerge from their present condition. It is not intended that all parts of the Bill should be equally indispensable to the scheme, and no one will be more ready than myself to undertake any revision that may be found to be necessary in the light of helpful criticism. My Lord, if I am so fortunate as to receive from the Council the leave I ask at its hands, it will probably be a year before the Bill comes up here again for its further 330

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stages. Meanwhile, its consideration will be transferred from this Council to the country, and all sections of the community will have ample opportunities to scrutinise its provisions with care. My Lord, this question of a universal diffusion of education in India depends, almost more than any other question, on the hearty and sympathetic co-operation of the Government and the leaders of the people. The Government must, in the first instance, adopt definitely the policy of such diffusion as its own, and it must, secondly, not grudge to find the bulk of the money, which will be required for it, as Governments in most other civilised countries are doing. And this is what we are entitled to ask at the hands of the Government in the name of justice, for the honour of the Government itself, and in the highest interests of popular well-being. The leaders of the people, on their side, must bring to this task high enthusiasm, which will not be chilled by difficulties, courage, which will not shrink from encountering unpopularity, if need be, and readiness to make sacrifices, whether of money or time or energy, which the cause may require. I think, my Lord, if this Bill passes into law, the educated classes of the country will be on their trial. It is my earnest hope that neither they nor the Government will fail to rise to the requirements of this essentially modest and cautious measure. My Lord, one great need of the situation, which I have ventured again and again to point out in this Council for several years past, is that the Government should enable us to feel that, though largely foreign in personnel, it is national in spirit and sentiment; and this it can only do by undertaking towards the people of India all those responsibilities, which national Governments in other countries undertake towards their people. We, too, in our turn, must accept the Government as a national Government, giving it that sense of security which national Governments are entitled to claim, and utilising the peace and, order, which it has established, for the moral and material advancement of our people. And of all the great national tasks which lie before the country, and in which the Government and the people can co-operate to the advantage of both, none is greater than this task of promoting the universal diffusion of education in the land, bringing by its means a ray of light, a touch of refinement, a glow of hope into lives that sadly need them all. The work, I have already said, is bound to be slow, but that only means that it must be taken in hand at once. If a beginning is made without further delay, if both the Government and the people persevere with the task in the right spirit, the whole problem may be solved before another generation rises to take our place. If this happens, the next generation will enter upon its own special work with a strength which will be its own security of success. As for us, it will be enough to have laboured for such an end—laboured even when the end is not in sight. For, my Lord, I think there is not only profound humility but also profound wisdom in the faith which says:— ‘I do not ask to see that distant scene: One step enough for me.’ [Replying to the criticisms which were offered to his motion for leave to introduce the Bill, Mr. Gokhale spoke as follows:—] 331

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Sir, I have surely no reason to be dissatisfied with the reception which the Bill has met with at the hands of the Members of the Council. No man has the right to expect—and I certainly did not expect that any proposals that he brings forward on a subject of such importance would be accepted by a body like this Council without any criticism; and if I rise, Sir, just now, to speak a second time, it is for two reasons. In the first place, I wish to express my sense of obligation to the Hon’ble Mr. Butler personally, and to the Government of India generally, for the attitude they have adopted towards this Bill. The attitude is no doubt cautious but it is not unfriendly, and it certainly goes as far as I had ventured to expect—I had not expected that it would go further than that. The second reason why I wish to say a few words before this debate is brought to a close is that I want to clear certain misconceptions to which expression has been given to-day, about some of the provisions of the Bill, as also about my object in bringing the Bill forward. Sir, as I pointed out in the course of the remarks with which I asked for leave to introduce this Bill, if there is one fact established more clearly than another in the history of primary education, it is this, that, without compulsion, there can be no universal diffusion of education. You may shake your heads—anybody can shake his head—and say that the time for compulsion has not come; that we shall try the experiment on a voluntary basis; that we shall wait for some time; that we shall achieve here what nobody else has achieved elsewhere. Anybody may say this, but, as sure as we are here, as sure as we are discussing this question in this Council to-day, I say that everybody will in the end recognise that without compulsion it is impossible to secure the universal diffusion of education throughout the country. That being so, the only effective and proper course is to suggest that the Government should introduce compulsion. And if the Government of India had not been beset with its peculiar difficulties, I should have urged it to take up this question and introduce compulsion on its own account. But, as I have already observed, there are several considerations which render such a course difficult, if not impossible. And since that cannot be, I am content to proceed on other lines and to try a measure, such as I have brought forward to-day. Sir, my Hon’ble friend Mr, Dadabhoy says that District Officers hold a very strong position on District Boards, and therefore, if this Bill is allowed to become law, District Officers, who may find no difficulty in getting the sanction of the Local Government, may use their position on the Boards to introduce compulsion. If this really happens, I say at once that I shall rejoice, because it will really mean that the Government will be accepting its own responsibility and introducing compulsion. I do want the Government to introduce compulsion if only it will do so; but as the Government will not do it, we have got to see what else we can do, and that is why I want this Bill. Sir, as far as I have been able to gather from to-day’s discussion, hardship is apprehended in regard to three matters in carrying out the provisions of this Bill. The first is that District Boards, which are largely under official influence, might introduce compulsion, though the people may not be prepared for it. But I have already pointed out that the Government of India will first of all lay down the 332

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standard which must be satisfied by any local body before it introduces the principle of compulsion. I myself have suggested a limit of 33 per cent., but as the matter has been left to the Government of India, I think, if ever this Bill becomes law, that they are likely to adopt a higher limit than 33 per cent. of the schoolgoing population being at school. And a limit of even 33 per cent., not only now but; for several years to come, will not be satisfied by any District Board. It will no doubt be satisfied by several Municipalities, but that is another matter. Therefore I do not think that the fear expressed about hasty action by District Boards is well-founded. If after the country has been familiarised with the idea of compulsion for some time, District Boards also follow in the wake of Municipalities, I do not think that there would be any reason to regret such a development. Then, Sir, a great deal has been said about the hardship which may be caused by empowering these bodies to levy a special education cess. My friends who have spoken have ignored the fact that the cess, when levied, is to be levied by the local bodies, and that it will require the sanction of the Local Government before it is levied. Those who say that the local bodies might consist of idealists and might be hasty in their action stand on a different footing from those who object to any special cess at all. To the former, I think it is a sufficient answer to point out that there is the Local Government to check idealism if there is any tendency in that direction. But there are those who object to any cess at all, and they have strongly urged today that it would be a calamity, a disaster, if any cess is ever levied in order that primary education might be made compulsory. Sir, I am unable to accept this opinion. On the other hand, I feel strongly that, if primary education is ever to be compulsory, local bodies will have to bear a fairly large share of the burden which it will impose. This is the case in all countries where the system of compulsory education prevails; and those friends of mine who object to the levy of a cess might as well object to compulsory education and be done with it. I admire, Sir, my Hon’ble friend Mr. Dadabhoy’s candour and consistency. Mr. Dadabhoy is against the levy of a local cess which may have to be imposed in order that the children of poor people may be educated. Mr. Dadabhoy the other day proposed that the excise-duty on cotton goods should be done away with, not on the ground that its burden falls on the consumers who are the poorest of the poor, but because the amount, if added to the profits of the mill industry, will mean a better return for the mill-owners. Mr. Dadabhoy also wants unrestricted hours for factory labour, for that means better dividends for capitalists. He is consistent all through; but his consistency need not appeal to this Council; and I think an attitude like his will hardly commend itself to those who wish well to the masses of the people. Sir, my fear is that, if this Bill ever becomes law, our financial difficulties will then only begin. It is not the cess that will constitute the real difficulty; it is the share that will have to be borne by the Government. The bulk of the money has to be found by the Finance Department of the Government of India, and I fear in the Hon’ble Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson (I am sorry he is not in his place—I should have liked to say this in his presence) we shall probably find a dragon in the path. However, we shall have to agitate in this matter as in other matters, and I think an 333

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important lever has now been put into our hands by the Government by the creation of the new Education Department. Surely the Education Member must have something to do, and if he is to do anything, they must give him money to spend. I think that that will be our lever, and if we use the lever properly, the Government will find the money we want in the end. There is no reason why we should not entertain this hope. That it is what every civilized Government is doing for its own people, and that is what we are entitled to expect from our Government. The third fear expressed is about extending compulsion to girls at the present stage. Sir, I have already expressly stated that the intention is that the education of girls should for the present continue on a voluntary basis, though I certainly hope that before long the necessity of putting that education on the same footing as that of boys will be recognized, and the Bill only takes powers for that time when it comes. Remember that Baroda has compulsion even to-day for girls as well as boys. My Hon’ble friend Sir Sassoon David says that the time for compulsion has not yet come. Will he tell us when the time for compulsion arrives? Will he tell us how and why it has arrived in Baroda and not in British territory? Will he tell us how it has arrived in Ceylon and not in British territory? Will he tell us why, when the Philippino Municipalities have introduced compulsion, our own Municipalities should not? Of course, if you merely assert that the time has not arrived and stop there, it is not possible to argue with you. The Hon’ble Mr. Butler declines to accept my analogies and says that the state of things in this country is different to what it is elsewhere; and as regards Baroda, he says that it is governed autocratically and that makes a great difference. Western countries will not do, because they are governed democratically! Baroda will not do, because it is governed autocratically! I suppose the Hon’ble Member will not be satisfied unless I produce the analogy of a country, governed bureaucratically; and as there is no other country governed as India is, he is safe in insisting on such an analogy, and I must say I give it up. Sir, I will now address only two words in conclusion—one to the Government and the other to my non-official calleagues, and then resume my seat. To the Government I will merely put this question: Are you content to lag behind Baroda? Every day that passes, while Baroda has a system of compulsory education, and we have not—every day that passes like that, material is produced which will go to build up a judgment against you; and I am quite sure the conscience of the Government will, before long, be roused to this question. You may say what you like in defence of the existing situation; but you are bound to realize that you cannot lag behind Baroda, and I am convinced that the question of compulsion is for us now only a question of time. To my non-official colleagues I will say this: if we are not prepared to bear a cess for educating the children of the mass of our own people, if we are not prepared to make sacrifices for so great an object, if we expect the money to drop from somewhere—and remember, even if the Government raise it by additional taxation, after all it is we who shall pay it—we may as well cease talking about improving the lot of the mass of the people. Sir, if we want our country to advance, there is only one way, and that is that the mass of the people in this country must be raised to a higher level. This can only be achieved 334

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by the spread of education, which in its turn requires a large expenditure of money. And a reasonable part of this money must be raised locally, as is being done in other countries, or else we may leave the matter well alone. Sir, I do not wish to say anything more. I once again beg to express my obligations to the Hon’ble Mr. Butler and to the Government for the attitude they have adopted towards this Bill, and I am also most grateful to those Hon’ble Members who have accorded this measure their cordial support. My Lord, I will now say a few words by way of reply to the observations which have been made by several Members on this resolution. At the outset, I would express my thanks to the Hon’ble the Home Member for the assurance that he gave at the end of his speech that the Government would consider carefully the proposals laid by me before the Council to-day. I wish I could feel the same degree of satisfaction in regard to certain other parts of his speech, notably in regard to what he said about a Commission going up and down the country, inviting suggestions from all and sundry as to what should be done by Government in this matter. I must also say that I was somewhat surprised to hear that the suggestions which I have placed before the Council appeared to be altogether new to the Hon’ble Member. My Lord, when I suggested the appointment of a Commission I naturally also meant that the Government should take some interest in the matter; and if they took some interest in it, they would not start a Commission with a mere blank sheet of paper before asking it to go up and down the country inviting suggestions. The Government would then start the Commission, as is invariably done in such cases, with definite instructions, and definite questions would then be framed on which opinions would be invited from the public. As regards the statement of the Hon’ble Member that my suggestions were new, it only emphasizes what I have been insisting on in the Council for several years, namely, that education should be made over to a separate Member of this Council. Education is one of twenty other Departments with which the Hon’ble Member has to deal and it is not to be expected that he will pursue educational matters with the same diligence and the same watchfulness with which they are pursued in other countries, notably in America, where they try to follow what is being done throughout the world every year in regard to education. If things had stood where they were left by the Hon’ble Sir Harvey Adamson, I should have thought that Government had adopted towards my resolution an attitude which was, on the whole, not unfriendly. But the remarks made by the Hon’ble Sir H. Stuart appear to me to be uncompromisingly hostile. I speak subject to correction because the Hon’ble Member had quite finished his Binomial Theorem when the bell rang and the time allowed for the examination was over. I can therefore confine myself only to what he actually said, and that portion did not sound as at all friendly to my motion. I must notice three observations that he made. The first was in connection with my humble self. I see that the Hon’ble Member has been studying some of my past utterances. That is a matter from which I should perhaps derive some satisfaction. I must say, however that he has not been reading my speeches correctly. He has no justification for saying that I have now taken up a position which is 335

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inconsistent with the position I had taken up before. It is true that three years ago I urged that Government should begin in this matter by making primary education free, and then proceed to make it compulsory. The aim always has been to have it free and compulsory. Three years ago I urged the abolition of fees first because Government had then plenty of money, with which they hardly knew what to do. As Government was then inclined to be favourable to that idea—and as to that I have only to refer to the Government Resolution issued at that time to make clear what their attitude was in the matter—I thought that was the line of least resistance. But throughout my aim has been to work steadily towards compulsion. The financial position, however, has changed. When new taxes have just been added, I cannot very well suggest to this Council that primary education should be made free straight off. I therefore have changed my track a bit, and, instead of beginning with the abolition of fees, I ask for the introduction of the principle of compulsion, which has always been an integral part of my scheme. I do not see that there is any inconsistency in that. If the Government abolish fees to-day, no one will rejoice more than I. There was another observation made by the Hon’ble Member which was slightly more serious. He said that I had expressed myself in a manner that was ungenerous towards Sir Arundel Arundel about three years ago in this Council. Now, my Lord, a reference to the debates of that time will shew that this description of what I then said is not justified. What happened was this:—In March 1906, when the Budget Statement was under discussion I urged that primary education should be made free. There was a large surplus, in fact, as I have said, Government did not know what to do with their money. Sir Arundel Arundel, who was then the Home Member and therefore in charge of education, in his reply described my suggestion as a large order. He no doubt expressed the same kind of sympathy with my object that the Finance Member lavished on us while he was putting on us new taxes. He said the object was very good and the Government would keep it steadily in view as a distant peak which some day they might be able to reach, but for the present they had to crawl along the plain. Within six months, however, Government issued a Resolution practically recommending free education to Local Governments. It was not a circular letter merely asking what Local Governments thought. It was more; the whole tone of it shows that it was practically a recommendation that was made. Of course they asked as a matter of courtesy, what the Local Governments thought of the matter but the whole document reads as if the Government of India had made up their minds on the subject. The next year’s Financial Statement contained a remark which was quoted by the Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy to the effect that if the Secretary of State’s orders were received in the course of the year, primary education would be made free and funds would be made available. Therefore, from the position which Sir A. Arundel took in March to the position in November there was a tremendous advance. I noted that fact in March following and I used it as an argument that education should be in charge of a separate Member who would take a special interest in it, audit should not be one of 20 other Departments over which the Home Member presided. I think the present system under which Education has 336

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to rub shoulders with Jails, Police and other Departments in charge of the Home Member, is one that is distinctly prejudicial to the interests of Education. The third point that I must notice in Sir H. Stuart’s remarks is about his calculations as to the cost of my scheme. My Lord, there is a saying that the worst enemy of the good is the best. I proposed some humble advance; the Hon’ble Member straightway wants us to go to the farthest point possible and then frightens the Council by calculations based on that. He may as well have said, ‘if education is to be free why not adopt the system that prevails in America? Then the cost will be 30 or even 40 crores. If you want to make a proposal look, I won’t say, ridiculous, but I will say queer in the eyes of people, then I have no objection to that method. But I should not have expected that from one with the sympathies which Sir H. Stuart is known to have in this matter. My Lord, I now come to what fell from the Hon’ble Mr. Orange in a speech to which we listened with great pleasure and sincere admiration. I have no quarrel with his position; I know his heart is practically with us in this matter, but he has to be practical and to cut his coat according to his cloth. He has to consider his resources and is strictly limited by them. One friendly warning he gave me which I am prepared to take in the spirit in which I am inclined to think it was offered, namely, that I should not complicate a consideration of this question by a reference to extraneous questions, such as railway finance, taxation of jute, etc. Now I can assure the Hon’ble Member that I did not introduce those matters in any wanton spirit. As a matter of fact unless you show that there are resources, the first difficulty that is pressed upon you is this. It is all very well to suggest such schemes, but where is the money to come from? If however you suggest measures for finding the required money, you are straightway told that you are introducing, extraneous matters and interfering with vested interests. There was one point in the Hon’ble Mr. Orange’s speech in regard to which I throw the main responsibility on Government. The Hon’ble Member said that the great difficulty was about the provision of sufficient accommodation by local bodies. That is true. He quoted from a report of the Government of Bombay which said that 100,000 children were seeking admission but had no accommodation. But why is this so? Why have not local bodies been required to provide accommodation? I quoted this morning one of the recommendations of the Commission appointed in Lord Ripon’s time. The Commission had distinctly recommended that legislation should be resorted to in order to promote the extension of primary education; by that the Commission means that powers should be taken by Government to require local bodies to provide accommodation. That was 25 years ago, but the recommendation has been allowed to remain a dead letter. No action has so far been taken on it and now we are confronted with this difficulty. Certain objections were raised to-day by the Hon’ble Mr. Chitnavis and the Hon’ble Mr. Majid to the principle of compulsion. They both thought compulsion was undesirable because if all children were sent to school it would be difficult to get labour. In answer to that I respectfully recommend to them a perusal of the debates in the House of Commons, when the Education Act of 1870 was passed; they will find them in the volumes of Hansard. Such 337

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objections have always been urged, but as I said this morning the mass of people do not live in order to supply labour to those who wish to prosper on it. I think it is the elementary right of every child that it should receive at least the rudiments of education. Mr. Majid referred to the religious difficulty; as regards that I am in sympathy with him. That is a matter for the Commission to consider, if one is appointed. Nothing of course should be done which would go against the religious prejudices of any community. As regards special taxation, well, I do not share the fears expressed. If Government take up this matter in the spirit in which I should like them to do it, I do not think there would be any necessity for special taxation. I do not think we should accept Sir H. Stuart’s calculations. I do not really think that the cost will be more than 4 or 5 crores, even if education is provided for the whole of the male population; and the burden that would fall upon the State would not be very heavy. As regards the children of poorer classes becoming gentlemen, if they are educated, that is an argument which I had better leave alone. My Lord, I think the whole discussion has established two things: first, the necessity for an inquiry has been clearly established. There is the point to which the Hon’ble Mr. Orange has referred, namely, requiring local bodies to provide accommodation. The Hon’ble Mr. Quin has told the Councils of the opposition of villagers to education, and other members have expressed other views. Even the official members are not agreed in this matter. Therefore, I think, the necessity for an inquiry is clearly established. I may remind the Council that when the Commission of 1882 was appointed, 25 years had elapsed since the educational policy had been laid down by the Despatch of 1854, and that lapse of time was considered sufficient to justify an inquiry. Twenty-five years have again elapsed since then, and therefore, I think the time has come when Government should direct a fresh inquiry into this question. If the Government will go so far as to say they will make an inquiry into the state of primary education—how far the policy recommended by the Commission of 1882 has been carried out and what new measures it will be desirable to take—that will substantially meet the requirements of the situation. My Lord, the second point that I think has been established, is the absolute necessity of strengthening the position of Education among the Departments of the Government of India. Sir H. Stuart quoted from my evidence before the Decentralization Commission and referred to a superficial inconsistency. He says I advocate to-day that Education should be made a divided head instead of a Provincial head, but that before the Decentralization Commission I had said there should be no divided heads. That is true on the surface, but that is not fair; for you must take my scheme submitted to the Decentralization Commission as a whole. If you do so, then you will find that there need be no divided heads, for I have advocated a large measure of financial independence of Local Government and under that scheme Local Governments will be able to find the money. But as long as the present excessive centralization continues, the Government of India must take the responsibility of finding money upon themselves so that the money should be forthcoming. If the Government of India become directly responsible for the spread of Education in the country, then I am quite sure that more money 338

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will be spent. Under existing arrangements, if the Government of India are able to spare any money for education, they make small grants spasmodically to Local Governments for the purpose. What is needed however is a large programme constantly kept in view and steadily carried out, and this can only be secured if education is a direct concern of the Government of India. [On the 18th March 1912, Mr. Gokhale, in moving that the Bill to make better provision for the extension of elementary education be referred to a Select Committee consisting of the Hon’ble Mr. Syed Ali Imam, the Hon’ble Sir Harcourt Butler, the Horible Mr. Mazhar-ul-Haque, the Hon’ble Nawab Saiyid Muhammad, the Hon’ble Babu Bhupendranath Basu, the Hon’ble Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, the Hon’ble Mr. Gates, the Hon’ble Sir James Meston, the Hon’ble Rao Bahadur R. N. Mudholkar, the Hon’ble Mr. Sharp, the Hon’ble Mr. Lyon, the Hon’ble Mr. Carr, the Hon’ble Mr. Arthur, the Hon’ble Khan Bahadur Mian Muhammad Shafi and the mover, spoke as follows:—] My Lord, it is two years to-day since the Council was invited in its very first session after the introduction of the recent reforms to consider a recommendation to the Governor-General in Council that a beginning should now be made in the direction of making elementary education free and compulsory throughout the country, and that a mixed Commission of officials and non-officials should be appointed to frame definite proposals. After a lengthy debate, the motion was by leave withdrawn, but the principal suggestions formulated on the occasion were subsequently embodied in a Bill which was introduced in this Council about this time last year. A year has since elapsed, and during the interval, all sides—the Government and the public, officials and non-officials, members of all classes and creeds—have had time to examine the provisions of the Bill. I think the promoters of the measure are entitled to regard with the utmost satisfaction the reception which the Bill has met with in the country; for, my Lord, it is no exaggeration to say that no measure of our time has received such weighty, such enthusiastic, such overwhelming public support as the Bill now before the Council. My Lord, it has been made abundantly clear in the course of the discussions that have taken place during the year that most men of light and leading in the country—men distinguished in every walk of life, in learning, in professions, in business, in public affairs, in patriotic or philanthropic endeavour—are on the side of the Bill. The Indian National Congress, the most representative body of educated opinion in India, has strongly supported the measure, and Provincial Conferences held in the different Provinces have also done the same. The Moslem League, whose claim to speak in the name of the great community which it represents is not disputed even by officials, accorded only a fortnight ago its cordial support to the Bill; and most of its branches throughout the country have also expressed their approval. Most of the local bodies consulted by Provincial Governments, as also the Senate of the Madras University, which was the only University Senate consulted, have expressed themselves in favour of the measure. Public meetings 339

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held in nearly every important town throughout the country have adopted resolutions in its support, and numerous special meetings of backward communities, several caste conferences and some missionary organisations have done the same. Then, my Lord, the Indian Press in the country with hardly an exception has with striking unanimity ranged itself on the side of the Bill, and what is even more significant, nearly half the Anglo-Indian Press, the Indian Daily News in Calcutta, the Times of India in Bombay, and the Madras Mail and the Madras Times in Madras, have also extended to it their valuable support. Last, my Lord, but not least, I must mention the important deputation—headed by no less a man than Lord Courtney—that waited last year on the Secretary of State and presented to him a memorial signed among others by some very distinguished men in England in support of this Bill. I venture to think that the ultimate success of a measure which has received such widespread, such influential, public support, is practically assured. The main opposition to this Bill has come from official quarters with which I will deal later. Here and there a few non-officials have also struck a note of dissent. But, my Lord, considering the far-reaching character of the issues involved in the measure, and considering also how the human mind is constituted, it is not to be wonder at that there has been this slight dissent; the wonder rather is that there should be this vast volume of public opinion in support of the measure The non-official critics of the Bill may roughly be divided into three classes. To the first class belong those very few men—so few indeed that they may be counted on one’s fingers—who have rendered distinguished services in the past either to the country as a whole or to their own community, whose claim to be heard with respect on such questions is undisputed, and who, though not against free and compulsory education in the abstract, consider that the introduction of such a system in India at the present stage of the country’s progress, even with such safeguards as are provided in the Bill, is not desirable. My Lord, these elders, whose minds have been cast in the mould of a previous generation, have not the elasticity to advance with the advancing requirements of the country, and we have got to face their disapproval of the present Bill with reluctance and regret. In the wake of these few elders follow a number of younger men who unquestionably accept their lead in all matters, and who therefore withhold their support from the present Bill. The second class consists of those who cannot understand either the necessity of the value of mass education, to whom the dignity of man is an incomprehensible idea, and who regard the poorer classes of the country as made solely to serve those who are above them. My Lord, these men hold these views, because they know no better, but their opposition to this Bill is perfectly intelligible. In the third class come those who are against this Bill because the bulk of officials are understood to be against it. They are against this Bill either because the officials have so much to give or else because they are so constituted that official favour is to them as the breath of their nostrils and an official frown is a heavy misfortune, and because they think nothing of bartering the birthright of our common humanity for something even less substantial than the proverbial mess of pottage. These, my Lord, are the three classes that are against this Bill. Taking all the non-official 340

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opponents of the Bill together, I think that their number does not exceed five per cent. at the outside of those who have expressed any opinion on the Bill. My Lord, special weight necessarily attaches first to the opinions of Local Governments, and next to those of local bodies in regard to this Bill. Turning first to the local bodies, I regret that the opinions of all such bodies were not either ascertained or have not been forwarded to the Government of India. In view of the fact that, if the Bill became law, the initiative in regard to its working would have to come from local bodies, it was of the utmost importance to know what the local bodies had to say of the Bill. The Government of Madras is the only Government that has deemed it to be its duty to invite the opinions of all Municipalities and District Boards in the Province, and some of the District Boards have in their turn invited the opinions of the Taluka Boards under them. The opinions thus elicited are appended to the letter of the Madras Government, and they afford overwhelming and incontestable evidence of the local bodies in Madras being strongly in favour of the Bill and being ready to avail themselves of its provisions if enacted into law. Of 61 Municipalities whose opinions have been recorded, 55 are in favour of the Bill. Of 24 District Boards, 20 are in favour. In addition, the opinions of 39 Taluka Boards have been ascertained, and they are one and all in favour of the Bill. The next Government in whose papers we find mention of a large number of local bodies in this connection is the Government of the Punjab, unfortunately educationally the most backward Province in the whole country. Here we find that 60 Municipalities are mentioned by name, and of those 32 are in favour and 28 against In addition, the Deputy Commissioner of Umballa wrote (the local bodies in Umballa are not included among these 60): ‘The consensus of opinion appears to be strongly in favour of the principle of compulsion; the only Municipal Committee which does not favour compulsion was the Municipal Committee of Jagadhri.’ The Deputy Commissioner of Hissar wrote; ‘All the Municipalities of this District, as well as the District Board, have expressed themselves in favour of the Bill.’ The Deputy Commissioner of Ferozepore wrote, ‘I have consulted the District Board and the Municipalities in this district; they all consider the Bill fair, and are in favour of its being passed into law.’ Nineteen District Boards are mentioned in the papers, of whom 6 are in favour of compulsion and 13 against. Considering the extremely backward condition of primary education in rural Punjab, this is not surprising. Turning next to Bengal, we find mention made in the reports of local officers of about 25 Municipalities, of whom 19 are in favour and 6 against. Also there is mention of two District Boards, of whom one is in favour and one against. There is no mention of the remaining local bodies in the Bengal papers In Eastern Bengal and Assam papers, we find 4 Municipalities mentioned, of whom 3 are in favour: also 6 District Boards, of whom 5 are in favour. For Burma the opinions of 16 Municipalities are given, of whom 9 are in favour. The letter of the Bombay Government mentions no local body, but the opinion of the Bombay Corporation was circulated among the members here only two days ago. However, in the report of the Commissioner of the Central Division which accompanies the letter, there is 341

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mention made of 6 Municipalities in that Division, all in favour. And we know for a fact that most of the Municipalities and a great many of the District Boards in Bombay are in favour of this Bill. In the papers belonging to the United Provinces, only 2 small Municipalities are mentioned, both in favour. Here also we know from the newspapers that most of the Municipalities and a large number of the District Boards are in favour of this Bill. The Central Provinces papers mention only two local bodies—the Municipality of Nagpur and District Board of Nagpur—of both which bodies my friend behind me is President. Both these bodies are in favour of the Bill. There are besides memoranda from five individual members of different local bodies, of whom four are in favour. Turning to what are known as the Presidency Municipalities, namely, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Rangoon, we find that Calcutta and Madras are strongly in favour of the Bill. Rangoon declines to express an opinion on the ground that it does not want to be saddled with any expenditure connected with elementary education. The Municipality of Bombay, while in favour of free and compulsory education, and while also in favour of the ultimate introduction of compulsory education throughout the country, is unable to approve the special method which is advocated in the Bill, namely, that the initiative should be left to local bodies. But, my Lord, those who know the singular position which the Bombay Municipal Corporation occupies in regard to expenditure on elementary education will at once understand why that body has taken up that attitude. Under an agreement, which is now embodied in an Act of the local legislature, the Bombay Corporation has undertaken to bear the entire cost of primary education within municipal limits in Bombay on condition of being relieved of police charges, the only qualification being that if ever the Government introduces compulsory education in the country and requires the Bombay Corporation to introduce compulsion within its area, the Corporation should receive financial assistance from the Government similar to what other local bodies would receive. The plain financial interest of the Bombay Corporation therefore is not in leaving the initiative to local bodies but in the initiative coming from the Government, and it is no surprise that the Corporation of Bombay is unable to approve of a method which leaves the initiative to local bodies. Before passing from this point, I would respectfully warn the Hon’ble Member in charge of Education against leaning on the opinion of the Bombay Corporation for support, for that Corporation, in addition to being in favour of the principle of free and compulsory education, wants the cost of it to come out of Imperial Funds! Turning next to the opinions of Local Governments, I would like first of all to present to the Council a brief analysis of the official opinions that have been sent up by the various Local Governments. Among these papers there are altogether 234 official opinions recorded; of them 90 are in favour of the Bill. Sixty-five of the 234 officials are Indian officials, and of them 39 support the Bill, some of them being very high officials, such as High Court Judges, District Magistrates, District Judges, and so forth. Of the English officials, there are 169

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opinions recorded, of which 51 are in favour—a minority no doubt, but still a very respectable minority. Before proceeding further, I think I had better explain what I mean by a person being in favour of the principle of the Bill so as to prevent misapprehension of the language which I am employing. My Lord, the principle of the Bill is to introduce compulsion at once in selected areas. Not all over the country, but in selected areas; not at some remote time, but at once. To make a beginning at once in selected areas, the initiative being left to local bodies—that is the fundamental idea of the Bill. All else is a matter of detail. Some of the details are important, others unimportant. The question of a local education rate, the question whether education is to be absolutely free, or free for poor people only, the proportion of cost which the Government is to bear—all these are important matters, but matters of detail capable of adjustment when the final settlement of the scheme takes place. Now, all those who are in favour of the fundamental part of the Bill, I claim to be in favour of the Bill for my present purpose; all those, on the other hand, who cannot assent to it, against the Bill. Now, in Madras, the opinions of no European officials are given, the only exception being that of two European High Court Judges, who are both in favour of the Bill. In Bombay, out of 19 European officials consulted, 8 are in favour, one of them being the Director of Public Instruction, and 2 being Inspectors of Schools for the Presidency proper (the 3rd Inspector, an Indian, being also in favour), 2 Commissioners of Divisions out of 3 in the Presidency proper, and 3 Collectors. In Bengal, out of 21 European officers consulted, 4 are in favour, all being District Magistrates. In Eastern Bengal and Assam, out of 21, 2 are in favour, both being District Magistrates. In the United Provinces out of 38 officers consulted, 6 are in favour, 1 of them being a High Court Judge, 1 a Commissioner, and 4 Collectors. In the Punjab, out of 38 European officers consulted, no less than 20 are in favour of the Bill—the largest proportion of European officers in favour of the Bill thus, strangely enough, coming from the Punjab. Among these 20, there is 1 Financial Commissioner, 1 Commissioner, 9 Deputy Commissioners, 5 Divisional Judges, 3 District Judges and 1 Sub-Divisional Officer. In the Central Provinces, only 4 official opinions are given, out of which 2 are in favour, both being Commissioners of Divisions. On the whole, my Lord, I claim that a very respectable minority of European officials is in favour of the measure. The officials who are opposed to this Bill may roughly be divided into three classes. First come a few Rip Van Winkles who appear to be sublimely unconscious as to what is going on not only in the rest of the world, but in India itself. To this class also belong a few cynics who do not understand the value of mass education, and who naively ask what good mass education has done anywhere. I was astonished to find among this class an Inspector of Schools in Madras. The very least that a kind Government can do for him is to transfer him to some more congenial Department, say, the Department of Forests. To the second class belong those who see in a wide diffusion of elementary education a real danger to British rule; also those who are against mass education, because they are against all popular progress, and who imagine in their shortsightedness that every 343

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step gained by the people is one lost by them. In the third class—and I am glad to say the bulk of the official opionions recorded belong to this class—are those who accept the necessity and the importance of mass education, who accept the policy which has been repeatedly laid down by the Government of India during a period of more than 60 years, but who do not recognise the necessity of compulsion at the present moment. They think that a great part of the educational field has to be covered on a voluntary basis, that compulsion would be inexpedient, and would lead to hardship, to discontent, and to danger. Some of them object to this measure on educational or on financial grounds. The outstanding feature of the official opposition to the Bill is however the fact that every Local Government that was consulted on this Bill has gone against the measure, and that makes it necessary that we should examine the opinions of Local Government and the objections raised by them in some detail. The only Local Government that comes very near to supporting the principle of the Bill is the Government of Madras. Not that that Government does not regard the Bill as objectionable or argue against it. What distinguishes it, however, from the other Local Governments is that it does not ignore the strength of the case in favour of the Bill, and that it does not argue as though the heavens would fall if the Bill were pussed into law. After urging several objections against the Bill the Madras Government says at the close of its letter that if the Government of India were disposed to accept this Bill, it would like it to be confined for the present to municipal areas only. The answer to that is that it would be entirely in the hands of the Government of India and the Local Governments to so confine it for the present. The Government of India could lay down such a proportion of school attendance to the total school-going population as a necessary preliminary test to be satisfied before compulsion is introduced, that thereby only Municipalities and not District Boards could for the present come under the Bill. Moreover, if any rural area wanted to try the measure, the Local Government could withhold its sanction. This opinion of the Madras Government, again, is the opinion of three members out of four. The fourth member, the late Mr. Krishnasawmy Iyer, one of the most brilliant men of our day, a man whose untimely death had made a gap in the ranks of public workers in the country, which it will take long to fill, has written a masterly minute of dissent, giving his whole-hearted support to the Bill and demolishing the objections urged by his colleagues against the measure. The next Local Government that comes, in a grudging manner and in spite of itself, to a conclusion not wholly dissimilar to that of the Madras Government is the Administration of the Central Provinces. After exhausting everything that can possibly be said against the Bill, that Government says in the end that if the Government of India wanted to try the Bill, it might be tried in a few selected municipal areas only. Only it does not want a general Act of this Council for the whole country, but it would like an amendment to be undertaken of the various Provincial Municipal Acts for the purpose; and it would lay down a condition, that only those Municipalities should be allowed to introduce compulsion which are prepared to bear the whole cost of compulsion themselves! Now, my Lord, if the object we have in view can be attained by 344

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amending Provincial Local Self-government Acts, I for one have no objection whatever. All I want is that local bodies should have the power to introduce compulsion, where a certain condition of things has been reached, under the control and with the assistance of Local Governments. But I do not understand why the Central Provinces Government should lay down that condition that local bodies, wanting to introduce compulsion, should bear the entire cost themselves. I can understand a Local Government saying that it cannot finance any scheme of compulsion out of its own resources. But I cannot understand why the Central Provinces Adminstration should try to impose such a condition unless it be to punish those Municipalities which show special keenness for education in their areas. I am quite sure that that was not the meaning of the Local Government, and therefore I must frankly say I do not understand why this condition has been laid down. The Government of Bengal sees no objection per se to the principle of compulsory elementary education, only it thinks that, considering the apathy of the people at the present moment, compulsion is not suitable. Moreover, it says, that if it is called upon to introduce compulsion in the near future, it will not be able to find the money out of Provincial revenues and that it would be forced to look to the Government of India for assistance. The Governments of Eastern Bengal and the Punjab oppose the Bill merely on general grounds, the letter of the Government of Eastern Bengal being almost perfunctory in its treatment of the subject. The letter of the United Provinces Government is a document that might have been written with some excuse 20 years ago. I cannot understand how a Provincial Government, at the beginning of the 20th century, can put forth arguments such as are contained in the letter of the acting Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces. The Government of Burma opposes the Bill on grounds the very reverse of those on which other Local Governments oppose it. Other Local Governments oppose the Bill because there is not a sufficient advance made in the field of elementary education in their Provinces; but the Government of Burma opposes the Bill because there is already a sufficiently large advance of elementary education in that Province! The last Government that I would mention in this connection is the Government of Bombay. My Lord, this Government is the strongest opponent of the Bill, and I feel bound to say—though it hurts my provincial pride to have to say so—that the very vehemence with which this Government argues the case against the Bill is calculated to defeat its own purpose, and that the terms of impatience in which its letter is couched, while not adding to the weight to the argument, only suggests a feeling of resentment that any non-official should have ventured to encroach on a province which it regards as an official monopoly. My Lord, it will be convenient to deal with the objections, which have been raised by the several Local Governments, all together. Before doing so, however, I think I should state briefly again to the Council the case for the Bill, so that members should see the grounds for and against the Bill side by side before them. My Lord, the policy of the Government of India in this matter, as I have already observed, is now a fixed one. The Government of India have accepted in the most solemn and explicit manner the responsibility for mass education in this country. The 345

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Educational Despatch of 1854, the Education Commission’s Report of 1882, with the Resolution of the Government of India thereon, and the Resolution of Lord Curzon’s Government of 1904, all speak with one voice on this point, namely, that the education of the masses is a sacred responsibility resting upon the Government of India. When we, however, come to consider the extent of the field which has so far been covered, I feel bound to say that the progress made is distinctly disappointing. Taking the figures for 1901, the beginning of this century, and that means after 50 years of educational effort, the number of boys at school in this country was only about 32 lakhs, and the number of girls only a little over 5 lakhs. Taking only 10 per cent.—not 15 per cent. as they take in the West and as they do in official publications, even in India, taking only a modest 10 per cent.—as the proportion of the total population that should be at school, I find that in 1901 only about 27 per cent. of the boys and about 4½ per cent. of the girls that should have been at school were at school? During the last ten years, elementary education has no doubt been pushed on with special vigour and the rate of progress has been much faster. Even so, what is the position to-day? From a statement which was published by the Education Department the other day, I find that the number of boys at school has risen during these ten years from 32 lakhs to a little under 40 lakhs, and the number of girls from 5 lakhs to a little under 7 lakhs. Taking the new census figures of our population, this gives us for boys a proportion of 31 per cent. and for girls 5¾ per cent. Taking the proportion of total school attendance to the total population of the country, we find that the percentage was only 1·6 ten years ago, and it is now no more than 1·9. My Lord, all the Local Governments have stated that we must adhere to the present voluntary basis for extending primary education, and the Bombay Government professes itself to be very well pleased with the rate at which it is moving in the matter. A small calculation will show how long it will take for every boy and every girl of school-going age to be at school at the present rate. I have stated just now that during the last ten years the number of boys at school has risen from 32 to 40 lakhs, or a total increase in ten years of 7½ lakhs, and the number of girls has risen from 5 to under 7 lakhs, or an increase of about 1¾ lakhs. This gives us an annual increase for boys of 75,000 and for girls of 17,000. Now, assuming that there is no increase of population in future—absolutely no increase of population—an obviously impossible assumption—even then at the present rate a simple arithmetical calculation will show that 115 years will be required for every boy and 665 years for every girl of school-going age to be at school! Even in Bombay, where things are slightly more advanced, it will take at least 75 years for every boy of school-going age between 6 and 10 years of age to be at school. Well might Mr. Orange, the late Director-General of Education, who was in this Council two years ago, exclaim:— If the number of boys at school continued to increase, even at the rate of increase that has taken place in the last five years, and there was no increase in population, several generations would still elapse before all the boys of school-going age were at school.

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And well might my late lamented friend Mr. Krishnaswamy Iyer of Madras, after a similar examination of the figures for that Presidency, observe in terms of sorrow:— ‘The voluntary method of persuasion must be condemned as a hopeless failure.’ My Lord, this then is the position. The Government of India are committed to a policy of mass education, and the rate at which we have been going for the last 60 years is hopelessly slow. Even at the accelerated pace of the last ten years, it will take enormously long periods for every boy and every girl to be at school. Moreover, this does not take into account the natural and necessary increases of population in the country. What then is to be done? Are we going to content ourselves with experiments of our own only, experiments which can only prolong the reign of ignorance in the country? My Lord, India must profit by the example and by the experience of other civilised countries. And other civilized countries have come to only one conclusion in this matter, and that is that the State must resort to compulsion in order to secure universal education for the people. Most of the Western civilized countries have accepted this, and I have already given to the Council, when introducing this Bill, statistics showing what progress they have made under a system of compulsory education, and how India compares with them. There are also the examples nearer India, of which I have spoken—examples of the Philippines, of Ceylon and of Baroda—which are of the utmost importance, and the mere assertion that their circumstances are different from those of British India cannot dispose of them. Of course no two cases can be exactly alike. But what you must show is that their circumstances are so different that what has succeeded in their case will not succeed in ours. And till you show this, we are entitled to say that the experiment which has succeeded elsewhere should also be tried in India. I do not see what difference there is between the population of Ceylon and the population of the Southern Presidency or between the population of Baroda and the population of British Gujarat. Therefore, those who argue that these analogies will not do on the score that the circumstances are different, will have to establish the difference they speak of and not merely content themselves with the assertion that the cases are different. Morever, I will mention to-day another instance—an instance which I was not able to mention last year because I had no definite information then on the subject—that of a most interesting experiment that has been recently tried with success in another Native State in India. It is a State in the Bombay Presidency and the experiment has been made under the very eye of the Bombay Government, not by the Chief, but by a British officer appointed by the Government as Administrator during the minority of the Chief— I refer to the State of Sangli. That State has a population of a little over 2 lakhs. Captain Burke, the Administrator who was at the head of the State for 6 or 7 years, found that the average school-attendance was very low in the State, being only about 2 per cent. of the population. At the end of 1907, he issued orders throughout the State making elementary education both free and compulsory under certain conditions. He, however, approached the problem from another standpoint. He laid down that at least 4 per cent. of the total population, that is, twice the 347

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percentage for British India, must be at school. He ordered schools to be opened in every village with a population of 400 and above, and his orders to the village officials were that where the attendance at school exceeded 4 per cent. there was to be no compulsion, but if it was lower than 4 per cent, compulsion was to be applied, not only in the case of boys but also in the case of girls! The age limits for boys were aid down to be between 7 and 12, and for girls between 7 and 10, and the responsibility was thrown on the village officials to ensure at least a 4 per cent. attendance, the Education Department of the State inspecting the work with care and vigilance. And in less than three years, as a result of these orders, the number of children at school doubled itself. In 1967, only about 5,000 children in a population of little over 2 lakhs were at school; in 1910, 10,000 children were at school, the number of schools too had largely increased; but while these most gratifying results were being obtained, hardly any one outside the State knew anything about what was going on. Those who speak of the opposition which might be encountered from the mass of the people themselves if compulsion is introduced, those who urge that there might be trouble, might well take note of the fact that in this State of Sangli compulsion was introduced not in advanced but in the most backward areas, not by the Chief, but by the British officer, and the experiment has proved so successful and has been so quietly carried out that very few outside the State have even heard of it. I therefore contend that we, in British India, might also have recourse to compulsion with great advantage. I for one shall rejoice if the British Government of the country takes its courage into both hands and comes forward boldly to introduce compulsion throughout the country for both boys and girls—the whole field to be covered in a certain number of years. But since that cannot be, and if anyone has any doubt in the matter that doubt will be dissipated by a reference to the official opinions received on the present Bill, the only alternative is for local bodies to be empowered to take the initiative, and introduce compulsion with the sanction and under the control of the Local Government. Local bodies, however, cannot take the initiative, unless there is legislation to empower them, and that is the reason why this Bill has been introduced. Whether this object is gained by enacting a special law for the whole country or by an amendment of the old Local Self-Government Acts of the different Provinces is a minor matter. The great thing is to make a beginning in introducing compulsion. Once a beginning is made, the public mind in the country will be rapidly familiarised with the idea of compulsion, and it will then not take more than 20 years at the outside to have a system of universal education in the country in full operation. As apprehensions are entertained in official and other quarters as to how compulsion will be regarded by the people, it is necessary to proceed cautiously; hence the proposal that the experiment should first be tried in selected areas only. Again there is fairly general opinion among those who have given any thought to the subject that for compulsion to be successfully applied in British India, there should be among the people a fair spread of elementary education, so that they may be in a position to appreciate its benefits. For that reason our proposal is that no local body should take up the question of compulsion unless at 348

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least 33 per cent. of the school-going population within its area is already at school. And in the Bill the power to lay down this proportion or any other proportion is left to the Government of India, so that if they deem it necessary they might prescribe a higher proportion. Moreover, no local body under the Bill can introduce compulsion without obtaining the previous sanction of the Local Government. To begin with, compulsion is contemplated only for boys, though power is taken to extend it, in due course, to girls; and I do hope that whenever it comes, it will be so extended to girls. The cost of the scheme is to be shared between local bodies and the Local Governments in a reasonable proportion, which, in my opinion, should be one-third for local bodies and two-thirds for Local Governments, the actual proportion, however, being laid down by the Government of India, and additional funds being placed by the Supreme Government at the disposal of Provincial Governments for meeting the Government share of the cost. The Bill proposes to exempt very poor people from the payment of fees as a matter of right, and in all cases local bodies, which are empowered to levy a special education rate, if necessary, will be at liberty to remit fees altogether. The responsibility for providing adequate school accommodation is thrown on local bodies, who will also have to arrange for a reasonable enforcement of compulsion. The curriculum must be approved by the Education Department of the Local Government, and finally, following the example of the compulsory acts of other countries, provision is made for absence from school for reasonable excuses and penalties provided for wilful absence without reasonable excuse. This, my Lord, is the Bill, and this is the case for the Bill. I will now proceed to consider the more important objections which the different Local Governments have urged against this Bill, as also those that have been urged by some nonofficial critics. I will dismiss with very few words the objection that a spread of mass education in British India involves danger to British rule. My Lord, I do not believe that there would be any such danger. My own belief is that it is rather the other way, that there will be danger, not from the spread of education, but from the withholding of education. But, my Lord, even if there is a possible element of danger in the spread of education, it is the clear duty of the British Government to face that danger and to go on with a faithful discharge of their responsibility. I do not think that any sane Englishman will urge that the people of this country should pay the price of perpetual ignorance for even such advantages as the most enthusiastic supporter of British rule may claim for it. Leaving therefore that objection aside, there are seven objections to which I would like briefly to refer. The first objection is to compulsion itself. The second objection is urged on educational grounds. The third is on the score of the scheme. The fourth is on account of alleged financial inequality and injustice in which the scheme would result. These four are official objections. Then there are three non-official objections. The first is to the levy of a special educational rate; the second to the levy of fees from parents whose income is not below Rs. 10 a month; and the third is the Muhammadan objection that the provisions of the Bill may be used to compel Moslem children to learn non-Moslem languages. I will answer these objections 349

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briefly one by one. The principal argument of those who are against compulsion is that there is plenty of room yet for work on a voluntary basis; that schools are filled as soon as they are opened, thus showing that the need of the situation is more schools and not compulsion; and that in any case till persuasion is exhausted, it is not desirable to go in for compulsion. Now, my Lord, this statement is not a complete statement of the case. It is quite true that in cetain places, as soon as schools are opened, they are filled. But there is also ample official evidence to show that in many areas schools have had to be shut down because children would not come. We find a statement to this effect in the United Provinces official papers. Mr. Maynard of the Punjab, in a most thoughtful opinion recorded on the Bill, says:— ‘It will very frequently be found that a perfectly genuine demand for a school on the part of a zealous minority does not guarantee an attendance after the school is provided, and it is occasionally necessary to close for this reason schools which have been opened on too sanguine a forecast.’ In Bengal and Eastern Bengal also several zamindars have complained that though they opened free schools on their estates, it was found difficult to get boys to attend them, because of the great apathy among the people. The real fact is that there are two factors, as Mr. Orange has stated in the last quinquonnial report on education, that cause the smallness of school attendance. One is undoubtedly the want of schools. But the other is the apathy of parents, even where schools exist. ‘The apathy of the populace,’ says Mr. Orange, ‘towards primary education is often mentioned and does undoubtedly operate as a cause which keeps school attendance low.’ He admits this, though he himself would like to push on education for the present on a voluntary basis only. Now, the remedy for this state of things must also be two-fold. First of all local bodies must be required to provide the necessary educational facilities for children that should be at school—school-houses, teachers, etc. That is one part of compulsion. Then they must be empowered to require parents to send their children to school—that would be the second part of compulsion. Now, my Lord, this Bill advocates both sides of this two-fold compulsion. It not merely requires parents in the areas where the Bill may be introduced to send their children to school, it also throws a definite responsibility on local bodies coming under the Bill to provide the necessary school accommodation and other facilities for the education of all the children within their area. Then it is said that compulsion would cause hardship, would cause discontent, and would prove dangerous. Well, the experience of other countries and as also in our own does not justify this view; and in any case, even if there is some discontent, that has got to be faced in view of the great interests that are involved in this matter. It is argued by some that the poorer people will be exposed to the exactions of a low-paid agency if compulsion is introduced. I think the fears on this subject are absurdly exaggerated. But if the people are so weak as to succumb easily to such exactions, the only way in which they can be strengthened is by spreading education among them and by enabling them to take better care of themselves. Those who object to the Bill on educational grounds urge that it is undesirable to extend the kind of education that is at present given in primary schools, for it 350

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is worse than useless. Most of the teachers are not trained teachers, the school buildings are unfit for holding classes in, and therefore until these defects are moved, until there is a sufficient supply of trained teachers forthcoming, until ample decent school accomodation is available, the question of extension should wait. My Lord, those who raise these objections ignore what is the primary purpose of mass education. The primary purpose of mass education is to banish illiteracy from the land. The quality of education is a matter of importance that comes only after illiteracy has been banished. Now, the primary purpose being to banish illiteracy, teachers who could teach a simple curriculum of the 3 R’s, and houses hired by or voluntarily placed by owners at the disposal of school authorities, must do for the present. In Japan, when they began compulsion, they held classes in the verandahs of private houses. I think what was not beneath the dignity of Japan need not be beneath the dignity of this country. Of course I do not depreciate the value and importance of trained teachers and decent school-houses; but I say that we cannot wait till all these defects are first put right before taking up the question of banishing illiteracy from the land. Let that work be resolutely taken in hand, and as we go along let us try to secure for the country better teachers and better school-houses. The third objection to the Bill is on the score of cost. My Lord, a lot of wild criticism has been indulged in by the opponents of the Bill on this point. Nobody denies that the cost of a compulsory scheme is bound to be large. But all sorts of fantastic estimates have been brought forward to discredit the scheme in the eyes of those who can be misled by such tactics. I think the calculation of cost is a fairly simple one. The Bill is intended to apply in the first instance to boys only, and we will therefore for the present take the cost for boys. Taking 10 per cent. of the total male population as the number of boys between the ages of 6 and 10, and taking the male population at about 125 millions, according to the latest census, we find that the number of boys that should be at school is about 12½ millions. Of these, about 4 millions are already at school. That leaves about 8½ millions to be brought to school. Now, Mr. Orange, the Director General of Education, in a note which he prepared for the Government, took the average cost of education per boy at Rs. 5, the present average cost is less than Rs. 4; the highest is in Bombay where it is Rs. 6-8 and everywhere else it is less than Rs. 4. These figures are given in the Quinquennial Report of Mr. Orange. Mr. Orange takes Rs. 5 per head, and I am willing to take that figure. Now, Rs. 5 per head, for 8½ millions of boys amounts to about 4¼ crores per year, or, say, 4½ crores per year. I propose that this cost should be divided between the Government and the local bodies in the proportion of two-thirds and one-third; that is, the Government should find 3 crores and local bodies the remaining 1½ crores. This again will be worked up to in ten years. If we have to find this money in ten years, it means a continuous increase of about 30 lakhs in our annual expenditure on primary education. Allowing another crore for pushing on education on a voluntary basis for girls, to be reached in ten years, means another 10 lakhs a year, or a continuous annual addition of 40 lakhs of rupees in all. Now, I do not think that this is too much for the Government to find. 351

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My Lord, I have given some attention to the question of our finance for some years, and I do not think that an addition of 40 lakhs every year is really beyond the power of the Government of India. Moreover, even if it be proposed that the whole of these 4 crores should be raised straight off, that all boys should be brought to school compulsorily at once, and that a crore of rupees more should be spent on the education of girls—assuming that these four crores have to be found straight off, an addition of 2 per cent. to our customs will solve the problem. Our customs-revenue is about ten crores this year with the duty standing at 5 per cent.; about 2 per cent. more will bring us the required 4 crores. Now, there is no special merit in having our customs-duty at 5 per cent., and they might as well stand at 7 per cent. without causing any serious hardship to anybody. There was a time when they stood at 10 per cent. in this country, and at the present moment they are at 8 per cent. in Egypt. I do not think therefore that there are really any very insuperable difficulties in the way of the scheme on the score of cost. Then, it is said that a scheme like this, a permissive-scheme, which allows areas to come under compulsion one by one, is bound to result in serious financial injustice and inequality as regards the assistance received from Government by different local areas. Now, my Lord, I feel bound to say that this is one of the flimsiest arguments that have been urged against the scheme which we are considering. If anybody proposed as a permanent arrangement that elementary education in certain parts of the country should be on a compulsory basis and in certain others on a voluntary basis, and if the areas that were on a compulsory basis got more from Government than the areas that were on a voluntary basis, there would be some force in the contention that different areas were being differently treated. But the arrangement that I propose is clearly transitional; in the end every part of the country is to rest on a compulsory basis and would share equally in the allotment made by Government. In a transitional stage, provided the same terms are equally open to all, I do not see where the injustice or inequality comes in. If a local body feels aggrieved that some other local body gets more than itself from Government, the remedy is in its own hands. All that it has got to do is to go in for compulsion itself. Those who object to the proposed scheme on the score that it would lead to financial inequality and injustice might object at once to the principle of introducing compulsion gradually, area by area. For how are we to proceed area by area, unless those areas that introduce compulsion first get also at the same time larger-assistance from the Government? Moreover, is there absolute equality even at present in all matters? Even now, on a voluntary basis, the Government, in many parts of the country, bears about one-third of the cost of primary education, with the result that those areas that spend more get more from the Government, and those that spend less get less. Is that equal? Again, take the question of sanitary grants. Under the existing arrangements, those local bodies that go in for the construction of sanitary projects get a certain grant from the Government. Now, if the local bodies that do not take in hand such projects were to complain of injustice, because others that do are assisted 352

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by Government, their complaint would be perfectly ridiculous, and yet it is the same kind of complaint that is urged against the scheme of the Bill. I do not think that any weight need really be attached to the objection on the score of financial injustice and inequality when it is remembered that such inequality can only be a passing, transitional stage. It is said that under the Bill, advanced areas and communities would be benefited at the expense of the less advanced. That argument is based on a complete misapprehension of the scheme. No one has ever suggested, or can possibly suggest, that any money should be taken out of existing expenditure on primary education for its extension on a compulsory basis. No one can also possibly wish to curtail future increases in the allotments to education on a voluntary basis. The expenditure for introducing compulsion is to come out of additional revenues partly raised locally and partly raised specially by the Government of India. The Government of India’s funds will have necessarily to pass through the Local Governments, since education is a Provincial charge. But that does not mean that Provincial Governments will have to curtail their present or future expenditure on a voluntary basis to finance any scheme of compulsion. My Lord, I have so far dealt with the four principal official objections against the Bill. I will now refer very briefly to the three non-official arguments which I have mentioned. The first argument is that while there is no objection to compulsion itself, the levy of a special education rate, where it would be necessary, would be most objectionable. Well, my Lord, I must say to that, that if we merely want compulsion, but are not prepared to make any sacrifices for the benefits that would accrue from it to the mass of our people, the sooner we give up talking about securing universal education, the better. The practice of the whole civilized world points out that a part of the burden must be borne by the local bodies. There is only one exception, as far as I am aware, and that is Ireland, where almost the entire cost of elementary education comes from the Imperial Exchequer. They have given this special treatment to Ireland because for a long time Ireland has complained of being treated with great financial injustice under the arrangement that has been in existence since the Act of Union was passed more than a century ago. If we take the whole of the United Kingdom, we find that the local bodies there bear on the whole about a third of the total cost. It is the same in France. And in other countries, the local proportion is still larger. I cannot therefore see how anybody can reasonably urge that the whole cost of compulsion should be borne by the Central Government. The next objection urged in some non-official quarters is that if you make education compulsory, it must be made free and the Bill does not make it free for all. I frankly confess that the proposal embodied in the Bill on this point was intended to conciliate official opinion. My own personal view always was that, where education was made compulsory, it should also be made free. Two years ago, when I placed my Resolution on this subject before this Council, I urged that view in explicit terms: In framing the Bill, however, I was anxious to go as far as possible to conciliate official opinion, and I therefore put in the provision that no fees should be charged in the case of those whose incomes were below Rs. 10 a 353

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month, and that above that limit the matter should be left to the discretion of local bodies. Well, my Lord, I must frankly admit that I have failed in my object. Official opinion has not been conciliated; and I do not see why I should allow room for a division in our own ranks by adhering to this provision. I shall therefore be glad to go back to my original proposal in this matter that, where education is compulsory, it should also be free. Lastly, my Lord, a word about the Muhammadan objection. I believe I need not say that there never was any intention that the compulsory clauses of the Bill should be utilized to compel Moslem boys to learn non-Moslem languages. However, to remove all misapprehension on this point, I am perfectly willing that where 25 children speaking a particular language attend a school, provision should be made for teaching those children in that language; and further, where the number is less than that, it should be left to the community itself to say whether the children should come under the compulsory clauses of the Bill or not. I have discussed this matter with several leading Muhammadan gentlemen and I understand that this would meet their view. My Lord, I have now dealt with all principal objections urged against the Bill. I cannot understand why there should be all this vehement opposition in certain quarters to a measure so modest in its scope and so permissive in its character. No local body is compelled to come under this Bill, that wants to keep out of it. Any Local Government that wants to prevent compulsion being introduced in any particular area, can prevent it by withholding its sanction to its introduction. And, lastly, the supreme control of the Government of India is retained at the initial stage by the provision that it is the Government of India that should lay down the proportion of school-going children at school which must be satisfied before any local body can take up the question of compulsion. I cannot see how such a Bill can do harm in any locality. I would only invite the attention of the Council to the fact that at least a. hundred Municipalities, more or less important, are willing to-day to try the experiment in their areas if this Bill is passed, and I do not see why these Municipalities should not be permitted to make the experiment. Of course the whole thing hinges on whether the Government of India are prepared to find a good part of the cost. That is, in fact, the real crux of the question, and whether the Bill is accepted or thrown out, it is perfectly clear that no large extension of elementary education is possible in the country, unless the Government of India come forward with generous financial assistance. I would therefore like to make a special appeal to the Hon’ble Member in charge of education on this occasion. My Lord, the Hon’ble Member knows that no one has acclaimed more enthusiastically than myself the creation of the Education Department, and I am sure every one will admit ungrudgingly that during the year and a half that the Department has been in existence, it has already amply justified its existence by the large grants, recurring and non-recurring that it has succeeded in seeming both for education and sanitation in this country. We are sincerely grateful to the Government of India for these grants. And, my Lord, in view of the conversation with Your Excellency which was mentioned by the Finance Member the other 354

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day, I think we are justified in expecting that in succeeding years these grants will grow in more and more, and not less. Well so far I believe we are all at one with the Department, I would like to say something more to the Hon’ble Member, My Lord, I know that the fate of my Bill is sealed. Now, there are obvious disadvantages attaching to a private Bill. Why not introduce a Government measure after the ground has been cleared by the rejection of this Bill? Why not—I put it to the Hon’ble Member—introduce a Government measure? It is quite true that there is room for progress on a voluntary basis. Let the Local Governments who are so anxious to keep education on a voluntary basis be required to push on its spread as vigorously as possible on a voluntary basis. And let the Government of India in the Education Department take up the question of pushing it on a compulsory basis, as its own special charge. I would like to put it to the Hon’ble Member, is he content merely to take grants from the Finance Department and distribute them among the various Local Governments and then look on, or is he not anxious, as I think it is his duty to take a hand in the game himself? If he is, then I suggest that there should be a division of functions such as I have described between the Provincial Governments and the Government of India. The progress of education on a voluntary basis should be left to the Provincial Governments. They do not want compulsion. They all prefer to push it on a voluntary basis. Let us then leave that work to them; let the Government of India, with its wider outlook and its larger resources, come forward, and profiting by the example of other civilized countries, provide for the gradual introduction of compulsion in this country. Let the Government take up the question of compulsion themselves, then they will be able to provide all the safeguards that they deem necessary. Let them frame a Bill free from all the blemishes which have been discovered in mine, and let them carry it through the Council. And let them, at the same time, announce a generous policy of substantial assistance to local bodies in carrying out the provisions of the measure. My Lord, let this be done, and let the burden of all future extensions be shared between the Government and the local bodies in the proportion of two-thirds and one-third. I would recommend that both for voluntary and compulsory extensions—I mean Provincial Governments should bear two-thirds of the cost of all future extensions of elementary education on a voluntary basis, and the Government of India, two-thirds of the cost of compulsion. Then, my Lord, elementary education will advance in this country with truly rapid strides, and the Hon’ble Member in charge of the Education Department will, under Your Excellency, write his name large on the memory of a grateful people. My Lord, I have done. No one is so simple as to imagine that a system of universal education will necessarily mean an end to all our ills, or that it will open out to us a new heaven and a new earth. Men and women will still continue to struggle with their imperfections and life will still be a scene of injustice and suffering, of selfishness and strife. Poverty will not be banished because illiteracy has been removed, and the need for patriotic or philanthropic work will not grow any the less. But with the diffusion of universal education the mass of our countrymen will have a better chance in life. With universal education there will be 355

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hope of better success for all efforts, official or non-official, for the amelioration of the people—their social progress, their moral improvement, their economic well-being. I think, my Lord, with universal education the mass of the people will be better able to take care of themselves against the exactions of unscrupulous moneylenders or against the abuses of official anthority by petty men in power. My Lord, with 94 per cent. of our countrymen sunk in ignorance, how can the advantages of sanitation or thrift be properly appreciated, and how can the industrial efficiency of the worker be improved? With 94 per cent. of the people unable to read or write, how can the evil of superstition be effectively combated, and how can the general level of life in the country be raised? My Lord, His Majesty the King-Emperor, in delivering his message of hope to the people of this country before he left Calcutta, was pleased to say: ‘And it is my wish too that the homes of my Indian subjects may be brightened and their labour sweetened by the spread of knowledge, with what follows in its train—a higher level of thought, of comfort, and of health.’ No nobler words were ever uttered. May we not hope that the servants of His Majesty in this country will keep these words constantly before their minds and will so discharge the responsibility which they impose that future generations in this country will be enabled to turn to His Majesty’s declaration with the same fervent and reverent gratitude with which the people of Japan recall their Emperor’s famous rescript of 1872? My Lord, I know that my Bill will be thrown out before the day closes, I make no complaint, I shall not even feel depressed. I know too well the story of the preliminary efforts that were required even in England, before the Act of 1870 was passed, either to complain or to feel depressed. Moreover, I have always felt and have often said that we, of the present generation in India, can only hope to serve our country by our failures. The men and women who will be privileged to serve her by their successes will come later. We must be content to accept cheerfully the place that has been allotted to us in our onward march. This Bill, thrown out to-day, will come back again and again, till on the stepping-stones of its dead selves, a measure ultimately rises which will spread the light of knowledge throughout the land. It may be that this anticipation will not come true. It may be that our efforts may not conduce even indirectly to the promotion of the great cause which we all have at heart and that they may turn out after all to be nothing better than the mere ploughing of the sands of the sea-shore But, my Lord, whatever fate awaits our labours, one thing is clear. We shall be entitled to feel that we have done our duty, and, where the call of duty is clear, it is better even to labour and fail than not to labour at all. [Replying on the debate which ensued, Mr. Gokhale spoke as follow:—] Sir, it only remains for me now to reply to the speeches which have been made in opposition to the motion that I have submitted to the Council. I will first say a few words about my friends, Sir Gangadhar Chitnavis and Nawab Abdul Majid. I really do not complain of the view which these two friends have expressed. Frankly, they do not believe in mass education, and in that they are not singular. There are men belonging to their class in other countries—in 356

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Western countries—who also have the same distrust of mass education. If my friends had the courage of their convictions, if they were prepared to push their views to their logical conclusion, they would propose the abolition of mass education. But they will not do that, for they are discreet in their generation. But, Sir, I would like to know one thing from the Hon’ble Sir Gangadhar Chitnavis, if he will be so good as to enlighten us on that point. The two local bodies of which my friend is President, namely, the Nagpur Municipality and the Nagpur District Board, have both supported this Bill. Now, was he or was be not present at the meetings of these bodies when the Bill came up for consideration? And if he was, did he protest against the resolutions? And if not, is the difference in his attitude due to the difference between the popular atmosphere of those meetings and the predominantly official atmosphere that we have in this Council? The Hon’ble Sir Gangadhar Rao Chitnavis: I was present at the two meetings of the Municipal Committee and of the District Council, but the way in which those resolutions were made and the safeguards with which they have been hedged round will show how enthusiastically people received this measure. And I told them— The President: I cannot allow the Hon’ble Member to make a speech. He must sit down and let the Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale continue his remarks without interruption. The Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale: Well, that suffices for my point. The Hon’ble Member was present and the resolutions were in favour of the principle of the Bill. You may put it any way you like, but the resolutions did favour the principle of my Bill. And the motion before the Council asks for nothing more. All it says is, approve the principle of the Bill and send it to a Select Committee in order that its provisions may be carefully examined. If the Hon’ble Member did not protest against those resolutions, if he allowed those reslutions in favour of the Bill to be passed there without his protest, I cannot understand how he can now oppose this motion that the Bill should go to a Select Committee, My Hon’ble friend, the Malik Sahib, has opposed the motion so gently that I shall show my gratitude by not controverting his views. My Hon’ble friend, the Maharaja of Burdwan, has also expressed himself in such a guarded way that I prefer to look upon his speech as more in favour of the motion than against it. He is in any case not going to vote against the motion; therefore, I will not say anything more as regards his attitude. I now come to the Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy. I must say that my friend’s position is absolutely incomprehensible to me. The other day I congratulated my friend on his conversion to official views in the matter of our complaint that the grant to irrigation was not always fully expended. The official plea has always been that, owing to scarcity of labour, the money allotted cannot always be spent. I congratulated my friend on his conversion to official views in that matter, because the complaint which was made on this subject the other day by the Hon’ble Mr. Mudholkar, and in which Mr. Dadabhoy could not agree, was precisely the complaint which my friend had himself been making in years past. To-day I will go a little 357

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further and congratulate my friend not only on his conversion to official views but on his conversion to the very manner of expressing those views. The Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy: Will you allow me a personal explanation? The President: I think the Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale is entitled to continue his speech without constant interruptions. Every member belonging to the Indian portion of the Council has made a speech, and I think the Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale is entitled, except for very strong reasons, to proceed without interruption. The Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale: Official members, when they oppose a non-official motion, first express plenty of sympathy with an object. Sometimes the sympathy is really most valuable; sometimes it is only intended to soothe our susceptibilities. But in any case sympathy is generally expressed before a motion is resisted. My Hon’ble friend has also begun to give us sympathy while opposing our resolutions. But, Sir, official sympathy has a practical value because it often means increased grants. I do not know, however, what we can do with the sympathy which the Hon’ble Member offers us. In fact, Sir, I must say that it is a source of no small embarrassment to us, because official opponents can point to that sympathy and say: ‘Here is a member who is in sympathy with you, and yet who deems it his duty to oppose your motion.’ The less, therefore, that we have of such expressions of sympathy from my Hon’ble friend in future the better, for we certainly should prefer his opposition pure and simple. Sir, two years ago I moved in this Council a Resolution on the subject of free and compulsory education. That Resolution recommended that a beginning should be made in the direction of making elementary education free and compulsory. There was no ambiguity about the terms. I definitely suggested that a beginning should be made. The Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy then made a speech in support, the very first sentence of which was: ‘My Lord, I cordially support this Resolution.’ He cordially supported my Resolution recommending that a beginning should be made in the direction of making elementary education free and compulsory, And we argued strongly about the necessity of introducing compulsion. The Hon’ble Member said: ‘And if the propriety of the Government action in fixing the age at which children can begin manual work in the interests of the physical development of the nation be admitted, equally, if not even more, proper will the Government policy be in compelling children to attend school up to a certain age in the higher interests of their mental and moral development. It is a balancing of advantages and disadvantages, and the advantage would appear to be in favour of compulsory education.’ Then again, Sir, last year, when I introduced the present Bill, what was it that the Hon’ble Member said? (Mr. Dadabhoy: Hear, hear.) Mr. Gokhale: “You may cheer now, but you won’t cheer at the end. My Hon’ble friend thus referred to the Bill which is now before the Council, the Bill which I propose should now go to a Select Committee: ‘Prima fasie,’ said, ‘the Bill deserves support. A close examination of the provisions (not merely a superficial glance at them but a close examination such as my friend always bestows on every subject) will show that the general principle of the Bill is sound.’ He thus said that a close examination of the Bill had convinced him at that time that the general principle of the Bill was 358

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sound. Sir, to-day we are only considering, as my friend the Hon’ble Mr. Mazharul Haque has already pointed out, the general principle of the Bill. The place for considering the details is the Select Committee. Those who are in favour of the general principle of the Bill are, in my opinion, bound to support this motion for referring the Bill to a Select Committee. If my friend is in favour of the general principle of the Bill I cannot understand how he opposes the motion. The Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy: Forgive me, Sir, but in fairness to myself I must request you to permit me to tender a personal explanation. The President: Are you rising to a point of order? The Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy: No, Sir, I want to explain my position. The President: Order, order. The Hon’ble Member had ample opportunity to explain his position at the time when he was speaking. The Hon’ble Mr. Gokhate is now fully entitled to proceed with his speech without interruption. The Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale: Sir, I must also point out that I am confining myself to quotations entirely. The Council is in a position to judge if I am properly representing or not the Hon’ble Member. I am quoting his words exactly as they are in these proceedings. Sir, more than that, since the Hon’ble Member himself made an indirect reference to the subject yesterday, I may mention that only ten days ago my Hon’ble friend had assured me that he would not only support my motion, but would strongly support it. He is of course entitled to change his views, but a man who has been as long as my friend has been in public life and who had examined the provisions of my Bill carefully last year and had expressed the views hedid last year and the year before is certainly expected to show some consistency. The Hon’ble Mr. Dadabhoy: Will you allow me, Sir. The President: The Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale is fully entitled to make these remarks. He is making quotations from books to which we all have access, and I must request the Hon’ble Member to allow him to proceed without interruption. The Hon’ble Mr. Gokhale: May I point out to the Hon’ble Member that there is always a disadvantage attaching to a person speaking before another. If the Hon’ble. Member gets an opportunity of speaking after me, he will be entitled to say whatever he chooses, without being interrupted by me. He, moreover, can explain himself in the columns of the Press, if he likes. Well I will now pass on from Mr. Dadabhoy and say a few words with reference to the remarks made by the Hon’ble Mr. Shafi. A large part of the Hon’ble Member’s speech was devoted to a condemnation of the principle of compulsion, and, after the manner in which the Hon’ble Member in charge of the Education Department practically accepted the desirability of compulsion, I do not think I need say much about that part of his case. After all when the Hon’ble Member in charge of Education, speaking in the name of the Government, says what he did on the subject of compulsion, if a private member takes a different view, that is comparatively a small matter. The Hon’ble Member is of opinion that, unless a person is absolutely and entirely in favour of every single clause of a Bill, he cannot be regarded as a supporter of the Bill. Now, Sir, as my friend the Hon’ble Mr. Haque has already pointed out, we are only considering the principle of the Bill 359

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to day, and I have already explained that, when I said that certain persons were in favour of the Bill. [Illegible] only meant that they were only in favour of the principle of the Bill. It should be remembered that a Bill is not like a law of the Medes and of the Persians or like Athene issuing from the head of Jove clad in full armour. A Bill is a series of proposals tentatively put forward before the public. Certain parts are fundamental and they cannot be allowed; but certain other parts are only tentatively put forward, and are liable to be revised in the light of such public criticism as is brought to bear upon them. If you take the view that he alone can be called a supporter who accepts every single clause of a Bill as first drafted, then no measure that was ever introduced in this world can be said to have been supported largely by the public. The Hon’ble Member also said that one result of my Bill would be that the areas that were more advanced would derive additional advantage and the areas that were more backward would be pushed still further back. This objection has also been urged by some other members. I have already pointed out that the objection is based on a complete misapprehension of my scheme such as it is. I do not want that the Provincial Governments should reduce in any way the expenditure that they are already incurring on the primary education of backward areas. And I do not for a moment suggest that further grants for primary education in backward areas on a voluntary scale should be reduced. But what I want is that, if certain local bodies want to go in for compulsion and are prepared to find a part of the cost, the Imperial Government, out of their own Exchequer, should come forward to the assistance of these bodies and provide the rest of the cost that would be required. If these local bodies do not go in for a compulsory scheme, the Government of India would probably be devoting its surplus revenues to various other purposes, such as to the reduction of debt and a number of other objects with which we are familiar. What I say, therefore, is that without touching the revenues of Provincial Governments, if any local body wanted to go in for compulsion and raised a part of the cost, the Government of India should come forward and supplement that cost out of their own Exchequer, I do not see how this would constitute any disadvantage to the backward areas which in their turn would also be benefited by the arrangement. I will now come to the remarks of the Hon’ble Member in charge of Education. I hope the Hon’ble Member will permit me to say that it was with the utmost satisfaction that I listened to the concluding portion of his speech—not the controversial part, with which I will presently deal, but the concluding portion of his speech. That portion really is what matters to us, because it lays down the future policy of the Goverment of India so far as primary education is concerned. Sir, as I listened to those warm and enthusiastic words which fell from the Hon’ble Member, I could not help feeling what a great thing it would have been for the country if, instead of being an official, the Hon’ble Member had been a non-official and if we could have had an opportunity of placing ourselves under his banner and spreading the gospel of the necessity of mass education throughout the country under his lead. Sir, I think that portion of his speech will give great satisfaction 360

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throughout the country, even to those who are convinced that we should lose no more time in making a beginning in the direction of making elementary education free and compulsory; because, taken with the opening words of his speech, it goes much further than any pronouncement on the part of Government has previously done. The Hon’ble Member stated at the beginning that no one would rejoice more than himself if primary education became free and compulsory in the country, and that it was the policy of the Government to so work that that desirable consummation should be brought about. That commits the Government of India, first, to an approval of the principle of free and compulsory education, and, secondly, to so conduct their educational operations that the time for making education free and compulsory would be hastened and not indefinitely put off. That, taken with the determination announced at the close of the speech, amounts to a practical promise that sooner than many of us imagine, the State will help us to reach the goal which we have before our eyes, the goal of free and compulsory education. Sir, I will now deal with the principal points in the Hon’ble Member’s speech. I am personally grateful to him, as also to the Hon’ble Mr. Sharp, for the terms of appreciation in which they have spoken of my humble efforts in this matter; but I did not quite understand what the Hon’ble Member meant by observing that, while he was prepared to appreciate what I had been doing, he was somewhat disappointed to find that I did not equally appreciate what the officials had been doing. If he spoke of his Department, he knows that there is no warmer appreciator of the efforts of that Department than myself. If, however, he spoke of the officials generally, he cannot surely expect me to be grateful even to those officials who are against mass education itself. As regards a number of officials who are really striving to push on mass education, of course we all appreciate their efforts: but appreciating efforts of that kind is one thing and expressing disappointment at the pace at which we are moving is another thing. Without intending to cast any reflection on those officials who are doing what they can under the existing system to push on primary education, I think it is perfectly permissible to say that the pace at which we are going is very unsatisfactory. In fact, that is what the Hon’ble Member himself said yesterday, and that is all I have said. Sir, the Hon’ble Member referred to what I had said about the letter of the Bombay Government, and he asked the Council to remember that the head of the Bombay Government was Sir George Clarke; and he seemed to imply that I had cast some sort of reflection on Sir George Clarke. It is not necessary that I should say to this Council that I have always entertained the warmest admiration for Sir George Clarke, both personally for his remarkable qualties of head and heart, and also for the great services that he has rendered to the Bomby Presidency in many fields. But this is not a question of Sir George Clarke personally; it is a question of the letter which the Bombay Government as Provincial Government has addressed to the Government of India; and I did mean yesterday, and I do say to-day, that even a great Provincial Government might show some courtesy to those who have the misfortune to differ from its views. I will give only one quotation to this Council. 361

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Speaking about a proposal that fees should be remitted and that free education should be introduced, the Bombay Government says: ‘Such a policy would be regarded as a triumph by a few persons who have shown no understanding of educational questions.’ Now, Sir, I understood the Hon’ble Member in charge of Education yesterday to favour free education. Many members here have also got up and said that they would like to have free education. Some of the officers belonging to the different Provincial Governments have expressed the view that education should be made free before it is made compulsory. But more than all, only five years ago the Government of India addressed a circular letter to all Local Governments advocating that fees should be abolished and that free education should be introduced, I therefore respectfully pass on this description of the Bombay Government of those who favour free education to the Hon’ble Member and to the Government of India! Sir, the Hon’ble Member asked, who were they who were in favour of this Bill? Now, that is a very easy way of disposing of all those who are inconveniently ranged on the other side. Those who are in favour of the Bill may be divided into two classes, namely, those who belong to the educated classes, and those who belong to the backward communities. Now, you can discredit the support given by these two sections in two separate ways. The Central Provinces Government, for instance, says that the members of the educated classes might be in favour; but what does it cost them to be in favour? The question does not really concern them, and mere heroic resolutions in favour of this proposal do not really count for much. On the other hand, if members of backward communities assemble and express themselves in favour, the argument is used, what do they understand of the Bill? They have not the intelligence to understand what would be the effects of the Bill. My Hon’ble friend Mr. Mudholkar reminds me that only a short time ago a meeting of 2,500 Mahars, that is, one of the most depressed classes on our side, was held in Berar and passed a resolution in favour of this Bill. If you ask me if every member of that body understood what the Bill was, I could not answer that question in the affirmative; but they must have had a fairly general idea that the Bill was intended to make education compulsory, and that under it their children would be compelled to go to school so that they might derive the benefits of education. The analogy of the three tailors of Tooley Street could in my opinion be applied far more to the persons opposed to the Bill than to those who are in favour of the Bill. Now, Sir, I come to my examples from different countries. The Hon’ble Member said, before dealing with these analogies, that there are differences in this country, of caste, differences of script, differences of language. But that only means that we have a bigger problem than elsewhere. It does not mean that we cannot tackle the problem successfully. What are these differences to do with the question of compulsion? You have got primary schools just now to teach different scripts, and different languages and for different communities; all that is necessary is to increase their schools and introduces compulsion in regard to attending them. 362

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The Hon’ble Member, speaking of the case of England, said that in England compulsory education and compulsory attendance came six and ten years after the compulsory provision of educational facilities. Will my Hon’ble friend allow me to say that that statement is not correct? The Act of 1870, which required the compulsory provision of educational facilities, at the same time empowered local authorities to frame bye-laws, whereby the attendance of children could be secured compulsorily at school. Of course it was a purely permissive provision, which some local auhorities used and some did not. But that is precisely what this Bill proposes to do. In 1876, the next step was taken when the responsibility was thrown on the parents to send their children compulsorily to school, and the whole fabric was ultimately completed in the year 1380, when local authorities were compelled to frame by-laws. But the Act of 1870 was in many respects similar to the Bill which I have laid before the Council, because this Bill on the one side empowers local bodies to introduce compulsion and on the other throws the responsibility on them to provide the necessary educational facilities, The Hon’ble Member has told the Council that in Japan it is persuasion and not compulsion that has produced the present results. An answer to that was given this morning in the course of the debate, that persuasion there has succeeded because there is compulsion behind it to fall back upon. All that we want is that we too should have compulsion to fall back upon and our persuasion also will then succeed much more than it can do at present. Then, Sir, as regards the question of the Philippines. The Hon’ble Member said that there was no State law of compulsion in the Philippines. That is quite true, but that is exactly what I myself had stated last year. This is what I had said: Under Spanish rule there was no system of popular education in the Philippines. As soon as the Islands passed into the possession of the United States, they drew up a regular programme of expenditure which has been systematically adhered to The aim is to make primary education universal and the educational authorities advice compulsion though no compulsory law has yet been enacted. In the matter of education many Municipalities have introduced compulsion by local ordinances.

That is my point. Of course, these local ordinances have been held by some to be illegal; they have been framed under powers that were conferred on local bodies by the Spanish Government. That, however, is a separate matter. It is significant that nobody has come forward on the side of the people to question the validity of these local ordinances. Coming to Ceylon, the Hon’ble Member said that 60 per cent. of the population of Ceylon were Buddhists. What has religion got to do with the question of compulsion? If you mean to say that there are no castes among the Buddhists, and therefore the difficulty is less, I say there are no castes among the Muhammadans of this country, and yet what have you done to introduce compulsory education among the 100 per cent. of the Muhammadans of this country? Finally, I come to the question of Baroda. The Hon’ble Member quoted figures which largely go against him. In the first place, he said that even according 363

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to the last census the percentage of literacy in Baroda was only 17 for the male population while the percentage in a British district—Broach—was 24. This is quite true; but that only helps me, for it shows that Baroda resorted to compulsion even before that State was as advanced as the neighbouring British territory in the matter of the spread of education. We have been told again and again that there must be a certain general diffusion of education before you can take in hand compulsion and I accepted with some reluctance a percentage of 33 as the proportion of children of school-going age who should be at school before compulsion could be introduced. Here, however, we find in Baroda, even when education was much more backward than it is in the surrounding British, territories, the State took up compulsion—a point distinctly in my favour, and not against me. Then, Sir, compulsory education was introduced in Baroda only five years ago. Surely my Hon’ble friend does not expect that the illiteracy of those who were beyond the school-going age five years ago would be touched by the compulsory education introduced during the last five years. The bulk of the population had passed beyond that stage five years ago, and of course they all come into the census figures of illiterates. But let us wait for another ten years and then we shall see a great difference if the British Government, continues—as I hope it will not—on its present voluntary basis and the Baroda Government on its compulsory basis. Then, Sir, the Hon’ble Member gave some figures for Broach. Well, I accept those figures—6·9 of the total population being at school in the whole district of Broach. But the Hon’ble Member should compare likes with likes. Broach is the most advanced district of the five districts which constitute Guzarat. If the Hon’ble Member takes that district, he should also take the most advanced division in the Baroda State for comparison. Else the camparison will not be fair. If you take the most advanced division in Baroda, which is, I find, the Navsari Division, the percentage of those who are at school to the total population is nearly 13 as against 6·8 for Broach—about double. So those figures after all really do not help the Hon’ble Member very much. The Hon’ble Member says that the percentage of attendance in Baroda to the total population is 8·5. I have got with me the report for 1911, which is recent enough, and I find there that the proportion for the whole State of those who are in primary schools is 9·5 and not 8·5: 8·5 is the attendance in village schools only. The proportion of all who are receiving primary education is 9 5. I will show the report to the Hon’ble Member afterwards if he likes; I have got it here with me. In your most advanced district in British territories—Broach—it is 6·8. Already this makes a difference. If you allow things to go on like this, will it take long for the British Government to lag behind Baroda—a contingency which, I am very glad to see, the Hon’ble Member regards with horror? Then, Sir, the Hon’ble Member relied on the support of the Bombay Corporation. Let me warn him again that he is leaning on a broken reed indeed. The Bombay Corporation is not only in favour of the principle of free and compulsory education, but it would like to throw the whole cost, or nearly the whole cost, on Imperial revenues. Is the Hon’ble Member prepared to accept that? Let him part 364

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company with the Bombay Corporation while there is yet time. He also spoke of the Malabar District Board’s opinion that it is better to improve education than to go in for universal education. Who proposes universal education straight off? We propose that we should only make a beginning in the direction of compulsory education and gradually advance, in the course of 10, 15 or 20 years. All the objections that are based on the assumption that we propose to go in straight for universal education are based on a misapprehension and therefore need not be considered any further. In this connection I would like to notice one remark which fell from the Hon’ble Mr. Sharp about the banishment of illiteracy. I am not so simple as to imagine that if you introduce compulsion in a few areas you will banish illiteracy straightway from the whole land. But the problem is a vast one; let us take it in hand at once and make a beginning, that is what I say. Unless you make a beginning at once, the prospect is not very cheering. Sir, one of the most important points raised in this discussion—it has been urged by several members—is this—first have schools, first have trained teachers and then propose that education should be made compulsory. Now, those who will go through the parliamentary discussions of 1870 will find in the volumes of Hansard that the same arguments were urged in England when the Act of 1870 was proposed. Where are the teachers? Where are the school-houses? That was what was urged against that measure. But I would like to ask what is really meant by this objection. If you call upon a local body merely to build schools, if you call upon either Local Governments or local bodies merely to have trained teachers without saying where they are to work, do you think anybody would take such a proposal seriously. Not unless you gave the local bodies at the same time the power to compel attendance. If a school is built or hired, local bodies should have the power to fill the school at once. They cannot build a school and then, with doors thrown open, wait for any stray children to walk in. You must give them the power to compel attendance simultaneously. That is what the English Act of 1870 did. It compelled local authorities to provide school accommodation. But at the same time it empowered them to compel attendance at school, no doubt in a permissive way, as this Bill does. What I say is, that the two things must go hand in hand; you cannot urge that one thing should come before the other. It is the same thing about teachers: you must be satisfied with untrained teachers for a time. After all, too much has been made of trained teachers; not that I depreciate the value of trained teachers, but for the purpose of giving the most elementary type of education—for imparting a knowledge of the R’s—I think even untrained teachers are not as useless as they are depicted. Most of the Indian members in this Council received their primary education under untrained teachers. The Hon’ble Mr. Sharp said that he had visited thousands of primary schools: Sir, we have learnt in primary schools. We have experience from the inside of these schools. How did we receive our primary education? I remember how I did it. We used to squat on the floor with a wooden board in front of us covered with red powder and a piece of stick to write letters with. Well, we have done fairly well in life after all, though we received our primary education in that way under untrained 365

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teachers. It is a question of removing illiteracy first of all. And here I should like to quote an important authority—the authority of the Bombay Government. Two years ago, Sir George Clarke—I think it was in his Convocation speech—took the same line that the Hon’ble Member in charge of Education took yesterday and the Hon’ble Mr. Sharp did to-day. ‘You must first have trained teachers; the quality of education must be raised; you must have proper school-houses, and so on.’ Last year however, he came round to the other view. A Resolution was issued by the Bombay Government (I do not know whether my friend the Hon’ble Mr. Enthoven was then Secretary in the Education Department in Bombay) on the spread of primary education in rural areas. And what does that Resolution say? It gives up the insistence on trained teachers and good school-houses, and it proposes to place primary education on an indigenous, aided basis in rural areas, giving grants to untrained teachers and allowing them to teach as well as they can, the curriculum of course being under the control of the Department. Now, this is precisely what we want all over the country to begin with. First establish at once these lower primary schools, then go on, as you have funds, improving the standards, bringing in trained teachers, and having better school-houses. And for God’s sake do not wait for your trained teachers, for your decent school-houses, till you take up the question of removing illiteracy from the land in hand. That is really the whole of my contention. I wish now to turn to the question of cost, and will only deal very briefly with it. The Hon’ble Member said he would like to take Rs. 10 as the figure per head. I meet him there with official authority. Mr. Orange—no amateur—in charge of Education before the Department was created—Director-General of Education— in an estimate that he prepared, not for a discussion in this Council, but for the Government, took Rs. 5 as the average cost per head: the Hon’ble Mr. Sharp will correct me if I am wrong; I know he cannot, because he knows that I am right. Mr. Orange took Rs. 5 per head. I think that that estimate holds the field and any mere vague statements that it might be more than this, that it might be 6 or 7 or 10 rupees, we are not bound to accept till the Hon’ble Member challenges the estimate of Mr. Orange and proves it to be an underestimate. And if we take Rs. 5 per head, the figures I have given are quite correct. Sir, I have already dealt with the argument that if compulsion is introduced in advanced areas, the spread of education in backward areas will suffer. I should deplore any action that could produce such a result; but I am sure there is no real foundation for the fear. How can any one imagine that those who want to see free and compulsory education all over the country would be a party to any scheme which would retard, instead of promoting, education in backward areas? Sir, there is one more point and I shall have done. The Hon’ble Member spoke yesterday of the desirability of such questions being dealt with by Local Legislative Councils. I have no objection to that. If Local Legislatures will take up this question and empower local bodies within their limits to introduce compulsion, I have no objection. Only I hope that that will not absolve the Government of India from the responsibility of finding the money, because it is essential that the 366

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Government share of the cost of compulsion should come out of the Exchequer of the Government of India, no matter what the estimate is. Sir, to those who profess to be appalled by the amount of money that will be required, I will mention only one act. The military expenditure of this country—owing to the exigencies of the State—I will not enter just now into its justification or otherwise—has risen in 35 years from 16 crores to about 31 crores of rupees—an increase of 15 crores a year. It was 16 crores at the end of Lord Ripon’s administration; it is nearly 31 crores now. If our military expenditure could be increased by 15 crores like this because the State thought it necessary to find the money, the spread of education, which is surely just as important as the defence of the country, has also a similar claim on Government revenues, whatever amount is actually required. And I am quite sure the State will be able to find the money, if the Government of India do not try to throw the responsibility on Local Governments.

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11 APPENDIX TO THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. VOL XX: MINUTES OF EVIDENCE RELATING THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT TAKEN AT DELHI, CALCUTTA, MADRAS, BOMBAY AND LONDON (1915), 46–55, 119–129, 138–143

REV. C. F. ANDREWS, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Written statement relating to the Educational Service. 82,920. (1) I regard a separation of University from School inspection work as ultimately necessary under modern conditions. University life in India has now advanced beyond the crude, elementary stage. Residential teaching Universities are being formed. University professorships are being founded. Post graduate research work is coming to the front. The whole situation is altered from the earlier days when a teacher’s work could be interchanged with inspection work and vice versa. Our modern Indian Universities are offering increasingly wide and important careers to those who are engaged in teaching. The Education services themselves must change with the changed conditions. Unfortunately the only important change hitherto (the division into Imperial and Provincial services) has been in a reactionary direction. There appear to me two ways of meeting the changed conditions:— (a) A reconstruction of the Education Services on a new basis. Instead of the old “Imperial” and “Provincial” Services there might be a “University Service” and a “School Inspection Service.” (b) An abolition of the “Service” system altogether within the University sphere. Pay, etc., should be allotted to the post, not to the person. The person shall be free to make his own movements in his own profession, and not be bound by Service Regulations. (2) The objection to (a) would come from those who regard the Directorship of Public Instruction as the goal of the Service. They would regard a purely University career as leading away from, and not up to, the highest posts. The objection is valid, if the Directorship were the only end in view. But new posts are now being 368

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made in the Universities themselves, such as University Professorships, carrying with them high remuneration. These would be the goal of a “University Service.” [I would gladly outline a scheme for a “University Service” if it would help the work of the Commission to consider it. I am perfectly certain if its prospects were made clear, and it was put forward as a career in itself, it would attract a far more scholarly type of men than those who are now being recruited.] (3) Personally, however, I shall look forward with more hope to (b) than to (a). The ultimate question to be faced, on the University side, is the position of the Government Colleges themselves, for which recruitment takes place. The history of these is, that they were established as “Model Colleges” in the early days, when no high standard of College efficiency had been attained by any existing institution. The University, then, was a mere examining body: the College was the teaching body. Now the situation has markedly changed. The Universities are rapidly becoming teaching bodies and all new Universities are being founded on that basis. Even an old examining University like Calcutta has so remodelled itself in the past two years that it has created, I believe, 15 University Professorships and has now a body of 1,000 post-graduate students, attached to the University rather than to the separate Colleges. The individual Colleges have also had a remarkable development. The criterion of efficiency has stepped from that of mere employment of up to date apparatus to that of acquiring a living College spirit through touch with religious or national or civic movements of the country. One College may have lakhs of money spent on it and be dead: another College may be impecunious but living. The test of life in University matters is in touch with living movements. (4) These two factors (the change in the University and the change in the College spirit) have tended to drive the Government Colleges into a backwater. They have struggled bravely, and even nobly, to get back into the open stream; but they are crippled and hampered by the present service conditions. The crude division of ‘Imperial’ and ‘Provincial’ has been a permanent grievance, canvassed by every Indian student. The temptation to seek inspectorships, outside the University, has prevented a whole-hearted absorption in the life of the University itself. The rules and regulations of the ‘services’ have impeded the healthy growth of the Government Colleges themselves as self, organising institutions in close touch with the community. Personally I look forward hopefully to the day when these Colleges will be let loose from the safe harbour of Government patronage and direction and launched upon the rising tide of civic life. The air there will be found much bracing and invigorating than that which now surrounds them. They would be supported largely by local and provincial patriotism and the public would have a deep interest in their welfare. If Government Colleges were placed at last in the hand of the community the funds released might be used for University development. Government would be able to foster this to-day, as it fostered College development in earlier times. It would thus come once more into the van of progress. (5) If asked therefore to choose between (a) and (b) I should prefer (b). In that case, so long as the Government Colleges still remained entirely under State 369

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control, the only change that would be needed would be to attach pay, etc., to each College post, and recruit for the post itself. Those on ‘Service’ pay might have the option of continuing as they were, or of changing to ‘Staff’ pay. Gradually the ‘Staff’ pay system would become universal, as old ‘Service’ claims died out. Then, if the Government Colleges were at last ‘nationalised,’ there would be no cumbrous ‘Service’ conditions to overcome. This then is my main proposition: Either.—The creation of a ‘University Service’ and the abolition of the distinction of ‘Imperial’ and ‘Provincial’ in this sphere; Or.—The abolition of the present ‘Service’ conditions altogether in Government University appointments. Of the two alternatives I prefer the latter, as more in keeping with the trend of modern University life in India. (6) I regard this University question as by far the most important which the Commission has to settle with regard to Education. In spite of the most lavish expenditure of State money (it is computed, for instance, that a student in a Government College costs the State sixteen times as much as a student in a State-aided College) the Government Colleges are now keeping in touch with the new spirit of the age. The men who are being recruited are, with certain noable exceptions, markedly inferior to those who came out in the past, and they have no enthusiasm for the present Service. Men of the highest ability prefer to stay at home, on a miserable pittance, as Assistant Lecturers in an English University and refuse to come out to India on treble the pay. Really first class men, Indians and English alike, are offering almost daily for educational work, on barely a living wage, in State-aided or Private Colleges; but three or four times the amount of pay will not induce them to take posts in a Government College. This state of things cannot go on much longer without a terrible disaster; for an enlightened Government cannot afford to lose touch with the progressive elements of higher education and fall back on mere wealth and past prestige.

REV. C. F. ANDREWS, called and examined. 82,921. (Chairman.) The witness said he had been for nine years on the staff of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, which had 212 students, and the Principal of which was Mr. Rudra. The staff numbered 19, eight being Europeans and the rest Indians. Before coming to India he had been about six years at Cambridge University. For some time he was engaged in Mission work in East London, and then went back to take up education work at Pembroke College. Outside St. Stephen’s College he had had no experience of educational work in India except that gained from a little University work and inspection work. He had only actually visited officially one College, but he had seen a great many colleges in India privately. St. Stephen’s College was a Missionary College receiving a grant-in-aid from the State, the grant being given on account of efficiency and the College having a free hand in its use. 82,922. The witness said his main position was that the Inspectorate in the Educational Services should be separate from the Professoriate. Most of his remarks 370

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in the written statement dealt with the Professorial side, which was the only side he was acquainted with. His scheme was to abolish the present system altogether and to recruit to particular posts on contract terms. The post might carry pensions according to length of service. The scheme was practically that which existed now outside Government Colleges. The staff at St. Stephen’s College was probably more permanent than the staff of most colleges, and quite as permanent as a Government college staff, but it might be that in some outside Colleges many officers would not stay to qualify for pension. The witness attached some importance to keeping a man on as Professor, as his experience was extremely valuable, but he also attached importance to the infusion of new elements into the College. Under a system of recruitment for post rather than for a service there would be much greater elasticity than at present. 82,923. The witness objected very strongly to the present system of cold weather Professorships, because there was a danger that in the long run it would prevent the recruitment of really good men who might rise to posts that were open to them, and it closed the posts to men who were already in the country. As a temporary measure it might have a certain value, but educationally it was bad. The system he proposed could be established in a Government College as the Universities expanded and as University teaching reached a higher level. A free atmosphere of competition on the whole was a stimulus to education greater than that obtained by bringing a man out who gradually rose from one scale of pay to another without being free to choose his own post. It was certainly in the interests of the College to put a man into a post for which he was trained, and naturally if he had not the qualifications he would not obtain a post. The fact that each post in a College required more and more a specialised training was a partial result of the advance of education and would encourage men to specialise. At present there was no very strong spur to a man to gain higher educational qualities. If the posts were all open to free competition a man who wished to compete would make himself educationally efficient by specialising in his spare time and vacations. The whole of the Professorial chairs should be open to competition. It was quite true that even under the present system men could not get into a College unless they had qualified, but there was a danger of stagnation which would be avoided by a freer atmosphere of competition. Now there was a danger of Government Colleges getting out of the living current of public life and of education becoming stagnant. 82,924. He could not conceive of a Government College being in the position of St. Stephen’s College in which eight European Professors were under an Indian Principal. 82,925. There were a number of ways in which Government Colleges were falling behind, though they were struggling very hard. A great deal of money was being put into them to keep them up to the level of the best private Colleges, but they had not the living spirit of the private Colleges. A College like Fergusson College in Poona was a living College compared with a Government College, which gradually became formal. He hoped by free competition to bring the Government Colleges into the flow of the tide rather than into a back-water. 371

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82,926. The witness said he did not consider an Indian Principal was an absolute necessity, but there ought to be the possibility of such a Principal of every College. As far as he knew, at present there was not even the possibility of an Indian Principal being appointed in any Government College. Dr. J. C. Bose of Calcutta was a most distinguished man, but he did not think he would ever be allowed, under any circumstances, to become Principal of a Government College. He did not know whether there was any legal obstacle, but he did not think there had ever been an Indian Principal. He did not attach importance to the maintenance of a European element as such in the College staff. His own experience showed him that very often an Indian was able to give the Western idea of education better than an Englishman, just as in England very often an Englishman was able to teach French better than a Frenchman. 82,927. The witness admitted that those who came to the Missionary Colleges were in rather a different category from those who entered the Education Service, as they were manned by men who were inspired with the idea of a great Missionary purpose; but apart from Missionary methods the free spirit and atmosphere of a Mission or private college was an attraction, which men, generally speaking, did not find in a Government College. They were not under the conditions of a definite service and were able to change their posts or go elsewhere. He would much rather have high qualities in individuals than a very compli [Illegible Text] For education to attain a high [Illegible Text] [Illegible Text] be, to a great extent, dependent upon the personality of educators and their living spirit. The tendency of a service was rather to formalise. 82,928. (Sir Murray Hammick.) The witness admitted he had heard of cases of men who had come out into private Colleges and afterwards endeavoured to get into Government service. He did not for a moment say that men were happier in private Colleges. There were always men in private Colleges who were ready to apply for appointments in Government Colleges, but he thought there were a great number of men who were not anxious to get into Government employ. 82,929. It was not his proposal to abolish Government Colleges altogether, but to nationalise them. The College should remain and grow as a college, but it should come more and more under other control than that of Government. The Government should look forward to the time when Government Colleges would no longer exist as such, but become local Colleges supported by local subscriptions and governed by local comittees, and in every sense expressing the spirit of the place. As to the means by which this could be brought about, he did not wish to go into detail but simply to make his main proposition that recruitment should be for posts rather than for a Service. That was one step forward to nationalisation. The new-comers would not necessarily be Government officers. They would probably be Government officers as long as Government paid them, but as the College gradually became more and more self-supporting, and Government paid less and the locality more, each of the posts would come more and more under the control of those who were supporting the College. He asked the Commission to recommend the abolishing of the Service because he believed that would lead on to what he ultimately wished for. 372

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82,930. With regard to the remark in the written statement that a student in a Government College costs the Government sixteen times as much as a student in a State-aided College, the witness said that had been told him by the Principal of one of the leading Colleges in the Punjab, but he could not give any statistics to support the statement. 82,931. The remark in the written statement that the men now being recruited were, with certain exceptions, markedly inferior to those who came out in the past, was, the witness said, based on his own personal knowledge of Government Educational officers; it referred entirely to Northern India, and not to the South. He had been looking at the qualifications in the last three or four years of each man who had come out into the Service, and he thought if they were compared with those of the men who came out ten years ago it would be found that the statement was not much of an exaggeration, if any. He did not agree that the men who were now coming out were quite suitable for the positions they held; he thought there was a distinct decline in Northern India. He had been told that it was the easiest possible thing to get the very highest men to come as Assistant Lecturers to the Universities in England in posts which might lead on to Professorships at £150 a year and they would go on for years at that rate and yet those men would not come out to India. 82,932. (Mr. Abdur Rahim.) The witness said Mr. Rudra had been Principal of St. Stephen’s College for about eight years, and the whole of the administrative work had been done by him very satisfactorily. Both the Principal and the Vice-Principal were Indians and did the whole of the administrative work of the College. The fact of an Indian being at the head of a College assisted to bring the whole staff more into harmony with the students. The relations between the Professors and the students in Missionary and private Colleges stood on a different footing from those in Government Colleges, and he believed the unsatisfactory relationships in Government Colleges were due chiefly to the present division into the Imperial and Provincial Services. Students recognised the injustice of cases like Mr. J. C. Bose and others. Where there was division or grievance amongst a staff, that division or grievance would be found amongst students also. The unity of a staff was the most vital element in the unity of the College, and that was one of his very strongest objections to the division of the Service into inferior and superior branches. He could not understand how it had gone on so long. 82,933. (Mr. Macdonald.) The witness said that when he was in England last year he found the Indian Educational Service was looked down upon at Cambridge University, where it was said that it had not the standing that it used to have. He had heard that it was considered no very great educational honour to be a Professor at an Indian University now, and that appeared to be the general feeling, with certain great exceptions. Under the present circumstances of University and College education in India there was nothing, except Missionary enthusiam, to bring a good man to India. Recently he had been anxious to obtain a first-rate man for the Educational Service, a man who was well versed in games and in every way suited for educational work. He wrote and made the suggestion and 373

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received a letter from the young man saying that he had been strongly advised not to join the Service by one of the very highest officers in the Punjab and one of the reasons put forward was that it was inadvisable to mix with the students. That state of things would not be changed so long as the body of Professors formed a service. He knew of no University or College in the whole world based on the system adopted in Indian Government Universities and Colleges. 82,934. With reference to the scheme he had put forward he failed to see any difference between it and the ordinary operations of English Colleges and Scotch Colleges. His point was that the College itself should be a self-supporting body ultimately, and that the Government grants should not be given in the form of payment for certain chairs, but should be spent by the University or College authorities as was done in the ordinary English Universities and Colleges. When a chair was vacant the appointment should not be made by a Director of Public Instruction or a Local Government, but by a qualified Senate or committee belonging to the College. From that, in the course of time, further transformation would take place in the natural way. 82,935. (Mr. Fisher.) With regard to the qualities required in a Professor of an Indian College, the witness said that the work being more or less analogous to English Public School work he wanted the Public Schoolmaster type of man, but the University Professor type was also required. The standard today was higher than when he first came out and was rising. The higher stages of education, such as M.A. classes, were largely growing, and he believed there were over one thousand M.A. students in Calcutta at the present time. The qualities of a good public Schoolmaster were mostly required in the first two Intermediate classes, and in the higher classes there was every chance for a man with University qualifications making a very deep impression on the students and also himself rising to University Professorships. University Professorships were now coming in like a flood, and there would be a very large number in the course of the next ten years. His idea was to make these posts the goal of the Professoriate. For a senior Mathematical post in a University he should require in the applicant, first, the highest University qualifications, and secondly, character, sympathy, athletics, and the power of mixing with students. For the post of teacher of English in the Intermediate classes of the first and second year he should put, first, character, sympathy, athletics, and the power of mixing with students; and the higher academic qualifications second. Every College trying to work up a decent standard was specialising far more than in the past, and the endeavour was being made as much as possible to make the teachers in the Intermediate classes specialise in that direction and teachers in the B.A. classes to be specialists in their own work. In other words, the College posts were gradually grouping themselves into two groups, a more advanced and a less advanced, and the F.A., as far as he could see, would always remain until the age of admission had advanced to the public school stage. 82,936. He was not prepared at present to recommend that appointment to chairs should be by Senates of the existing Universities; ultimately he should look forward to their being appointed by a College body itself under certain powers 374

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of veto. His ultimate idea was a University largely supported by local funds and to some extent controlled by the community, somewhat on the analogy of a civic University in London. One College at Lahore was entirely supported by the enthusiasm of a religious community, and there were colleges supported by the enthusiasm of a local community, of which he thought the Agra College was an example. He hoped, also, that the Government College at Lahore would evoke the enthusiasm of the Province and especially of the city in which it was placed. He also hoped civic enthusiasm would be shown for the University. He wished the Government to take up the University stage, and work wholly in that direction, as it did so splendidly in connection with the College stage fifty years ago. The Government ought to be the pioneer in University progress, leaving College progress more and more in the hands of the people. He did not think there was any chance of University affairs at present being under civic control, but the time was ripe for civic control of Colleges. 82,937. (Mr. Sly.) The witness said he had not had experience of the inside teaching in other Colleges, but he had a good deal of knowledge of the staff and of the ideals of private colleges. His ultimate aim was to free Colleges from Government control and to make Government the pioneer of University progress, provide funds to allow the Universities to expand and create posts. As Government created model colleges fifty years ago, so he hoped it would create free Universities in the future. 82,938. The witness admitted that freedom of Government control over Colleges depended on secondary education being good; if that was on the right lines it might be assumed that College education would continue on right lines. He had considered the effect of the present condition of secondary education on his proposals, but he did not see its bearing on the subject. If statistics showed that the Government Colleges were substantially more successful in the percentage of students that took degrees than private Colleges that fact might slightly modify the criticism he had made of Government Colleges, but he thought the figures would probably be the other way. His own experience in the Punjab was that a very large number of University scholarships, to take one point, came from private Colleges. 82,939. With regard to the interchange of Professors and Inspectors, the witness said he had known of cases of Professors who told him they desired to go into the Inspectorate line. 82,940. The witness said that in computing the cost of a student in a private College and a Government College he would accept the statistics given in the “Quinquennial Review of Education.” His own figures only dealt with the cost to the Stage not the cost of the whole education. One of the greatest Colleges in Lahore at one time was only getting a grant from the Stage sufficient to pay one Junior Professor in the College. Under his policy Government, when it gave up the Colleges, would very largely reduce its expenditure and throw the burden on local contributions. 82,941. (Mr. Gokhale.) The witness said that he had no experience of any difficulties ever having arisen from European Professors working under an Indian 375

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Principal. The spectacle of Englishmen loyally working under an Indian Principal naturally gave the College a certain advantage over Colleges where Englishmen occupied a position of superiority and Indians a position of inferiority. He thought the students liked the position of Europeans working under an Indian and respected it; and it made them happier. There was also a school attached to St. Stephen’s College, the head of the school being an Indian, and the teachers under him Europeans, and no friction of any kind occurred. 82,942. He had met Indians who had imbibed the Western spirit as much as it was desirable they should do; he did not want Indians to be Anglicised altogether, but to imbibe whatever was best in the West and apply that best to Eastern conditions. For that purpose he thought an Indian who had imbibed the Western spirit would have certain advantages over an Englishman to whom the East was more or less new, as he would be able to interpret the West to Indians better than a European, other things being equal. In a College the staff and students ought to be united in harmony and sympathy, for the College to do its best work. If there were any irritating distinctions, or too much thought was directed towards pay and prospect, and the students did not feel that the Professors sympathised with their progress, the work was seriously hampered. 82,943. The witness believed the difficulties in the way of English Professors exercising the same influence as they used to do were increasing every year. It would not now do for European Professors merely to take part in sports; it was necessary for the students to feel that their best interests were the first consideration. 82,944. The great evil at present was the division into Provincial and Imperial Services, but there would be a still further advantage if the Service itself was abolished in the University. 82,945. If that disadvantage was taken away from the Government Colleges they would do better work than they were doing to-day. 82,946. (Mr. Chaubal.) The witness said civic enthusiasm was not sufficiently advanced to enable Colleges in the near future to be self-supporting, but that enthusiasm would grow every year. He could imagine that Government was occasionally asked to take over civic Colleges on account of communities wishing to get rid of the burden owing to the weakness of civic patriotism. 82,947. (Sir Theodore Morison.) The witness admitted that civic patriotism had shown itself rather weak. He instanced the Agra and Bareilly Colleges as Government Colleges which were handed over to a municipal body of trustees, but did not know sufficient about them to say whether they were encouraging examples. The principle, however, was right. It was much more difficult in India to encourage a civic spirit than a religious or sectarian spirit, but the civic spirit was growing and if encouraged by Government would grow still further. Because up to the present Indian self-government had not been a success, that was no reason why it should be abolished. He had not gone into the method by which Government Colleges might be nationalised, because he did not think that came under the present enquiry. He pleaded for nationalisation as a policy but could not go into details as to how it should be carried out. 376

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82,948. (Lord Ronaldshay.) The witness said, other things being equal an Indian Professor who had acquired the Western spirit would probably be more successful in instructing Indian students than an English Professor; but he did not deduce from that that St. Stephen’s College would be a more efficient educational institution if for the present eight European Professors eight Indian Professors were substituted. He did not, however, contemplate the eight European Professors remaining there in perpetuity. At present the College required what European Professors only could give, for example, athletics. The European element was very necessary if the right Europeans were obtained. 82,949. With regard to qualified English Professors coming out to India imbued with a zeal for educational work, the witness said he knew of a certain Professor who had definitely given up a Government College in order to take service with a private college on a mere pittance, because he felt he had more freedom for selfexpression. There were men with a sympathy for the country apart from missionary or religious zeal. The observation in the written statement that really first-class men, English and Indians, were offering themselves almost daily for educational work in India in the case of State-aided and private colleges, men who would not come out into Government service, might be taken almost literally. If the men in Government colleges had more prospects and a freer choice in their career and, in the long run, of a University professorship, it would tend to bring back again a higher scholastic qualification. 82,950. (Mr. Crosse.) The witness said he would qualify his statement that the Government colleges were in a backwater by saying that on certain sides they were going forward, as for instance the technical and mechanical side and actual equipment, but on the side of educational life and spirit the remark was true of the Government College at Lahore. The Government college had led the way in certain matters, but in others had fallen behind. There were many Professors who had definitely stated they were dissatisfied with their service owing to their loss of freedom. He had constantly heard the Educational Service complained of by officers, and he himself felt that the Service was not what it ought to be. (The witness withdrew.)

At Delhi, Friday, 28th November, 1913. PRESENT: THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD ISLINGTON, G.O.M.G., D.S.O. (Chairman). THE EARL OF RONALDSHAY, M.P.. SIR MURRAY HAMMICK, K.C.S.I., C.I.E. SIR THEODORE MORISON, K.C.I.E. SIR VALENTINE CHIROL. MAHADEV BHASKAR CHAUBAL, ESQ., C.S.I.

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ABDUR RAHIM, ESQ. WALTER CULLEY MADGE, ESQ., C.I.E. FRANK GEORGE SLY, ESQ., C.S.I. HERBERT ALBERT LAURENS FISHER, ESQ. JAMES RAMSAY MACDONALD, ESQ., M.P.

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And the following Assistant Commissioners— J. G. JENNINGS, ESQ., M.A., Indian Educational Service, lately Principal, Muir Central College. M. CROSSE, ESQ., M.A., M.SC., Inspector of Schools, Punjab. KHAN BAHADUR MAULVI UMAR-UD-DIN, Inspector of Schools, Rawalpindi Division. M. S. D. BUTLER, ESQ., C.V.O., C.I.E. (Joint Secretary)

AFTAB AHMAD KHAN, ESQ., B.L., Trustee of the Aligarh College. Written Statement relating to the Educational Service. 82,951. I am asked to express my opinion on the present system and condition of the Educational Service in India. I may say that I am not much acquainted with the technical part of the subject and can submit my views only as regards the general principles which underlie the system and the educational interests which it is meant to secure. (2) The Educational Services of the country, as they exist at present, are classified under the following two main heads:—(a) The Superior Educational Service, and (b) The Subordinate Educational Service. The Superior Service is said to consist of two classes—(i) The Indian Educational Service and (ii) The Provincial Educational Service; and the Subordinate Service consists of (i) The Subordinate Educational Service and (ii) The Lower Subordinate Educational Service. 82,952. (VII.b) The working of the existing system of division of services into Imperial and Provincial.—The first point which deserves consideration is the question as to whether the division of the Superior Service into (a) the Indian Educational Service, and (b) the Provincial Educational Service is sound or necessary. In my opinion the division is neither sound nor necessary. In a Despatch dated the 6th January 1905 the Secretary of State for India has explained that “The Provincial Service was intended to represent side by side with the Indian Educational Service, the highest class of Employment open to natives of India. Both of these branches, that recruited in England and that recruited in India, together form the Superior Service of the Education Department, the difference between them being not in status or duties but in the conditions of employment as regards pay, leave, and service for pension. Thus the only reason which is given for maintaining this division is the difference in the conditions of employment of these two classes of officers as regards pay, &c., while there is said to be no difference in the status they possess or the duties they perform. It is thus assumed that the difference in the conditions of employment as regards pay &c., does not effect the status and position of the Members of either Service. I am, however, unable to appreciate the force of this reasoning. In my opinion those officers who are appointed by the Secretary of State on higher pay and better conditions must occupy, and do occupy higher and better position than those who are appointed by Local Governments on less pay and on conditions not equally favourable. It is nothing but a fiction to hold

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that men employed on different terms can ever have the same status, or form one service on sound lines. To my mind the real reason of this arrangement appears to be the idea that the services of suitable Europeans cannot be secured without the offer of better terms than those which can attract suitable Indians for the same work. But considering the class of men we require for the Superior Service the idea that the services of suitable Indians can be secured on cheaper terms is not well founded. The fact is that Indians of real ability prefer other occupations and professions which are more paying and attractive than the Educational Service, and I am sure that unless sufficient and high remuneration is offered Indians of real promise will not be attracted towards Educational work. Thus both with a view to raise their status as well as to attract Indians of real ability to this service it is essential that there should be no difference in the conditions of employment of Europeans and Indians who are to form the Superior Service of this country. Therefore the division of the Superior Service into the two classes should be abolished, and they should both form one service in the real sense of the term. SUPERIOR SERVICE. 82,953. As regards the Superior Service the following points deserve special consideration:— (i) Whether the present system of recruitment is satisfactory. (ii) Whether any period of probation is desirable. (iii) Whether the present scale of pay is sufficient to attract men of such qualifications as are required in the interest of education in this country. (iv) Whether the conditions as regards pension are satisfactory. (v) Whether this service should remain practically confined to Europeans as has been the case so far. 82,954. (I.) Method of recruitment.—In my opinion the present system of recruitment is not quite satisfactory and needs revision and improvement. At present all appointments for this service are made by the Secretary of State for India, but I do not know the procedure which is followed in making selection of suitable candidates. My suggestions in this connection are as follows:— (i) All Principals and Professors of Colleges, Inspectors of Colleges and Schools, and Headmasters of Model High Schools should belong to this service. (ii) No one should be appointed to this service who has not obtained First or a good Second Class in honours in any subject at any of the English Universities, preferably Oxford and Cambridge. (iii) At every English University there should be a Board with the ViceChancellor at its head for the purpose of making first selection of suitable candidates for Educational Service in India.

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(iv) The Secretary of State should select candidates out of those recommended by the above-mentioned Boards, or from among those who have already served with distinction in a College or Public School in England. (v) The Government of India should also have the power of recommending for selection by the Secretary of State the names of such candidates as possess the required qualifications and have come out to India after completing their education in Europe. 82,955. (II.) Systems of training and probation.—Candidates after the selection by the Secretary of State, should be required to continue their study in their special subject for a period of one year at Oxford or Cambridge, or with the special permission of the Secretary of State at any other University. Those who may be selected for professorial work should devote their probationary period to study and research in their special subject under the supervision of the University Professors; and those who may be selected as Inspectors or Headmasters should spend the period in the study of Theory and Practice of Education. For the period of probation the selected candidates should get an allowance of at least £200 a year. 82,956. (IV.) Conditions of salary.—As to the question of pay my opinion is that the Government should be as liberal in this matter as their funds permit. The quality of the staff is the most important question in this whole problem, and any expenditure upon its improvement is an investment in which we the people of India are virtually concerned. Any expenditure on this object should have preference on all other requirements which may be cut down to the lowest limits in order to provide sufficient means for attracting the best possible persons for this Service. I am in favour of time-scale, and would recommend that every Officer of the Superior Service should start with Rs. 500 a month, and should have the right to rise with an annual increment of Rs. 50 to Rs. 1,500 a month in twenty years. Over and above this every Principal should get an allowance of Rs. 300 a month, and in Colleges which have the residential system every senior tutor should get Rs. 200 a month and every ordinary tutor Rs. 100 a month. There should also be special allowances to be awarded to those who may distinguish themselves in any particular branch of learning as an encouragement to research and original work in the domain of knowledge. I suggest these liberal and higher scales of pay with the chief object of attracting men of higher standard of qualification and not for the Service as it recruited at present. 82,957. (VI.) Conditions of pension.—As regards the question of pension I am of opinion that an Officer of the Educational Service after a service of 25 years, should be entitled to retire on half the pay as his pension. This rule should be applicable to all branches of the Educational Service. I make this suggestion for two reasons:—(i) Because officers in this service may begin work at a later age than is usual in other Services, and (ii) to make the Service more popular. 82,958. (VIIa.) Such limitations as may exist in the employment of nonEuropeans.—As to whether the Superior Service should be practically confined 380

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to Europeans, as has been the case so far. I am of opinion that for a long time to come we do require the services of Europeans and particularly of Englishmen in the Educational Department of the country. We require their services for two objects:— (i) For teaching those branches of knowledge in which we, in India, have not attained the European standard of advancement; and (ii) For enabling our young men to come into actual and personal contact with European culture and English mode of thought, and thereby helping them in the formation of their character. It is therefore extremely important to have a sufficient number of European and British Scholars in our Educational Service. But the time has come when every encouragement should be given to Indians to qualify themselves for the Service, and those who are, or may be, qualified should be appointed to this Service without any restriction. I learn that ever since the institution of this Service only three Indians have been appointed up to this time, which is not a satisfactory state of affairs, and should not be allowed to continue any longer. PROVINCIAL SERVICE. 82,959. For the future this Service should be separate from the Superior Service and Officers such as the following should belong to Provincial Service:— (i) Assistant Profesors of Colleges. (ii) Assistant Inspectors. (iii) Headmasters of High Schools other than Model High Schools. (iv) Headmasters of Training Schools. These officers should be recruited by Local Governments, as is the case at present; and the necessary qualification for this Service should be the Degree of Master of Arts of any of the Indian Universities or Degree of Bachelor of Arts of any of the European Universities. But if any member of this Service gives proof of exceptional ability in any branch of learning he may, on the ground of approved service, be promoted to the Superior Service with full status and pay attached to that Service. As to the pay of officers belonging to the Provincial Service my opinion is that they should start with Rs. 200 a month, and should be entitled to rise, with an annual increment of Rs. 25 to Rs. 700 a month in twenty years. This will make the Service popular, and will induce many of those who now seek Deputy Collectorships and other similar posts choose educational line in preference to those which are more paying and attractive at present. SUBORDINATE SERVICE. 82,960. Then comes the question of the Subordinate Educational Service, to which the following officers may belong:— (i) Deputy Inspectors and Sub-Deputy Inspectors. 381

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(ii) The Headmasters of Anglo-Vernacular Middle Schools and Assistant Masters of High and Middle Sections of Anglo-Vernacular schools. (iii) Teachers in Training Colleges and Headmasters of Normal Schools. These officers are to be recruited by Director of Public Instruction, and the necessary qualification for this Service should be M.A. or trained B.A. of any of the Universities of India. The scale of pay should be from Rs. 60 a month and with an annual increment of Rs. 12 it should rise to Rs. 300 a month in twenty years. But any officer who gives proof of exceptional ability may be promoted to the Provincial Service with the full status and pay attached to that Service. THE LOWER SUBORDINATE SERVICE. 82,961. This part of the subject practically covers the field of Primary education, and may be considered under the following heads:— (i) Qualification of teachers. (ii) Salary of teachers. (iii) Pensions or bonus for teachers. (iv) Status. Qualification of teachers.—The passing of the Vernacular Final Examination and the Normal School course should be the necessary qualification for this Service as is the case at present. This whole subject has been recently considered in the United Provinces by the Committee on Primary Education and the matter is now under the consideration of the Local Government. Salary of teachers.—As regards the salary of teachers my suggestion is as follows:— (i) That in every Vernacular Primary School the minimum pay should be Rs. 12 a month. (ii) That the minimum salary of a trained teacher in Vernacular Primary School should be Rs. 15 a month. (iii) That teachers who are likely to spend their lives in Upper Primary Schools should rise to the maximum salary of Rs. 30 a month; and those who are likely to spend their lives in Town Schools should rise to Rs. 50 a month. The scale of pay should be so arranged that the above-mentioned maximum salaries may be attainable in twenty years. Pensions or bonus for teachers.—So far as this Service is concerned the grant of bonus is proferred to pension, and I may suggest that every officer of the Service should contribute one anna a month in the rupee and an equal contribution should be made by the Government or the District or Municipal Board towards the Bonus Fund of every such officer. Status of teachers.—So far as teachers of Primary Schools are concerned the question of status is very important and deserves special consideration. It is obvious that apart from educational qualification the social position and status of the Teacher plays an important part in the success of an Educational system, and 382

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hence the question of the status of teachers is of special significance and deserves particular consideration. In former days the Maulvi of a Maktab or the Pandit of a Patshala used to command much more respect than the teachers of the Primary Schools of the present day. It was so not only because they were better paid, but chiefly because they were respected by the elders of their pupils. The Maulvi and the Pandit derived their importance from their position as Imam and Spiritual Adviser of the people. Modern pedagogues in the existing Educational system of the country do not enjoy the same confidence and respect as did their predecessors. Moreover it is a matter of common knowledge that the teacher in a village school does not receive proper treatment at the hands of Government officials. Thus the small salary and contemptuous treatment combine to lower his status in the eyes of the general public, and it is now time that something should be done to make up for all these defects so that men of better social position may be induced to seek this service. In my opinion the following methods should be adopted to make the teaching line more attractive and honourable:— (a) Good service of successful teachers should be recognised on some occasion of public importance in some suitable manner, such as the award of certificates of good work by the Collector of a District on the occasion of some Durbar or public function. (b) Occasional promotion and transfer of successful teachers to other suitable posts under the district of Municipal Board or the Collector of District, carrying better pay and prospects. (c) The District Officer should be directed to treat the school teachers with courtesy and due consideration, and the Inspecting Officers of the Department should be required to pay a special regard to the status and position of the teachers and should treat them with due respect in the presence of their pupils such as to offer them chair and to address them in courteous language. DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. 82,962. So far I have said nothing about the post of the Director of Public Instruction which is the most important post in the whole Service. Every one will agree that it should always be filled by some Educationist who has had ample experience of educational work in this country, but in my opinion the time has come when a proper estimate should be made of the extent and importance of the work which the head of the Educational Department of a Province has to do in this country. The problem of education is so vast and intricate, and the interests which it comprehends are so diverse and peculiar that it is too much to expect that any European head of the Department can do the work successfully or can devote his attention to important educational questions without sufficient and proper help. I may mention here some of those important questions which need special attention and which under the present circumstances are not properly looked after:—

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(i) Education of the masses, (ii) education of women, and (iii) Muhammadan education. My suggestion is that there should be an officer belonging to the Superior Service in charge of each of these educational interests, and whose duty should be to make a special study of his branch and help the Director in all matters connected with that branch. The importance of promoting the cause of Mass Education and of the education of women is recognised by everyone, and I need say no more about them on this occasion. But the question of Muhammadan Education requires some explanation. It is needless to remark that the question of education is of the utmost importance for Muhammadans whose very existence as a living people depends upon in its proper solution. They are, so to say, in the position of an invalid for whose recovery special treatment is necessary, but so far their special requirements in the matter of education have not received the attention which they need and deserve. This has been mainly due to the fact that the question has not been properly represented before the authorities up to this time. My suggestion therefore is that a Muhammadan officer, belonging to the Superior Service, should be appointed whose chief duty should be to study the educational needs of the Muhammadans of the Province and should act as Educational Secretary to the Director of Public Institution in all matters connected with the question of their education in that Province. For this purpose this Muhammadan officer should have power to inspect all educational institutions in the Province and should be required to pay special attention to the condition of Muhammadan institutions which are now coming into existence in all parts of the country, and which badly need official support. I wish this officer to be a Muhammadan for the following reasons:— (i) Experience has shown, as it is only natural, that no non-Muhammadan officer can be in a position to understand the feelings and requirements of Muhammadans to the same extent as a Muhammadan can. (ii) No non-Muhammadan, naturally, can be expected to have the same enthusiasm and zeal which in our own present condition we need so badly, in the cause of Muhammadan education as a Muhammadan himself. (iii) The appointment of a Muhammadan officer in this position will give confidence and will be the means of removing many complaints real and otherwise. I am therefore of opinion that such important educational questions as mentioned above should be entrusted to separate officers who should be in the staff of the Director and should act as his Secretaries in all matters connected with their respective branches.

MR. AFTAB AHMAD KHAN called and examined. 82,963. (Chairman.) The witness said he had been a member of the Legislative Council for the United Provinces. He had been trustee of the Aligarh College since 1897, and had been Fellow of the Allahabad University for some years. He

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was Honorary Fellow at the present time. He had been Joint Secretary of the AllMuhammadan Educational Conference since 1906. 82,964. His general contention was that the Provincial Education Service had drifted into an unduly subordinate position. According to the present system, the Service consisted of two divisions—the Indian Educational Service and the Provincial Educational Service—and members of both Services were supposed to constitute one Service without any distinction. But there was a differentiation, and his idea was to secure suitable Indians in India to form part of the superior Service. Under the present circumstances, however, and on the present terms, good Indians were not attracted to the Service. He would like to see the Department re-organised on the basis of actual work to be done. 82,965. The witness thought that after the re-organisation and the improvement of the Service, better men would be obtained, and in that case they would be entitled to be called ‘Professors.’ He knew that in Cambridge the word “Professor” was used differently, but in India he thought all the members of the superior Service, who did the work of Professors, should be called Professors. In some Provinces the designation was used for special officers, and in other Provinces it was applied more or less broadcast. There should be more uniformity of practice in this respect. 82,966. The witness felt the importance of maintaining a European proportion in the Educational Department. It was as important to keep that European proportion in the professorial as in the administrative branch. The proportion should be about one-half, and he would only make it contingent upon there being men available. Steps should be taken to procure men, and opportunities and inducements should be offered to Indians, so that there might be no deficiency of recruits. In the present circumstances men would never be attracted to the Service. 82,967. Any member of the Provincial Service who proved himself an exceptional man should have the right to be promoted to the superior Service, with all the status and pay which that Service involved. The witness would regard that as an exceptional form of recruitment to the superior Service, as distinct from direct recruitment. 82,968. Asked whether it should be left to the Secretary of State to nominate Indians who had a European degree, the witness said his suggestion was that the Universities of England, preferably Oxford and Cambridge, should form a Board, with the Vice-Chancellors at their head, to select a certain number of candidates for the superior Service, and the Secretary of State should select recruits out of those men for the Service. His object in making that proposal was to secure that the Universities, out of regard for their reputations, would take good care to select men who were really fit for the Service. Also, they were in a much better position to know what sort of men were required for the Service than outsiders. 82,969. The witness was not of opinion that the professorial should be separated entirely from the administrative branch. He would have both branches interchangeable, as at present, because in the course of time it might turn out that a man was better fitted for a professorship than headmastership, or vice versa.

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82,970. He also made the suggestion that before men selected for professorial work in India came out, they should work during their probationary period under the University Professors, and complete their study in their special branch; and that those who were selected for headmasterships and inspectorships should have time to study the theory and practice of education, so that they might be better fitted to perform their work in India. He was not in favour of separating the Service from the very beginning. He thought on the whole it would be better to leave the matter to the discretion of the authorities. 82,971. He would bring the post of Deputy Inspector, now in the Subordinate Service, up to the Provincial Service. 82,972. The witness suggested that the Director of Public Instruction should be relieved by the appointment of three staff officers, who should deal respectively with the masses, women, and Muhammadans. His idea was that one man without adequate assistance and well-informed assistants could not look after the whole of the education of a Province. As to the question of Muhammadan education, his opinion was that it had not received the amount of attention which it ought to have received by the authorities. The Director of Public Instruction could not be expected to give the subject that special attention which those who were interested in Muhammadan education thought it ought to receive. For instance, taking the United Provinces, Muhammadans composed 14 per cent. of the population. If the history of education in the Province was studied, it would be found that whenever any proposals where made, either by the Educational Commission or by the Supreme Government, and the Local Governments were asked to go into the question of the improvement of Muhammadan education, the Local Governments always said that the condition of Muhammadan education was satisfactory, on the ground that Muhammadans composed only 14 per cent. of the population. If the result of the examinations showed that the percentage of Muhammadan passes came up to 14 per cent. they were satisfied. If, however, there had been any Muhammadan officer to represent to the Director the views of those interested in Muhammadan education, he could have said that the United Provinces was a Province inhabited by a large number of very ancient and old Muhammadan families. In the total population there might be 14 per cent. Muhammadans, but if the population of respectable and ancient Muhammadan families in the United Provinces was taken, it would be found that it came to 40 per cent. 82,973. There was a complaint upon the part of Muhammadans that Muhammadan students were not admitted in sufficient numbers into Government schools, that they did not get a sufficient remission of fees, and that here was not a sufficient number of Muhammadan teachers. Then again, Muhammadan schools needed official help in the form of recognition, and of grants-in-aid. In many ways the question of Muhammadan education ought to receive a great deal of consideration. If there was a Muhammadan Secretary with the Director, it would be his duty to study the question, and lay the facts before the Director. Similarly, with regard to female Muhammadan education, which was an extremely delicate subject, the Director of Public Instruction could not understand that problem in 386

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all its details as a Muhammadan could. The witness agreed that nominally all the work he had just been suggesting was work that should be carried out by the existing Inspector, but such an officer could only do it for his own particular area. What he really suggested was an officer with a free run over the whole Province, and with power to report to the Director of Public Instruction. He suggested that such a proposal should be applicable throughout India. Muhammadan education was in an extremely backward state throughout the country. There was an insufficiency of schools, and those which existed were not getting the necessary care to bring them up to the standard of other communities. 82,974. (Lord Ronaldshay.) The witness said he would make it a necessary qualification that no Indian should be appointed to the Superior Service unless he had been educated at one of the English Universities, preferably Oxford or Cambridge. 82,975. With regard to the question whether he thought it desirable that the people of India should be led to suppose that they could train themselves for the superior posts in their own country, and that they must go to Europe to get an adequate University training, the witness said at present such was the case, and would be for some time to come, and he thought it absolutely necessary. He did not include in that category individual cases of officers, who should be promoted direct, without being compelled to go to England. 82,976. With regard to whether Indians who went to Europe at the student age were likely to acquire a good many of the vices of the West, and lose some of their own virtues, the witness said that that depended on the individual. That was a general question, and not an educational one. 82,977. Generally speaking, he did not think an Indian would gain more by being trained in his own country during his student days, and then going to Europe later on for study leave, after serving his Department for a few years. He thought before a man entered the Service he should qualify himself by going to Europe. If there were similar institutions to Oxford and Cambridge in India, of course there would be no need for an Indian to go out of the country, but there were no such institutions. In Aligarh the authorities were trying to establish a University on the model of a European University, and when they had done so, then it would be a question whether it would be necessary for an Indian to go to Europe at all. 82,978. He would be disposed to say that a considerable expenditure on the part of Government with a view to attracting either European or Indian Professors of the highest calibre to India, would be entirely justified in the eyes of the Indian community. 82,979. (Sir Theodore Morison.) The reason why Muhammadans generally had not availed themselves of the ordinary facilities which were open to the general public in the Government institutions, was because they thought they had not sufficient representation in the Service. 82,980. He did not think there was any considerable Muhammadan objection at the present day to entering Government schools on the ground of religion. 387

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82,981. The witness said he attached great importance to the residential side of a college. He had suggested that the senior tutor should be given an allowance of Rs. 200 a month, and ordinary tutors Rs. 100 a month, because their work was not very pleasant, and there must be some special inducement for good men to carry it on. Such work ought most certainly to be encouraged in the educational system of the country. 82,982. With regard to his suggestion that there should be a very considerable increase in salaries in Government colleges, the witness said he had not looked to any other interest in the matter except that of education. He did not care whether other interests were affected by his proposal. India ought to get the best education possible. The State-aided colleges would be affected by his proposal, because in a few years Indians of such education would be produced that they would be available for State-aided institutions. 82,983. As to the status of teachers, and the witness’s recommendations thereon, if better men for the superior Service, both Europeans and Indians, were obtained, he thought they would look after themselves, and he thought their learning would command the necessary respect. The Subordinate Service certainly needed something done for it. He also said that, if there was someone with the authorities to represent the general feeling of the people with regard to the giving of titles, better results would accrue. The title of Shams-ul-ulama was very often given to those who really never ought to hold it, but who received it because they commanded the favour of some one in authority. 82,984. He did not agree that special efforts on the part of Government had been made to help Muhammadans in different parts of India, and that the results had generally been discouraging. The real effort was made, so far as the Government was concerned, after the Education Commission of 1882. That Commission made recommendations which really went to the root of the matter. The Government of India accepted certain recommendations, which were sent on to the Local Governments, but they were not properly carried out, simply because there was no one to represent the matter in its proper light. For instance, one of the most important recommendations of the Commission, which was accepted by the Government of India, was that in the Annual Educational Report, there should be a special chapter devoted to the question of Muhammadan education, in which should be shown in detail what particular steps had been taken to promote and improve Muhammadan education. If, however, the report of the United Provinces was looked at, it would be found that the subject was generally dealt with in a few lines. 82,985. With regard to the suggestion that in those parts of India where the Muhammadans had relied most on their own exertions the state of Muhammadan education was least unsatisfactory, whilst it was most unsatisfactory where it had received a great measure of assistance from Government, the witness said that depended upon the character of the people, the history, and the position of the particular section of the community in a Province. 82,986. (Mr. Chaubal.) When he said Muhammadans were not admitted in sufficient numbers in Government schools, he meant that it was because the school 388

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could only accommodate a certain number of people. He could quote no instances of a certain class being admitted to schools in preference to another, but it was said that there was some partiality shown. It was true that pupils obtained admission into the secondary school standards from the lower standards, and there was an examination held from which a certain number were admitted into the higher standards. 82,987. He did not know of any instances of any suggestions made by the present Muhammadan inspectors of divisions, which had not been considered or been treated fairly by the Government. 82,988. With regard to his suggestions that all Indians should go to Europe for training prior to entering the superior service, the witness said that in special cases men might go to England after serving four or five years in the service, instead of going out raw from college. 82,989. He did not approve at all of a separate institution the object of which would be to look after the conduct and behaviour of young Indians in England. He thought they should be kept within the influence of good English society. 82,990. (Mr. Sly.) At present in the college part of Aligarh, there was the Principal, who was an Indian, six European professors, and four Indian professors, of whom two had European qualifications. In the school, there was the headmaster, the assistant headmaster, who were Europeans, and about 20 Indian masters. The Principal was paid Rs. 1,000, and the professors were started at Rs. 400 rising to Rs. 750. The Europeans, and Indians with European qualifications, were paid exactly the same rates of salary. Indians who had not European qualifications did not receive the same scale. The Indian assistant professor was started at Rs. 100 rising to Rs. 300. 82,991. (Mr. Fisher.) At the Aligarh College a point was made of encouraging students to go to England if they were promising, and of good character. Many had gone from the college to England. The result, on the whole, had been satisfactory. Most of such students, when they returned, did not go into the Educational Service as professors, but entered the Bar. With regard to his suggested rules for the probation of candidates after selection by the Secretary of State, he did not necessarily mean it to be inferred that he assumed that all candidates would be selected just after they had taken their degree at the University; but when there was an Education Board in the University for the purpose, they should have a list of available candidates from which the Secretary of State might choose as many as he required, and those who were selected might go through the probationary term. 82,992. The witness said he would propose for his own college that a man, after being selected for the post of professor, should undergo a probationary period of study and research, arranged under the supervision of the University. 82,993. He contemplated the continuance of a reformed Provincial Service. When he used the term “Provincial” he did not necessarily mean to imply that the second grade of the Educational Service was to be exclusively recruited from the Province in question. He only used the word “Provincial” because the service 389

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would be confined to that Province, whereas the Imperial Service would be for the whole country. 82,994. (Mr. Madge.) Influential representations from Muhammadan institutions would not be as effective as an officer specially attached to the Director of Public Instruction. The former system had been in vogue for at least 40 years, and nothing satisfactory had come from it. It was true that in former years Muhammadans would not attend Government Schools because religion was not a part of the course of instruction, but he did not think that was true in many cases at the present time; the feeling had died out. 82,995. (Mr. Abdur Rahim.) It was true that he had special opportunities for studying Muhammadan education. Representations had been made on the subject of having a Muhammadan officer in the office of the Director of Public Instruction. Resolutions had been passed in the all-India Muhammadan Conference on that matter for several years past. He did not complain of unfair treatment on the part of the present officers, but there were questions specially appertaining to Muhammadan education which could be better studied if there was a responsible Muhammadan officer to keep the Director informed on the subject. Representations had undoubtedly been made by Muhammadan educational bodies, but unless there was a thoroughly informed officer in the office of Director, those representations could not be weighed and considered in an efficient manner. He was not aware of any special steps having been taken in Madras specially to encourage Muhammadan education. 82,996. With regard to Muhammadan boys being refused admission in the United Provinces, the number was very large. There were very few Muhammadan schools throughout India, and they were not so good as the Government institutions. He personally did not attach much importance to the remarks in regard to favouritism, but suspicions did exist, and in order to remove them the best plan was to have a Muhammadan in a responsible position, and then Muhammadans would have no reason to complain that their interests were not properly served. 82,997. In order to show the difference which the appointment of a Muhammadan officer made in a district, the witness quoted the following figures for a district, of which the total population was over 800,000, and of which the Muhammadans composed 775,000. These showed the number of students in primary schools and aided maktabs. In 1907–08, when there was a non-Muhammadan District Inspector, the total number of students was 8,902, of whom 5,047 were Muhammadans. In 1908–09 the total number of students had risen to 9,169, and the number of Muhammadans was 5,591. In 1909–10 the total number was 8,826, and the number of Muhammadans was 5,042. In the following three years a Muhammadan Inspector was in charge, with the result that in 1910–11 the total number of students was 9,965, of whom 6,154 were Muhammadans. In 1911–12 the total number was 12,438, of whom 7,835 were Muhammadans, and in 1912– 13 the total number was 14,402, of whom 9,836 were Muhammadans. 82,998. It was true that in Eastern Bengal there had been considerable progress made with regard to Muhammadan education. He attributed that to the special 390

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attention which had been paid to the subject after the Partition. A special conference had been called, presided over by Mr. Sharp, the Director of Public Instruction, in which all the needs of the question were studied and considered and a great number of scholarships were given. Another reason why more progress had been made in Eastern Bengal was because there was a larger number of Muhammadan Inspectors there than in any other district. 82,999. (Sir Valentine Chirol.) The witness said that if in the interests of education it was necessary, in order to avoid any feeling of jealousy, that every section of the community should have a special officer attached to the Director for the purpose of advising him as to that particular community’s needs in education, such officers should be appointed. He contended that unless and until special attention was paid in some form or another to the interests of Muhammadan education, the interests of Muhammadanism would not be promoted. A satisfactory scheme would be for an official to be selected by Government to perform the suggested work on the nomination of the Muhammadan community, and for his expenses to be defrayed by them. The officer should then work with the Director of Public Instruction in some way settled by mutual agreement between the representatives of the community and the Government. Such an official should be given the same status, the same powers, and the same position as an official secretary. 83,000. (Mr. Jennings.) With regard to the duties of tutors and specialists in Aligarh College, the duty of the tutor was to look after the residential life and discipline of the students. It was a very important duty, and there were a number of tutors in the college. The residential part of the college would not be run by specialists alone; the specialists could only deal with the educational side. College tutors and Inspectors could be made interchangeable in some cases. He thought a tutor, who was a high specialist, would carry much greater weight, and command much greater respect and admiration. (The witness withdrew.)

BABU SARADA PRASANNA DAS, M.A., Officiating Principal, Hooghly College. Written Statement1 relating to the Education Department, being a Memorandum embodying the Corporate opinion of the members of the Provincial Educational Service, Bengal.

83,567. I. It is desirable that the two branches—Provincial and Indian—of the Superior Service be amalgamated into one Service. The Resolution of the Government of India on the reorganization of the Educational Services dated the 23rd July 1896 stated in paragraph 6 that the Superior Service would consist of two branches—one including all posts to be filled by persons appointed in England, which will be called “the Indian Educational Service”; and the other, including all posts to be filled by recruitment in India, will 391

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be known as “the Provincial Educational Service.” In the course of a reply in the Imperial Council, Sir Antony MacDonnell (afterwards Lord MacDonnell), the then Home Member, was pleased to explain that there was no difference between the two Services except as regards the place of recruitment, and the same reply was afterwards practically repeated by the then Secretary of State in the House of Commons. It was this principle of equality which was virtually given effect to, in Bengal at any rate, by the provision of seven Principalships of Colleges and four Divisional Inspectorships reserved exclusively for the officers of the Provincial Service (vide Bengal Government’s letter to the Government of India—General (Education) Department No. 717, dated the 28th February 1894). In practice, however, the Provincial Service has come to be regarded by the Education Department as a subordinate Service, the newest recruit in the Indian Service being treated in many cases as senior to the most senior officer of the Provincial Service. This is probably due to the analogy to the Provincial Executive and Judicial Services, which are frankly subordinate to the Indian Civil Service, and also to the provision of acting allowances for the Provincial Educational Service officer officiating in the Indian Educational Service. The equality of the two Services was made quite obvious by the Government appointing (1) Mr. Brühl, a member of the Provincial Service, to the Principalship of the Sibpur Engineering College, which has on its staff several members of the Indian Service; (2) Mr. Duke, a member of the Indian Service, to a Professorship of the Cuttack College, the head of which is Mr. Shaw, an officer of the Provincial Service. These two appointments leave no doubt whatever as to the original intention of the Government of Indian to attach the same status to the two Services. In proposing the amalgamation of the two Services we are only advocating an organization which would give effect to the intention of the Government Resolution referred to above, without the possibility of a deviation that has arisen in practice. The great defect of the system under which the Provincial Service does not actually enjoy the same prestige as the Indian Service, in spite of the fact that several members of the former Service possess more distinguished academic qualifications and reputations, consists in this, that it supplies an object-lesson to our students in the colleges which is detrimental to the interests of sound education. For such invidious distinctions, based mainly on considerations of nationality, are calculated to weaken the students’ self-respect. It could never have been the intention of Government to introduce such a system. The distinction that obtains now between the two Services is regarded by the members of the Provincial Service with a feeling of deep disappointment. The principle which led the Government of India to recognize, in the above Resolution, the equality of the two branches of the Superior Service was mainly based on the two following considerations:— (1) The respective officers of the two Services, working side by side in colleges, have exactly similar duties assigned to them, in recognition of which under a Resolution of the Bengal Government they are uniformly styled “Professors.” 392

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Inasmuch as the Deputy Magistrates, Munsifs, and Subordinate Judges have altogether subordinate duties assigned to them, the Provincial Executive and Judicial Services are obviously differently related to the Indian Civil Service as compared with the relation which ought to subsist, and which was intended to subsist, between members of the Provincial and Indian Educational Services. (2) In the matter of academic qualifications the members of the Provincial Service have equivalent, identical, and, in some cases, even decidedly superior qualifications as compared with those of the Indian Service generally. We venture to think that the members of the Provincial Service have been, on the whole, discharging their duties as efficiently as the members of the Indian Service. II. In order to attract distinguished graduates from European Universities, Europeans should be given a higher scale of pay, though the status of Indian and European officers should be exactly the same. The one amalgamated Service should therefore consist of two classes of posts: (1) posts carrying full salary, (2) posts carrying at least 3⁄5ths or 60 per cent. of the full salary. Distinguished Indian scholars should however be appointed on full pay in India also. III. Posts of the former class will at present be held by the members of the existing Indian Educational Service, while those of the latter class will be similarly held by the members of the existing Provincial Service, subject to the following limitation:— At least one-fourth of the full-salaried posts should be reserved for Indians of distinction, whether educated in Europe or India. To the posts so reserved specially meritorious Indians who may be already in the Service but drawing pay on the lower scale should be equally eligible for appointment. These appointments should be made on the recommendation of the Local Government. IV. The present proportion of the cadre of the Indian Educational Service to the Provincial Educational Service is 1:3. This proportion should be reduced in future to 1:6, a corresponding increase being made in the number of posts carrying a lower salary. This would be in accordance with the recommendations of the last Public Services Commission. V. In the recruitment of officers, European and Indian, only men of high academic qualifications should be held eligible. VI. In the matter of special appointments, e.g., Divisional Inspectorships, Principalships of Colleges, the posts of Assistant Director and Director of Public Instruction, there should be no distinction as between Indians and Europeans, i.e., these posts should be open to all officers irrespective of appointments in India or England. VII. Seniority of officers in any particular grade should be determined by the date of appointment to that grade, and not by the actual salary drawn. VIII. The scheme of amalgamation of the two Services as they stand at present, if approved, should be worked on the following plan:— There are at present 52 posts in the Indian Educational Service and 160 posts in the Provincial Educational Service. In the case of full-salaried posts mentioned in 393

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paragraph II, the initial pay should be Rs. 500 rising to Rs. 1,000 in ten years by annual increment of Rs. 50. Out of a total of 52 posts, 32 posts should be included in this time-scale. In the case of posts with a lower salary, the initial pay should be Rs. 300 rising to Rs. 600 in ten years by annual increment of Rs. 30. Out of a total of 160 posts in the Provincial Educational Service, 100 posts should be included in the time-scale. On completing ten years’ service all the officers should be eligible for admission into a Graded Service constituted as follows:— Full Salary. Grade.

V IV III II I

Number of posts. ... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

6 6 5 2 1

Salary. Rs. 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2,000

Lower Salary. Number of posts. 18 18 15 6 3

Salary. Rs. 720 840 960 1,080 1,200

IX. Promotion from the ungraded to the graded list should be regulated chiefly by considerations of merit and not of seniority.

Supplementary Written Statement relating to the Provincial Educational Service. GENERAL REMARKS. 83,568. Importance of the work of Educational officers, and especially the responsibility resting with teachers, are admitted on all hands. Professors in Colleges have not only to train men for Public Services and for the liberal professions, but they are also responsible for imparting sound education calculated to widen the bounds of knowledge and to build up the character of their students so as to make them, in the words of His Imperial Majesty, “loyal, manly and useful citizens.” Lord Curzon, in the course of his address delivered at the annual Convocation of the Calcutta University on the 15th February, 1902, thus referred to the gravity and responsibility of those who choose the profession of teaching:—“I turn to those young men who are going to be teachers of others. I pray them to recognise the gravity and responsibility of their choice. Rightly viewed, theirs is the foremost of sciences, the noblest of professions, the most intellectual of arts. . . . . The first thing I would have you remember, therefore, is that you are not entering upon as easy or an idle profession. It is the most responsible of all.” 394

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In view of the gravity and importance of their work, only men of very high attainments and character should be selected for service in the Education Department, and the conditions of service, salary, leave and pension should be sufficiently attractive. It is therefore essential that the following general principles should be carefully observed by Government:— (1) Elimination of considerations of nationality.—In recruiting Educational officers, considerations of race or nationality should be altogether left out of account, as it is necessary to appoint the best men available, to whatever nationality they might belong. (2) Widening of the place of recruitment.—In recruiting officers for the Superior Educational Service, recruitment should not be confined to a particular province or a particular country. Best possible men, wherever available, ought to be appointed. (3) Appointment by Local Government.—Appointment to the Superior Educational Service in India should be made by the Local Government in consultation with the Director of Public Instruction and the University authorities in India. This point will be more fully explained under the head “Recruitment.” (4) Amalgamation of the Provincial Educational Service and Indian Educational Service.—The Provincial Educational Service, and the Indian Educational Service, which are only two branches of the same service, viz., the Superior Educational Service, should be amalgamated, in order that the distinction which has now arisen in practice between the two branches may be completely removed. This point, to which I attach great importance, will be dealt with more fully later on. (5) Appointment of Indians2 to the highest posts in the Education Department.— Qualified Indians (whether graduates of Indian or European Universities) should be appointed to the highest posts in the Education Department, viz., Principalships of Colleges, including the Presidency College, Divisional Inspectorships and the posts of the Assistant Director and the Director of Public Instruction. (6) Equal pay for both Indian and European officers, with compensation allowance for the latter.—The pay of the amalgamated Superior Educational Service (hereinafter called the Bengal Educational Service) should be exactly the same throughout the whole period of service for both European and Indian officers, but European officers may be given a compensation allowance, as explained in the scheme herewith submitted (Enclosure A), in order to induce men of high qualifications to serve in a country remote from their homes. (7) Personal allowances in recognition of special merit.—Personal allowances should be given to distinguished members of the Bengal Educational Service, whether European or Indian, in recognition of special merit, as explained in the scheme appended to this note (Enclosure A). Some of these personal allowances (not exceeding one-fourth of the total number) may, however, be given to officers, Indian or European, of special distinction, at the beginning of their service, if the interests of the service require that such inducements should be offered in special cases. (It is to be understood that in the case of Europeans a personal allowance, 395

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when granted, will be in addition to the usual compensation allowance.) Under this system of personal allowances distinguished officers of special merit will have every chance of getting a maximum salary of Rs. 2,000 a month, so that the Educational Service will attract best possible men, and there will be always an incentive to efficient work. (8) Some of the proposed personal allowances to be reserved for Indians.— At least one-third of the number of the proposed personal allowances should be reserved for Indian officers, in order to induce the best Indian graduates to join the Education Department by an offer of surer prospects. Apart from all general considerations, the principle of reserving a certain number of posts for Indians in a branch of the Public Service has already been recognised by the Secretary of State for India in the case of the superior branch of the Public Works Department. (9) General improvement of the pay and prospects of Educational officers.— The day and prospects of promotion of Educational officers, which compare unfavourably with those of members of other branches of the Public Service, should be substantially improved. The initial pay and the maximum pay ought to be raised, and the service should be so constituted as to ensure a steady flow of promotion. (10) Time-scale.—The pay of a member of the Bengal Educational Service, during the first ten years of service, should be regulated in accordance with a suitable time-scale to be explained later on (Enclosure A). This is already the case in the Indian Educational Service, the Provincial Engineer Service and the Telegraph Service. (11) Reduction of the European element.—The proportion of European officers to the Indian officers in the Superior Educational Service should be gradually reduced in the interest of economy, as more and more qualified Indians are available to represent Western culture. This is in accordance with the recommendations of the last Public Services Commission. In the present circumstances of the country, however, a certain number of highly distinguished European officers is indispensable in the Education Department, to assist in the “gradual union and fusion of the culture” of the East and the West. And when this ideal has been attained, it may be possible to work the educational machinery almost entirely through an indigenous agency. 83,569. (I.) Method of recruitment.—As already stated under the head of “General remarks,” only the best men should be appointed to the Bengal Educational Service— (a) to whatever nationality they might belong, and (b) wherever they may be available (whether Europe or India). Every vacancy should therefore be widely advertised both in Indian and in English papers. (c) Moreover, appointment to the Educational Service should be made by the Local Government in consultation with the Director of Public Instruction and the University, for the actual requirements in the case of any vacancy are better known to the Local Government than to the India Office. Moreover, character and attainments of Indian graduates, as compared with those of European graduates, are more fully known to the Local Government than to the authorities at home. As 396

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to the recruitment of European graduates, the India Office may invite applications from them and forward them to the Local Government with memoranda on their qualifications. (d) Men of high academic qualifications (whether European or Indian), especially those who after a brilliant University career have gone through a postgraduate course of study so as to specialise in the subjects they are required to teach, or men who after a distinguished University career have proved themselves to be highly capable teachers, in private colleges, should only be appointed to the Bengal Educational Service. 83,570. (II.) System of training and probation.—All officers, excepting those who have already had experience of college work, for a period of not less than two years, should be appointed in the first instance for two years. If recruitment be made in the manner already suggested, no special training will be necessary after appointment to the service. 83,571. (III.) Conditions of service.—Duties of a Professor should not be confined to lecture work. He should be responsible for the physical and moral training of the students under his charge, as much as for their intellectual training. He should encourage sports and games, and have free intercourse with them in the debating clubs, the common room, the playground, the hostels, and even in his own house. In short, he should mould the life and character of all students under his care. With a view to facilitate social intercourse between Professors and students, the former should be provided with free quarters within the precincts of the college. 83,572. (IV.) Condition of salary. A.—EXISTING CONDITIONS OF SALARY IN THE PROVINCIAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE. (a) Constitution of the Provincial Educational Service.—The Provincial Educational Service is now divided into eight classes, the pay and the strength of which are shown below:— Class. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Number of Posts. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

5 10 11 14 18 23 32 34

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

397

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Pay. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Rs. 700 600 500 400 350 300 250 200

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(b) Low initial pay.—The initial pay (Rs. 200) is inadequate. The initial pay of the Provincial Executive Service is Rs. 250. (c) Low maximum pay.—The maximum pay to which a member of the Provincial Educational Service is now entitled is Rs. 700. The pay of the highest grade in the Provincial Executive Service is Rs. 800, and in the Provincial Judicial Service Rs. 1,000. Moreover, members of the Provincial Civil Service (both Executive and Judicial) are allowed to hold some listed posts, but there are not even openings of this kind for members of the Provincial Educational Service, however brilliant or meritorious they may be. (d) Slow promotion.—Promotion is very slow in the Provincial Educational Service for two reasons. In the first place, the number of posts in the lower classes is very large as compared with the number in the higher classes, and in consequence, even under the most favourable circumstances, nearly two-thirds of an officer’s whole period of service must be spent in getting through the three lowest classes. Secondly, nothing has been more conducive to slow promotion than the old practice (which has not yet been altogether discontinued) of appointing some officers direct to one of the higher classes in the Provincial Educational Service. From 1897 to 1905 about 20 officers were appointed direct to classes VI. and VII. (the lowest class being class VIII.), and some even to class V. Quite recently (in August, 1913) an officer was appointed sub. pro tem, direct to class III. of the Provincial Educational Service. The result is that most of the appointments in the higher classes are now held by officers who will retire later than many of the members of the lower classes; and though some relief is thus afforded to the former, it is merely at the expense of the remaining officers who form the majority. B.—CONDITIONS OF SALARY AS THEY SHOULD BE. (a) Introduction of a system of progressive pay (time-scale).—In a service like the one which is now called the Provincial Educational Service (but which, I propose, should be amalgamated with the present Indian Educational Service, the amalgamated service being called the Bengal Educational Service), the graded system can hardly work satisfactorily; firstly, because the strength of the service is very limited, and, secondly, because it is sometimes found necessary to appoint some of the officers on special rates of pay higher than the pay of the lowest class, and in such cases appointment has to be made direct to some of the higher classes, over the heads of deserving officers in the lower classes, thus seriously blocking a normal flow of promotion and giving rise to a bitter feeling. It would no doubt be possible to improve the pay and prospects of members of the service even by retaining a graded system, provided the service were constituted on the following lines:— (1) The pay of each grade is to be substantially increased. (2) The number of posts in the lower classes is to be substantially reduced, a corresponding increase being made in the number of posts in the higher classes. 398

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(3) Finally, it is to be strictly observed that under no circumstances appointment should be made to any class other than the lowest. I should, however, strongly advocate the introduction of a system of progressive pay in place of the present graded system, at least during the first ten years of service, as in the Indian Educational Service or in the Provincial Engineer Service, as this will remove the grievance just referred to (namely, the appointment of outsiders over the heads of deserving officers), and secure a regular flow of promotion and make the service more popular. (b) Raising the initial pay.—The initial pay should be raised to Rs. 300 a month. (c) More rapid promotion.—The rate of promotion should be much more rapid than at present. In order to give effect to my suggestions under the three preceding heads, viz., (a), (b) and (c). I should strongly urge that the pay during the first ten years of service should be Rs. 300—30—600 a month, i.e., the initial pay should be Rs. 600 a month rising to Rs. 600 a month in ten years by an annual increment of Rs. 30 per mensem. (d) Raising the maximum pay.—The pay of the highest grade should be Rs. 1,300 a month. This of course, implies that there should be some intermediate grades—for example, two grades on Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 800 respectively. The constitution of the amalgamated Superior Educational Service, as proposed by me, will be explained later on in the scheme annexed to this note (Enclosure A). (e) Personal allowance to specially meritorious officers.—Personal allowances should be granted to officers of exceptional merit in addition to the grade pay (vide Enclosure A). 83,573. (V.) Conditions of leave.—(a) Equal facilities should be given to members of both the Indian and the Provincial branches of the Superior Educational Service for self-improvement and for keeping them abreast with the times, and there should be no difference as regards leave rules, especially in the case of furlough, so as to afford equal opportunities to all Professors for study in Europe or in different parts of India. (b) Privilege leave is allowed to Educational officers enjoying regular vacation:—(i) on half pay, and (ii) only when there is urgent necessity. The Director of Public Instruction should be authorised to relax the second condition at his discretion, and to allow privilege leave in cases of ordinary necessity. (c) The head of an office should be allowed discretion to extend casual leave from ten to fifteen days in the year, especially in cases of urgent necessity. 83,574. (VI.) Conditions of pension.—(a) Twenty-five years’ active service should entitle an officer to full pension. (b) Twenty years’ active service should also qualify for full pension in the case of— (i) officers who may be invalidated by competent medical authorities, (ii) officers who are admitted into the Educational Service from private colleges at an advanced age, and (iii) officers of special merit who may be willing to retire before completing 25 years of active service. 399

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83,575. (VII.) Such limitations as may exist in the employment of nonEuropeans and the working of the existing system of division of services into Imperial and Provincial. A.—EXISTING CONDITIONS. (a) Indians, however high their academic qualifications may be, are almost completely debarred from appointment to the Indian Educational Service. Prior to the reconstitution of the present Superior Service in 1897, men like Pandits Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and Mohesh Chandra Nayaratna, Babus Bhudeh Mukherjee, Prasanna Kumar Sarbadhikari, Umesh Chandra Dutta and Peari Charan Sarkar, who had purely Indian qualifications, were considered to be very valuable acquisitions to the Superior graded service; but since the constitution of the Provincial Educational Service in 1896, even distinguished members of this service, like Dr. P. C. Roy and Dr. D. N. Mallik, who are well-known for their researches and high character, have not been admitted into the Indian Educational Service. (b) Non-Europeans in the Provincial Educational Service are not allowed now to hold the highest posts in the Education Department, e.g., Principalships of the Presidency and Dacca Colleges, the Civil Engineering College, Sibpur, and of the Calcutta Madrasa, Divisional Inspectorships (with one exception), and the post of the Assistant Director of Public Instruction, not to speak of the post of the Director of Public Instruction. Only a few years ago seven Principalships of Colleges, including the Ravenshaw College (now in Bihar and Orissa), and four Divisional Inspectorships, were reserved exclusively for members of the Provincial Educational Service, but at present only three of the Principalships and one Divisional Inspectorship are open to members of the Provincial Educational Service. Thus, while the number of listed posts thrown open to the Provincial Civil Service is being gradually increased, there has been unfortunately a distinctly retrograde move as regards the Provincial Educational Service in respect of appointment to posts of higher responsibility. (c) The working of the existing system of division of the Superior Educational Service into Imperial and Provincial has proved very unsatisfactory, and has given rise to bitter discontent. In the resolution of the Government of India on the reorganisation of the Educational Services, dated the 23rd July 1896, and in the Bengal Government Resolution No. 1244, dated the 26th March 1897, it was stated that the Indian Educational Service and the Provincial Educational Service were only two branches of the same service, viz., the Superior Educational Service. It was clearly explained in the Imperial Council and also in Parliament that there was no difference between the two branches of the service, except in respect of the place of recruitment and the pay. But in actual practice a member of the Provincial Educational Service has come to be regarded in the Education Department as inferior to a member of the Indian Educational Service, e.g., a man like Dr. P. C. Roy, the present senior officer of the Provincial Educational Service, who has earned a world-wide reputation for his original work in 400

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Chemistry, is regarded inferior in status even to the junior members of the Indian Educational Service. B.—NECESSITY OF REMOVING THE EXISTING LIMITATIONS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE INDIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICE AND THE PROVINCIAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE. (a) If graduates of Indian Universities are found competent enough to be Judges of the High Court or members of the Executive Council (both Imperial and Provincial) or to hold the highest appointments in the enrolled list of the Financial Department of the Government of India, there are no grounds for debarring them from holding the highest posts in the Education Department, including the post of the Director of Public Instruction. (b) The distinction which has arisen in practice between the Provincial and Indian Educational Services should be completely removed, and the two services amalgamated into one service, to be called the Bengal Educational Service. I lay great stress on this point for the following reasons:— (1) The distinction which has now arisen in practice was never originally intended by Government, as already explained under the head “A—existing conditions,” and it is obviously desirable to give effect to the original intention of Government. (2) The Provincial Educational Service does not bear to the Indian Educational Service the same relation that the Provincial Civil Service bears to the Indian Civil Service. Members of the Provincial Executive and Judicial Services have altogether subordinate duties assigned to them, and are distinctly subordinate to members of the Indian Civil Service. But members of the Provincial Educational Service and of the Indian Educational Service, working as Professors in colleges, have exactly similar duties to perform. The equality of status between these two classes of officers is indicated also by the fact that they bear the identical designation of Professors, while members of the Provincial Civil Service (both Executive and Judicial) have designations [“Deputy Magistrates,” “Subordinate Judges,”] which obviously imply an inferiority of status, as compared with members of the Indian Civil Service. (3) As regards academic distinctions, it may be pointed out that only the best graduates of Indian Universities are, as a rule, appointed as Professors in the Provincial Educational Service, and their qualifications may be said to be of a high order, even in comparison with those of the members of the Indian Educational Service, especially as the best European graduates are not always available for this service. (4) As regards the actual success attained by the European and Indian graduates respectively as Professors in colleges, the best method of arriving at a definite conclusion is to compare their abilities as teachers and disciplinarians, their character, and above all the enthusiasm with which they devote their time and energy to furthering the best interests of the students committed to their care. 401

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(5) The difference in status between the Provincial and Indian Educational Service officers, which has arisen in practice, though not intended by Government, has given rise to a feeling of intense bitterness in the minds of the more deserving members of the Provincial Educational Service. This feeling should be removed in the interests of sound education. Amalgamation of the Indian and Provincial branches of the Superior Educational Service may be effected on the lines illustrated by the scheme herewith submitted (Enclosure A). The scheme is based upon the principles relating to conditions of service, salary and status already formulated, and may, of course, be modified by the authorities in detail, the main principles being, however, allowed to remain unchanged. 83,576. (VIII.) Relations of the service with the Indian Civil Service and other services.—(a) To ensure cordial relation between members of the Educational and other branches of the Public Service, there should be mutual intercourse and exchange of views. (b) The status of members of the proposed (amalgamated) Educational Service should be higher, irrespective of pay, than that of members of the Provincial Civil Service (both Executive and Judicial). Members of the Indian Educational Service are already accorded a higher rank than Deputy Magistrates and Sub-Judges, and members of the Provincial Educational Service, as already pointed out, should have the same rank as those of the Indian Educational Service. 83,577. (IX.) Some other points.—(1) Inspectors of Schools, Additional Inspectors of Schools and Assistant Inspectors of Schools should continue to be included in the same service as Professors in colleges for the following reasons:— (a) It is necessary that the superior inspecting agency and the controlling officers of the Education Department should be men of as high academic qualifications as Professors in colleges and have also teaching experience, without which no effective control can be exercised over the teaching work in schools and colleges. Professors of some years’ experience may therefore be appointed with advantage as Inspecting officers. (b) It may happen that some of the Professors will find sedentary work unsuited to the state of their health, and a change of occupation may prove reinvigorating, and may thus prevent a too early termination of their career of usefulness; and, on the other hand, inspection work will not degenerate into a mechanical routine work, if fresh ideas and spirit be occasionally infused into it from the atmosphere of college life. (2) All officers doing lecture work in colleges should be men of high academic qualifications. It is therefore necessary to discontinue the practice now obtaining in the Education Department of appointing some Lectures on an as low initial pay as Rs. 125 a month. (3) The Principal of every Government College should be given a suitable local allowance, and also provided with residential quarters, free of rent, within or near the college, in consideration of his heavy duties and 402

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responsibilities, which consist in administrative work, a large volume of office work, including checking of accounts and control of the hostels, in addition to lecture work. (4) Married members of the proposed (amalgamated) Educational Service, in large towns, should receive adequate house allowance, unless they can be provided with free quarters. This concession has already been allowed to all married members of the Indian Educational Service living in Calcutta. (5) The relation between two or more Professors teaching the same subject in a college should be one of co-ordination and mutual co-operation. Each of them should be responsible for his work directly to the Principal of the College, and not to any of his colleagues. (6) No officer of less than 10 years’ experience (whether European or Indian) should be appointed to the responsible post of Principal of a College or Inspector of Schools, as an accurate knowledge of the conditions and requirements of those under his charge, and a clear and ready perception of the practical measures best suited to their welfare, are essential for successful performance of the duties of an educational administrator. (7) There are some posts included in the Provincial Educational Service (e.g., post of the Head Maulvi, Calcutta Madrasa, Superintendent, Apprentice Department, Civil Engineering College, Sibpur), for which it may be necessary to recruit officers on a rate of pay higher than the pay of the lowest class. Inclusion of such posts in a graded service necessitates appointment of outsiders over the heads of deserving officers in the lowest grades. Posts of this kind should therefore be placed outside the grades of the service, with a view to remove a keenly felt grievance arising from the appointment of outsiders to higher grades. (8) Headmasters of schools, and other officers not connected with College education, should not be included in the proposed Bengal Educational Service, care being, however, taken that their prospects may not in any way be prejudiced. 83,578. ENCLOSURE A.—SCHEME OF THE PROPOSED AMALGAMATED SUPERIOR EDUCATIONAL SERVICE TO BE CALLED THE BENGAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE.

(1) STRENGTH OF THE SERVICE. A.—Present strength of the Indian Educational Service and the Provincial Educational Service. (a) The number of posts in the Indian Educational Service is 56 (including the three posts outside the grades), of which 12 are vacant now. But there are actually 14 officers in the Indian Educational Service, viz., 39 Europeans and five Indians, including those outside the grades. (These figures have been taken from the quarterly Civil List for Bengal corrected up to the 1st July, 1913.) 403

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(b) The strength of the Provincial Educational Service (according to the issue of the Civil List referred to above) is 147. But the actual number of officers in the service is now 133. (c) It will thus be seen that the total strength of the Indian and Provincial Educational Services is 203 (56 in the Indian and 147 in the Provincial Service), but that the actual number of officers in the two services is 177 (44 in the Indian and 133 in the Provincial Service).

B.—Strength of the proposed Bengal Educational Service. (a) The strength of the proposed Service should not exceed 177, the actual number of officers now in the Indian and Provincial Educational Services. (b) As suggested in my memorandum under the head “IX.—Some other points”, in the paragraph marked (S), officers having no direct connection with college education (and also those doing chiefly tutorial work or working as assistants in colleges) should not be included in the proposed Service, though Inspectors of Schools and Assistant Inspectors of Schools should continue to be so included for reasons explained under the head “IX.—Some other points”, in paragraph marked (1). Twenty-five to 30 officers may thus be removed from the cadre of the Provincial Educational Service. On the other hand, some of the lectureships in colleges now included in the Subordinate Educational Service should be included in the proposed Service, some however being converted into posts of college tutors. The strength of the proposed Service should therefore be about 160 as follows:— Actual number of officers in the Provincial and India services Number of headmasters and others to be transferred (roughly) Remaining number Number of lectureships to be included (roughly) Total strength

177 27 150 10 160

(2) PROPORTION OF EUROPEAN OFFICERS TO INDIAN OFFICERS IN THE PROPOSED SERVICE. For the present the number of European officers should be 40, which is about their actual number in the Indian Educational Service now. The number of Indian officers should therefore be 120. European officers should be gradually replaced by Indian officers of similar qualifications, so far as practicable. This will lead to economy, as the number of compensation allowances will thus be gradually reduced. In my opinion the number of Europeans should be reduced by at least 15 (which appears to be practicable) during the next 20 years on the gradual retirement of the senior officers. Since the passing of Lord Curzon’s Universities Act, the standard of education in Indian Universities has considerably advanced, and a steadily increasing number of Indians now proceed to foreign countries for study. 404

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(3) CONSTITUTION OF THE PROPOSED SERVICE FOR BOTH EUROPEANS AND INDIANS. (a) The time-scale (Rs. 300—30—600 in 10 years).—The initial pay of an officer of the Bengal Educational Service should be Rs. 300 a month, rising to Rs. 600 a month in 10 years by an annual increment of Rs. 30 a month. (b) The graded service.—(1) After completing 10 years’ service, all officers will enter into a graded service in order of seniority, though they must draw for some years a fixed pay equal to the maximum pay of the time-scale (i.e., Rs. 600 a month) before they will find admission into the graded service, which will necessarily be contingent upon the gradual retirement of the senior officers in the highest grades. (2) Of the proposed 160 posts to be included in the Bengal Educational Service, 100 may be allotted to the time-scale and 60 to the graded service, which may be divided into three classes or grades. (3) The pay and the strength of each grade, as proposed, are shown below:— Class (grade). I. II. III.

... ... ...

... ... ...

... ... ...

Pay.

Strength.

Rs. 1,300 1,000 800

5 20 35

Time-scale Rs. 300—30—600 in 10 years 100.

(4) COMPENSATION ALLOWANCE FOR EUROPEAN OFFICERS. Every European officer, being a graduate of a European University, should be given a compensation allowance of Rs. 300 a month, so long as his pay does not exceed Rs. 1,000 a month. The allowance should cease to be given to an officer as soon as he is promoted to Class I (Rs. 1,300), firstly, because a compensation allowance is not necessary in the case of an officer drawing a pay of Rs. 1,300 per month, and, secondly (and chiefly), because a specially meritorious officer will be able to earn a personal allowance (as explained in the next paragraph) long before he rises to the highest grade.

(5) PERSONAL ALLOWANCE. (a) A definite number of personal allowances should be assigned to the Service, to be granted to officers (European or Indian) who may prove themselves to be specially meritorious ordinarily after 10 years of service. (b) Some of these personal allowances may, however, be given to officers (Indian or European) of special distinction, at the beginning of their service, if the interests of the Service require that such inducements should be offered in special 405

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cases, but the number of allowances granted in this manner should not exceed one-fourth of the total number of allowances assigned. (c) In the case of a European officer, a personal allowance, when granted, will be in addition to the usual compensation allowance, except when the officer rises to the highest grade. (d) The number and value of the proposed personal allowances may be as follows:— Personal allowances. Grade. 1st grade 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade

Number. ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ...

2 4 6 12

Amount. Rs. 700 500 300 200

N.B.—The grades of personal allowances are independent of the grades of the Service, and there is no correspondence between them. (e) At least one-third of the personal allowances should be reserved for Indian officers in order to induce the best Indian graduates to join the Educational Service by an offer of surer prospects. ( f ) A specially meritorious officer should be granted, in the first instance, after at least 10 years of service, an allowance of the lowest grade (Rs. 200), but as senior officers drawing higher personal allowances gradually retire, he will be eligible for allowances of higher grades. But these allowances will not be granted merely in order of seniority.

(6) PROMOTION AND SENIORITY. Seniority will be regulated according to the dates of appointment to the Service. Promotion up to Class III (Rs. 800) should be in accordance with seniority, but in the case of higher grades it should be regulated chiefly according to merit.

(7) PROSPECTS OF EUROPEAN OFFICERS UNDER THE PROPOSED SCHEME AS COMPARED WITH THEIR PRESENT PROSPECTS IN THE INDIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICE. (a) A European officer will rise from Rs. 600 a month (Rs. 300 pay + Rs. 300 compensation allowance) to Rs. 900 a month (Rs. 600 pay + Rs. 300 compensation allowance) during the first 10 years. The average income therefore will be the same (Rs. 750 a month) both in the proposed scheme and in the existing Indian Educational Service during the first 10 years of service for European officers.

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(b) As a compensation allowance of Rs. 300 is proposed to be granted to European officers up to class II, this allowance will make their pay and prospects in the proposed scheme probably a little better than at present. (c) The chief attraction of the proposed scheme to really distinguished men is the scheme of personal allowances. A specially distinguished and meritorious officer will certainly rise to Rs. 2,000 a month (Rs. 1,300 pay + Rs. 700 allowance). (d) Moreover, inclusion of a large number of Indian officers in the European service will not prejudice a meritorious European officer, as comparatively less meritorious members of the service will not rise beyond class III (Rs. 800), nor will they be entitled to personal allowances. Further Supplementary written Statement relating to the Education Department, being a Memorandum on the working of the division of the Superior Educational Service into Imperial and Provincial branches. 83,579. In the Written Statement submitted by me on the 1st October 1913 (vide paragraphs 83,568–78), I could not, for want of time, deal adequately with the important subject of the working of the division of the Superior Educational Service into two branches, Indian and Provincial. Moreover, as the time allowed was only a week, I could not then fully ascertain the views of all the officers whom I have been called upon to represent. I therefore beg to submit this supplementary memorandum, dealing more fully with the subject of the existing division of the Superior Educational Service into two branches and their proposed amalgamation. The distinction between the Indian and the Provincial branches of the Superior Educational Service is threefold in actual practice, viz. in regard to the status, the place of recruitment and the pay. (A) UNEQUAL STATUS. In spite of the repeated declarations of the highest authorities, the status of an officer of the Provincial Educational Service has come to be regarded as distinctly inferior to that of an officer of the Indian Service. This, however, is inevitable, under the existing circumstances. For it is almost inconceivable that the status of a body of officers belonging to a distinct branch of the service, drawing pay on a lower scale, could ever be equal, except in theory, to that of the officers in the other branch of the Service. (B) DIFFERENCE AS REGARDS THE PLACE OF RECRUITMENT. The distinction between the Indian and the Provincial Educational Services, as regards the place of recruitment, is highly objectionable, as well as unnecessary, at the present stage of development of the Indian Universities. My reasons for arriving at this conclusion are as follows:— 407

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(a) Introduction of racial considerations. The present system, under which recruitment for the highest posts in the Education Department (i.e., the posts in the Indian Service) is made invariably and exclusively in Europe, introduces racial considerations and throws the question of academic distinctions and qualifications in the back-ground. The last Public Services Commission recommended recruitment in England for Professorships in those branches of learning only, in which the European standard of advancement had not been attained in India at the time. The recommendation was obviously based on considerations of qualifications and academic distinctions; but Government of India (Home Department) in their No. 4—Edn./204—205 dated the 23rd July 1896, on the subject of the reorganisation of the Educational Service, stated as follows (in paragraph 15):—“In future natives of India who are desirous of entering the Educational Department will usually be appointed in India and to the Provincial Service” (p. 185, Papers relating to the Reorganisation of the Educational Service in India from 1891–97. The result of this has been (1) that no graduates of Indian Universities, however distinguished or capable, can now find admission into the Indian Education Service, (2) that distinguished Indian graduates of European Universities, like Dr. P. C. Roy, have been refused admission to that Service, but (3) that an ordinary European graduate of the Calcutta University (Mr. Billing) could find an easy access to the Indian Service. (b) Recruitment on protectionist principles unsatisfactory. The hard and fast rule regarding the place of recruitment leads to the undesirable result that candidates of no superior merit in Europe, under the protection of this exclusive rule, are sometimes appointed in preference to more distinguished and capable men in India. (c) Progress of Indian education and research. Since the last Public Services Commission, there has been a considerable progress of education in India. The number of qualified Indians available for higher educational work is unquestionably much greater now than was the case 25 years ago, and the standard of education in Indian Universities is distinctly higher now. Within recent years, the Calcutta University has taken steps not only to raise its standard of education, but to impart a decided stimulus to advancement of knowledge by insisting upon writing an original thesis as the essential condition for the award of the degree of Ph.D., as well as of the Premchand Roychand Scholarship, and by taking care to appoint as University Professors, specialists and scholars of distinction. It is also a fact that within recent years, many Indian graduates have shown considerable aptitude for research. Some Indian members of the Calcutta Mathematical Society (started only a few years ago) have done useful original work, while a visit to the Chemical Laboratory of the Presidency College, where a band of enthusiastic chemists have been carrying on valuable original research under the guidance of Dr. P. C. Roy, will convince everybody that there is now no lack of intellectual atmosphere in India. (d) Recruitment on free trade principles unobjectionable. Even supposing the number of properly qualified Indians to be really few even now (which certainly is 408

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not the fact), I do not see any possible objection to keeping an open door for both Europeans and Indians, which means that in the case of every vacancy, the Local Government must select the best man from among all available Indian and European candidates. On the other hand, recruiting exclusively in Europe is at present not only unnecessary, but has been operating merely as an effective bar against the admission of even the best graduates of Indian Universities to the higher Service and has in consequence created grave dissatisfaction in the Provincial Service. (C) UNEQUAL PAY. The average monthly earning of a member of the Indian Educational Service is about three times as large as that of a member of the Provincial Educational Service. According to my calculations based on the figures in the Civil List for Bengal corrected up to the 1st July 1913, the average cost to Government, in July 1913, was Rs. 801, for a member of the Indian Education Service, and Rs. 295, for a member of the Provincial Educational Service (and I may add incidentally, Rs. 1788 for a member of the Indian Civil Service, Rs. 903 for a Superintendent of Police, Rs. 411 for an Assistant Superintendent of Police, Rs. 376 for a member of the Provincial Civil Service, Executive branch, and Rs. 367 for a member of the Provincial Civil Service, Judicial branch, so that the Provincial Educational Service officer, whose status is said to be as high as that of an officer of the Indian Educational Service and therefore higher than that of members of the Provincial Civil Service happens really to be the most ill-paid of all!) It is almost inconsistent with the self-respect of the Indian Professors in the Provincial Educational Service that for doing exactly similar work and with as much ability and success, generally speaking, as members of the Indian Service, they should be allowed about a third part of the remuneration of the latter. It is a significant fact that with only a few exceptions, the most brilliant graduates of the Calcutta University (I mean particularly those few who distinguish themselves by securing the first or second place in all the University Examinations from the Matriculation up to the M.A.) have fought shy of the Provincial Educational Service in Bengal, and those that have actually joined the Service are altogether dissatisfied with the conditions of their Service. As regards the question of inequality in salary between Indian and European officers doing similar work, the simple issues are:— (a) Is it fair (and if fair, to what extent) to allow a higher salary to European officers, on account of the greater cost of their living and on account of the sacrifices they make in serving in a distant country? (b) Is it not desirable to attract the most qualified men to the Educational service by offering them comparatively better prospects? If desirable, should not such better prospects be offered in the shape of higher pay rather than in the shape of personal allowances for special merit, in view of the practical difficulty as regards judging of special merit? (c) Is a Professor in the Provincial Service really of so inferior merit as to deserve only about a third part of the salary of a Professor in the Indian Service? 409

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I shall now deal with these issues one by one. (a) If the cost of living is higher in the case of a European officer, the Indian officer has to support or at any rate to help his poorer relations, out of a feeling of charity, which is his national characteristic. Moreover, the Indian officer is obliged to live in insanitary conditions and cannot get good medical help or benefits of residence in healthy stations on account of lower pay and thus meets with death at an age when the European officer enjoys a vigorous health. It would, therefore, be quite unfair to contend that the Indian officer requires less money, because his physical needs are fewer. Candidly, however, I must say that the pay attached to a post should be determined solely by the duties and responsibilities and not by the needs of the incumbent of the post. At the same time, I admit that if a European candidate has to be appointed as a matter of real necessity and in the interest of education to any post for which all the available Indian candidates are found to be comparatively less suitable (I believe such cases are few now and will be fewer still in the course of the next 20 years), then and then only I would give a suitable compensation allowance at a fixed rate (say Rs. 300 a month to the European candidate, in consideration of the sacrifices the latter would have to make in accepting service in a distant country and I would also devise a scheme of personal allowances for special merit, which in itself would prove sufficiently attractive to the meritorious European graduates, as much as to the best Indian graduates (Vide Enclosure A to my memorandum dated the 1st October, 1913). (b) In order that the best men may be attracted to the Service, it is no doubt desirable to differentiate the emoluments of educational officers to some extent, but not certainly on racial grounds or on the basis of the sentimental belief that graduates of classical Universities like Cambridge and Oxford are necessarily superior to graduates of comparatively modern Universities in Europe and India, nor as a rule, even on the basis of initial qualifications, however high, for all the recruits should be men of high academic qualifications, whether Indian or European. The only just and logical basis of differentiation is real merit, which should be judged by the standards of (1) ability as Professors or Educational administrators, (2) capacity for original work, (3) enthusiasm and devotion to duty, (4) moral character and (5) last but not least, in the case of Professors, capacity for building up the character of students, which means the capacity to understand the pupils, to sympathise with them and thus to acquire a real power of control over them, and in the case of educational administrators, accurate knowledge of local conditions and requirements and a clear preception of the measures best suited to the local needs. The differentiation should, therefore, be made, not generally at the time of recruitment, but after 10 years of service, and some personal allowances should be set apart for rewarding special merit, irrespective of nationality, as explained in my scheme (Vide Enclosure A to my memorandum dated 1st October, 1913). The only objection that might be raised against my scheme of personal allowances for special merit is that it would be difficult for Government to discriminate between the different officers; but this difficulty has to be faced even now, 410

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in making selections for the most responsible posts in each Department and in awarding titles, distinctions and special promotions. The difficulty, however, will be minimised, if the personal allowances proposed by me are attached partly to more responsible posts (such as Principalships and Divisional Inspectorships), but it is desirable that some of them should also be thrown open to the entire body of Professors, Indian and European. (c) I do not believe that any fair-minded person will contend that the Provincial Service officer is really of such an inferior type that he deserves only a third part of the pay of the Indian Service officer, for doing exactly similar work. Judged by the various tests mentioned in the preceding paragraph, Professors in the Provincial Service will be found unquestionably to be as efficient as members of the Indian Service generally, and some of them, distinctly of superior merit. There have been many Indian Professors in the Presidency College, Calcutta (and also elsewhere), enjoying a higher reputation for ability as Professors than many European Professors in the same College. There has also been a large number of Indian Principals of Colleges and Divisional Inspectors of Schools who discharged their duties to the satisfaction of those who supervised their work (Vide the reply of Bengal Government to interpellations put in the Bengal Legislative Council by the Hon’ble Dr. Debaprasad Sarbadhikary on the 2nd April, 1913). As regards the original research, not only some of the senior members of the Provincial Education Service, but several members of the lower grades of the Service have distinguished themselves by doing original work. In the matter of building up the character of students, European Professors generally cannot be expected to do as much as their Indian colleagues, as it is difficult for the former to understand their pupils, to get an insight into their inner life by having a free and intimate intercourse with them and thus to acquire real control over their private life. As regards the relative merits of Indian and European Educational officers, I cannot do better than to give below some extracts from letter No. 11,029 dated 11th August, 1892, from the Director of Public Instruction, Madras, to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Madras:— “European experience in Educational matters is of less value in India than in Great Britain. The cleverest don from Oxford or Cambridge may prove a failure as an Indian Educationist.” “The Professorships of Mathematics, History, Sanskrit and Philosophy have been held, with credit either permanently or temporarily, on several occasions, by natives of India” (Vide para. 3 of the letter referred to, pp. 12–13 of the Papers relating to the Reorganisation of the Education Service in India from 1891–97). If it was true so far back as 1892, it is more so now, after a steady and considerable progress in education for 21 years. Perhaps I may add here that a statutory native of India (Mr. H. M. Percival) was acknowledged for many years as the most distinguished Professor of English in Bengal, and a similar reputation for English scholarship and success as a Professor of English was enjoyed by the late Rev. Lal Behari Dey, the author of “Folktales of Bengal,” “Govinda Samanta” &c. Mr. Homersham Cox (lately of the Muir Central College, Allahabad) is of 411

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opinion that “there are Indians thoroughly competent, although they have never studied in Europe,” and that “a superstitious value is sometimes attached in India to a European degree.” Mr. Cox concludes as follows:—“The conclusion then is that already many, eventually all, of the posts of the Indian Educational Service with the doubtful exception of the Professorships of English, might be conferred on Indians.” (Modern Review, Nov., 1912.) I might mention the names of many illustrious Indian officers now in the Education Department, but it would be invidious to do so. I may, however, be permitted to mention the name of the late lamented Professor Benoyendranath Sen of the Presidency College, who was looked upon as the friend, philosopher and guide of his students and who combined with a high character and a deep religious fervour, exceptional abilities as a Professor and I have grave doubts if any European Professor is capable of exercising the same salutary influence on students as the last Professor Sen; and yet this distinguished Professor was all along in the Provincial Service and it was 8 or 9 years before he could get a lift to Class VII (then Rs. 200). In these circumstances, I most emphatically condemn the existing division of the Superior Educational Service into two branches with unequal pay and recruited in different places. This kind of division is humiliating to the Professors in the Provincial branch and seriously affects their sense of responsibility and creates in them a sore feeling calculated to interfere with the proper discharge of their duties, specially outside the College. It tends to create in the officers in the Indian branch a feeling of artificial superiority and an attitude unfavourable to the growth of an esprit de corps among the members of the Service. Finally, it is an unwholesome object-lesson to the Indian students who do not fail to mark the differential treatment accorded to the ablest Professors of their own nationality. THE ONLY REMEDY: AMALGAMATION ON THE BASIS OF EQUAL PAY. In my humble opinion and in the opinion of the entire body of officers whom I represent, the two branches of the Service should be amalgamated into one undivided Service and the pay of all officers, Indian and European, should be made equal, the latter being, however, given a compensation allowance of Rs. 300 a month (Rs. 200 a month in the opinion of some officers). No further differentiation in emoluments should generally be made on the basis of initial qualifications, but special merit may be recognised, after 10 years of service, in accordance with a suitable scheme of personal allowances. Moreover, European candidates should be appointed, only when suitable Indian candidates are not available. With the exception of a few University chairs, which should be open only to specialists of established reputation, to be recruited on special terms for short periods, all the posts in the Education Department should eventually be filled solely by Indians. As regards the absolute equality of pay of the officers, Indian and European, I consulted all the members of the Provincial Educational Service (Collegiate branch) and they have modified their views as expressed in the memorandum 412

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submitted by Dr. P. C. Roy on behalf of the entire Service. In that memorandum, which had to be prepared in a great hurry and without due consideration, for want of time, the posts of the proposed amalgamated Service were divided into two classes, viz., those carrying full pay and those carrying 60 per cent. of the full pay. But I am now in a position to say (and I have been actually requested by some of the officers to say) that after mature and deliberate consideration, the officers subsequently came to the conclusion that in the proposed amalgamated Service, there should be one and the same scale of pay for all officers, Indian and European. I venture to hope that the Scheme I already submitted in my memorandum dated the 1st October, 1913 (Enclosure A to that memorandum) will meet the requirements of the situation. But as a result of further consideration and consultation with members of the Service, I should now suggest the following slight modifications in my original Scheme:— (a) Some of the proposed personal allowances in my scheme should be attached to certain specific posts (e.g. Principalships), while the rest should be thrown open to the whole body of the Service. (b) At least half the number of more responsible posts to which personal allowances may be attached should be reserved for Indian officers. I do believe that Indians are now quite capable of standing on their own merit. But at the same time, it cannot be denied that in the past, Indian officers of undoubtedly superior merit have been regarded and still continue to be regarded as inferior to the newest European recruits in the Indian Service and it is also a fact that since the constitution of the Provincial Service, not a single Indian graduate of an Indian University, however meritorious, has been appointed to the Indian Service, while some of the Principalships and Divisional Inspectorships reserved in 1897 for the Provincial Service have now been actually reserved for the Indian Service. Hence there are reasonable grounds for apprehension that unless the claims of Indians are safeguarded by some kind of protection, their merit might not be adequately recognised in the future also. Moreover, the proportion of Indians to Europeans being 3 to 1 in my scheme, the demand for reserving at least half of the number of more responsible posts for Indians is moderate. (c) With a view to reduction of cost, the constitution of the amalgamated Service, as proposed in my last memorandum may be modified as follows (the scheme of personal allowances, however, remaining the same as previously proposed by me):— Class. I. II. III. IV.

Pay. ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ...

... ... ... ...

Rs. 1,300 1,000 800 700

Strength. 4 8 18 20

Time-scale 300—30—600 in ten years 110.

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(d) Promotion up to Class II (Rs. 1,000) should be regulated chiefly according to seniority.

BABU SARADA PRASANNA DAS, called and examined. 83,580. (Chairman.) The witness represented the Provincial Educational Service of Bengal on the collegiate side. He was at present Officiating Principal of the Hooghly College, a position he had occupied for 2½ years. He had been in Government service for 15½ years. The explanation of the three written statements put in was that Dr. P. C. Roy originally called a meeting only of the Calcutta officers of the Provincial Service, but officers in the mufassal were not given sufficient time for deliberation or discussion. There was complete unanimity of opinion that the Indian and the Provincial services should be amalgamated into one service, but there was some difference of opinion as to the exact manner of working out a scheme of amalgamation. A scheme was adopted by the Calcutta meeting under which a certain number of posts would carry full salary, and others only 60 per cent. It was then contemplated that as a rule Indians would occupy only the lower salary posts, though some of them would be eligible for holding the full salary posts. Later on when the witness was informed on the 22nd September last that he had been elected to appear before the Commission he again consulted the members of the Service on the collegiate side and was told by most of them that they had modified their views. There was no change of opinion in connection with the essential principle that the Indian and the Provincial Services should be amalgamated, but it was now unanimously desired to abandon the idea of keeping Indians to a 60 per cent. salary standard. 83,581. In the detailed scheme contained in his written statement, dated the 1st October, 1913, he had proposed that 27 appointments now in the Provincial Educational Service should not be placed in the amalgamated service. This was his own personal view, but some of his colleagues were of a contrary opinion. The posts in question were those of headmasters of collegiate schools and superintendents of madrassahs. 83,582. In any reformed system consideration should be given to the actual work done as distinguished from the place of recruitment or race. On the collegiate side all the existing posts in the Provincial Educational Service were equally important with those in the Indian Educational Service and should be in the same service with them. 83,583. The recommendation that headmasters of schools should not be included in the proposed amalgamated service was made because nothing was gained by converting a headmaster into a Professor or a Professor into a headmaster: the headmaster should be recruited from amongst experienced schoolmasters in India, who might be M.A.’s and B.T.’s, but Professors could not be recruited from that source. He did not agree that the best training for an Inspector was that of a schoolmaster. A certain amount of teaching experience was necessary for an Inspector, but that experience could also be obtained in colleges. 414

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83,584. With reference to salary, the officers, now asked for equal pay with Europeans, but would not object to a foreign service allowance for the latter on account of their having to make certain sacrifices in taking up service in a foreign country. It should be provided, however, that Europeans were recruited only when suitable Indian candidates were not available. In the present circumstances of the country a certain percentage of Europeans was necessary, but it would be an advantage to appoint more Indians to higher posts. In the first place, the firstrate men from Europe would not generally accept service in India, and it was undesirable to increase the burden on the Indian taxpayer by appointing second and third-rate men from Europe. In the second place there had been considerable progress in education in India within recent years, and the number of highly qualified Indians available for higher educational work was much larger now than was the case 25 years ago. In the third place, one of the most important duties of a Professor was to build up the character of students and to influence their lives, and European Professors could do much less in that direction than Indian Professors, as the Europeans could not mix freely with the Indian students or completely understand them. There was a wide gulf between the European Professor and the Indian student, and there was no possibility of bridging it. It must be the work of Indian Professors to build up the character of Indian students. 83,585. A first-class Honours man from Cambridge or Oxford was not necessarily superior to a first-class man from an Indian University. From the point of view of scholastic attainments the M.A. degree of the Indian University would correspond to an Honour’s Degree in Europe. He had never been to Europe himself and could not speak from actual experience. There were a good many officers in the service who had taken an Honour’s Degree at an English University before coming out to India, and he would put most of them under the category of second or third class officers, because they had not proved successful Professors. The real test was not simply the initial University qualification, but ability as Professors or educational administrators, and success in building up the character of students. He himself set more store by actual success attained as educationalists subsequent to entry into the service. He did not consider a special training necessary for Professors; officers serving for a certain number of years in India would obtain the necessary training. 83,586. The wintess desired appointments to the proposed amalgamated service to be made by the Local Government, and not by the India Office. For a particular vacancy applications should be invited from both European and Indian candidates, and the best amongst them should be appointed by the Local Government. In the case of candidates in England, the India Office might forward applications with comments on the qualifications to the Local Government. If the India Office objected to forwarding applications to a Local Government, a Board might be constituted at the India Office to receive applications and forward them. His proposal would take the selection right out of the hands of the India Office and hand it over to the Local Governments. Europeans should be appointed only if highly qualified Indians were not available. 415

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83,587. The witness did not see the necessity in all cases of an Indian having a training in a European University, except in the case of Professors of Science and technical subjects, to whom it might be an advantage to have a training in the best laboratories in Europe. That, however, might be done by giving facilities for study leave. 83,588. If officers of special merit could retire after 20 years’ service, the very best men would be attracted. Such men on retiring should be given pensions. 83,589. The staff in the Government colleges was at present fairly sufficient. In his own college some classes contained 70 or 80 pupils, while others only contained 13 or 14. With large classes it might be advantageous to employ additional tutors, but there was no need to add to the lecturing staff. 83,590. (Sir Theodore Morison.) Under the present system there was some class teaching in the college which consisted in tutorial assistance rendered to individual students, each class being subdivided into smaller sections for this purpose. As Mathematical Professor he explained the general principles of mathematics and endeavoured to obtain some work from the students; for instance, he worked out some typical examples, and the students would work out other examples at home. Occasionally they were asked to write essays on mathematical subjects. It was really lecturing and excercises, not class teaching. 83,591. The witness could not give figures to show what the suggested amalgamated service would cost the Government. The increase of cost under the proposed scheme would be 50 per cent., or probably more on the present cost. 83,592. (Mr. Sly.) The first written statement, submitted through Dr. P. C. Roy, fixed the Indian officer’s pay at 60 per cent. of the European officer’s, but the service subsequently modified that view on the ground that it would be lowering the status of the Indian officers, and desired that all the officers should have the same pay, with a certain compensation allowance for European officers. The second scheme proposed equal pay with Rs. 300 compensation allowance to the Europeans. When the European officer’s pay was more than Rs. 1,000 the allowance might cease, which would practically bring the pay of Europeans and Indians in the highest grade to the same amount. The allowance to Europeans was given partly in consideration of their cost of living being greater, but it was thought that when men were earning Rs. 1,300 a month they could do without a compensation allowance. Moreover, specially meritorious European officers would also be able to earn a personal allowance in addition to the grade pay of Rs. 1,300 under the witness’s scheme of personal allowances for special merit. It should not be forgotten that the Indians had to spend a great deal on family expenses. The view was that after the highest grade on Rs. 1,300 had been reached there should be no distinction in salary except on the ground of special merit only. 83,593. (Mr. Fisher.) It was not intended, on the death of a distinguished Professor, holding a particular chair, to preclude the chance of making a direct appointment of a man well qualified to take up his work, and that was not implied by the remark in the written statement that in no circumstances should appointments be made to any class other than the lowest, as a personal allowance might 416

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be granted in such cases, if really necessary, under the witness’s scheme of personal allowances. 83,594. (Mr. Madge.) The standard of education in India had risen sufficiently high to secure the best kind of men in almost every subject, but it would be desirable to have a few distinguished Professors from England specially for English. It was not a question of attaching exaggerated importance to the passing of examinations; Indians showed a real aptitude for educational work, and many of them had shown a special aptitude for research work. A school of Indian research was steadily growing at present and was creating an intellectual atmosphere in the country and a real academic life. 83,595. (Mr. Gupta.) There were other reasons why the amalgamation of the services should take place. If the Indian Educational Service was kept separate, there would be a tendency to recruit Europeans on racial grounds. The last Public Service Commission recommended the recruitment in Europe of Professors in those branches of learning in which a high standard had not been attained in India at the time, but the Indian Government in a Resolution stated that natives of the country should be appointed to the Provincial Service, thus clearly bringing in racial considerations. Also the India Educational Service officers were remunerated about three times as highly as the Provincial Service men. This inequality was not justified, as Provincial men, especially in the professorial branch, were doing their work as efficiently and sometimes better than the Indian Service men. The present distinction made the Provincial Service man looked upon as an inferior officer, and no amount of assurances on the part of Government would make his status equal to that of the Indian Educational Service officer. 83,596. The witness was in favour of giving full pay to an officer during the first two years of service on probation. 83,597. The witness had no hesitation in saying that, examined by the highest possible standard, the work of Indian Professors would not be found wanting. They had a capacity for original work, which was one of the most important tests of the ability of Professors. Many officers in the Provincial service had actually done original work. (The witness withdrew.)

DR. P. C. ROY, C.I.E., Professor of Chemistry, Presidency College, Calcutta. Written statement relating to the Provincial Educational Service.3 83,675. I may begin by emphasising the fact that recent experience has brought the problem of education well to the foreground as the most important problem which British statesmanship has to face and solve. Education occupies a prominent place in the gracious speech of His Imperial Majesty the King-Emperor in reply to the address presented by the graduates of the Calcutta University. The supreme importance of education was also recognised by Lord Curzon’s government. The 417

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recent policy of Government, as embodied in the Scheme of Provincial Universities and University Chairs, has focussed attention on education as the problem of the day. It is also significant that the most prominent of our public men—men like Sir Gooroo Das Banerji, KT., Sir Ashutosh Mukherji, KT., Sir Tarak Nath Palit, KT., Dr. Rash Behari Ghosh, and the Honourable Dr. Devaprasad Sarvadhikari—have come to realize that education is the most fundamental problem to which all other problems must be subordinated. It is therefore essential that the Educational Department should be recognised as one of the most important branches of the public service. The work of education is the most responsible duty undertaken by the State. The department trains men for the various branches of the public service as well as for the several learned professions. In view of the extreme importance and the responsible nature of the work done by the department, it is absolutely necessary that it should be staffed by men recruited from the very best materials, in India and in Europe. The officers of the department should not only possess very high academic qualifications but should also be inspired by the ideals of duty. They should all feel an ardent enthusiasm for the work of education. This can be only secured by (1) enhancing the attractiveness of the service, (2) enforcing the strictest conditions of admission, so as to rigidly eliminate inefficient or incompetent candidates, Indian and European. Merit and efficiency should be the sole tests of admission, and preferment and all other considerations, e.g., race, nationality, prestige, etc., should be completely ignored or subordinated to the supreme test of competency. Every care should be taken to secure the best men, for an incompetent man, once admitted into the service, acts like a clog in the educational wheel and impedes the rapidity and smoothness of its motion. All distinctions should be based upon real differences, and not on considerations of race and prestige which now form the dividing line between the two branches of the Superior Service, the so-called “Indian” and “Provincial.” This unfortunate distinction—a distinction without a difference—should be abolished, and the two branches of the Superior Service should be merged into one service. The distinction should never have been made, for even at the time when it was made—it was made as early as 1896—there were Indian candidates available who were at least as qualified or competent as the European officers who then staffed the “Indian” Educational Service. These Indians—most of whom were graduates of the British Universities—were thus denied a place in the “Indian” Educational Service, and the anomaly, as unjust as it was inexplicable, compelled these unfortunate men to enter the Provincial Service for no other or stronger reason than their nationality. This glaringly unjust treatment meted out to them still rankles in their mind, and in the case of some of them it is almost too late to repair the consequences of this grievous mistake. I advocate therefore the amalgamation of these two branches of the Superior Service with all the earnestness and emphasis that I can command. The amalgamation will strike at the root of the bitter discontent which prevails among the officers of the Provincial Service. This discontent was created by the fact that though the two branches of the Superior Service are 418

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admitted to have the same status in theory, in practice a stigma of inferiority has come to be attached to the Provincial Service officer as such, no matter what his qualifications or length of service may be. This brand of inferiority, which is purely gratuitous and unmerited, not to say illogical, has produced in this branch of the service an intense feeling of bitterness which it is absolutely necessary to remove in the interests of sound education and for the efficient working of the department, for we cannot get the best and the most out of a man who smarts under a sense of unjust and undeserved treatment. In the Presidency College, for instance, the most senior man in the “Provincial” Educational Service is treated as junior to the latest recruit to the Indian Educational Service. Thus when there are two Professors of the same subject, one in the Indian Educational Service and the other in the Provincial Educational Service, the officer in the Indian Educational Service is invariably held to be the senior Professor, even though the Provincial Educational Service officer, besides being a teacher of acknowledged efficiency, may be a man of much greater experience and of equal or even greater academic distinctions. After considering the matter with all earnestness and fairmindedness, I am firmly convinced that the only remedy for this most anomalous and unsatisfactory state of affairs is to effect this amalgamation which I have already advocated. The treatment now accorded to Indians by the Educational Department, whether graduates of European or Indian Universities, does not accord well with the British sense of justice and this reproach should be completely wiped out. With these general observations, I beg now to proceed to the specific points on which the Commission has been pleased to invite opinion. 83,676. (I.) The methods of recruitment.—As regards recruitment, I would widen the field of selection by employing more open methods. In the case of appointments carrying special allowances, referred to in paragraph 15, page 5, recruitment should not be made as heretofore. The post should be advertised in the Indian and English papers, and appointment made by a properly constituted Board under the Local Government, which alone knows the local requirements, from among candidates for the post, including those already in the service. That the present method of recruitment, through the India Office, has not been altogether satisfactory, will appear to be obvious to any one who examines the actual facts. The appointments made, say, during the last ten years, cannot be considered, from an academic point of view, as altogether satisfactory. If better men have not been available, that only shows the desirability of adopting the more open method of recruitment as suggested above. Under the present mode of recruitment, men already in the service are excluded from the class of appointments under consideration. Further, the chairs recently created in the Calcutta University are being filled up by the mode of recruitment which takes account of academic qualifications alone. Under this system, on the one hand Europeans like Professor Young, F.R.S., Dr. Oldenberg, Professor Sylvain Levi, Dr. Strauss, Mr. Leslie (as an Assistant Professor in Economics), on the other, Indians like 419

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Dr. B. N. Sil, whose qualifications are entirely Indian but whose distinction as a scholar cannot be questioned, have accepted posts under the University. As regards appointments, other than those carrying special allowances, recruitment should be made from among Indian candidates possessing the highest academic qualifications. Officers of the present Subordinate Educational Service, possessing high academic qualifications and doing college work or belonging to the inspecting staff, should also be regarded as eligible for these appointments. I would advocate, however, that no one doing the work of a College Professor should in future be appointed to the Subordinate Service. 83,677. (II.) System of training and probation.—The conditions of work in the College Department require that an officer should be fully capable of entering on his work as soon as appointed. If the choice is confined to men with real academic distinctions, this object will be secured. There should, however, be a period of probation for two years. Training in the case of a College Professor is synonymous with academic qualifications, and understood in this sense, the methods of recruitment should be so devised as to secure only trained men for the service. But at the same time, officers of the Department, Indian or European, who may have shown special aptitude for research, whether in arts or science, should be encouraged by being given facilities, on equal terms, for visiting Europe and other centres of culture. In the case of a member of the superior inspecting staff, experience in teaching at a college or as Head Master of a collegiate or zilla school, and a knowledge of the vernacular, should be considered essential. 83,678. (III.) Conditions of service.—The officers should have ample leisure for study and research. The rule acquiring a medical certificate for physical fitness may be relaxed at the discretion of the Local Government. Free quarters should be provided for all officers, or quarters provided in consideration of a small percentage deducted from the salary, as is the practice in the Judicial and Executive Services in the more important stations. In Presidency towns where such quarters cannot be provided, or provided with great difficulty, liberal house allowances should be paid, no distinction being made as between Europeans and Indians. At present the Presidency house allowances are given only to members of the Indian Educational Service. This is an irritating distinction which should be done away with as early as possible. Special allowances should be given to Principals of Colleges. The scale of travelling allowance in the case of an officer of the Educational Department should be the same as that of an officer in the Indian Civil Service. Travelling allowances should be determined by the nature of the work done, and not by the amount of salary drawn. 83,679. (IV.) Conditions of salary.—If the extreme importance of the work of education as explained in paragraph 83,675 be adequately realized, it will be readily admitted that the scale of salary in the Educational Department should be so fixed as not to lower the status of an educational officer, as compared with that of the officers of the other branches of the public service. The present scale was fixed more than a quarter of a century ago, and the cost of living has rapidly gone up in 420

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the meantime. It has more than doubled, and this fact demands a very substantial increase in the present rate of pay. 83,680. (V.) Conditions of leave.—Greater facilities should be given to all officers, Indian and European, in the Educational Department for study in Europe. In particular, officers should be permitted to combine a vacation with privilege leave if the total period of the leave is to be spent in study and research. 83,681. (VI.) Conditions of pension.—Twenty-five years’ service should qualify for full pension. Twenty years’ service should also qualify for full pension, if an officer is medically invalided. 83,682. (VII.) Such limitations as may exist in the employment of nonEuropeans and the working of the existing system of division of services into Imperial and Provincial.—In my preliminary remarks I recommended most strongly and earnestly that the two branches of the Superior Service be amalgamated into one service and gave some general reasons which clearly necessitate this step. This I regard to be the crucial point at issue. I now proceed to explain the absolute necessity of adopting this measure, which alone can do away with various anomalies which have arisen in practice and radically remove the bitter and deep-seated discontent among those officers of the Superior Service who are now branded as “Provincial.” In the first place, I am in general agreement with the views which have been submitted through me by the entire body of officers of the Provincial Service, and the main portion of which I take the liberty of reproducing for purposes of ready reference.4 I should, however, strongly deprecate the proposed differentiation of posts into those carrying a full salary and those carrying a lower salary. All the posts in the Superior Service should, in my opinion, be on the same scale of pay; in the case of certain specified posts, however, I am prepared to admit that there should be a special system of allowances ranging from Rs. 300 to Rs. 600 and even Rs. 800, it being understood that recruitment to these posts should be according to the method already advocated by me in paragraph 5. I am opposed to any invidious distinction based on racial considerations, as such a distinction is in reality opposed to the spirit of the recommendations made by the last Public Services Commission. That competent Indian candidates were available at the time when the existing division between the two branches of the service was initiated, is abundantly evidenced by the fact that the last Public Services Commission recommended that recruitment should as a rule be locally made except for certain specific appointments. In accordance with these recommendations, seven Principalships of Colleges, three Inspectorships and a majority of the Professorships under the Bengal Government were served for Indians, and the European service was reduced from 41 to 27 (including the Director of Public Instruction, Assam). Since then there has been a distinctly retrograde move. All the Divisional Inspectorships, practically all the Principalships of colleges have now been reserved for the Indian Educational Service, which is virtually European, and the number of posts in this service 421

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has been raised from 26 to 54, the corresponding increase in the Provincial Educational Service being from 104 to 165. While thus, in all the other services, progress has been in the direction of throwing open to Indians an increased number of appointments usually held by Europeans, in the Education Department most of the more important posts formerly reserved for Indians have now been reserved for Europeans. And yet if the conditions of local recruitment were favourable at the time the last Public Services Commission made their recommendations, they are much more so now, after a steady educational progress for over a quarter of a century. I have already mentioned the fact that Dr. B. N. Sil, a graduate of the Calcutta University, has recently been appointed to the King George V. Chair of Philosophy by the Calcutta University. In my own subject, viz., Chemistry, we have got distinguished scholars and investigators like Rasik Lal Dutt and Nilratan Dhar, men who are now on a fair way towards earning for themselves a European reputation, but under the existing mode of recruitment for the Indian Educational Service, such men have absolutely no chance of entering this higher service. Finally, if graduates of Indian Universities can be appointed to be High Court Judges, members of Executive Councils, and Accountants-General of provinces, I see no reason why they should be debarred from holding the highest appointments in the Education Department. Supplementary written statement relating to the Education Department, being a Memorandum on the Recruitment of the Educational Service. 83,683. I have expressed my views in my corporate capacity on the undesirableness of earmarking a branch of the Educational Service as “Provincial.” In the present memorandum I shall confine myself to one or two points in connection with the method of recruitment of the service and the disadvantages under which its members have to labour. In the Despatch of the Secretary of State for India on the “Reorganisation of the Educational Service of India” 1896, occurs the pronouncement: “In future natives of India who are desirous of entering the education department will usually be appointed in India and to the Provincial Service.” This momentons and unfortunate decision has had the effect of virtually excluding Indians from the higher or the Imperial branch of the service. In reply to a question put in the Imperial Council last year the Honourable Mr. Butler replied that out of 211 appointments in the Imperial branch only 3 were held by natives of India. The present system stifles the legitimate aspirations of our countrymen and keeps away the most meritorious amongst them from the fold of the education department. The hardships of the “Provincial Service” members can best be brought home to the Commission by referring to some concrete instances. Let us take the case of Dr. P. C. Ray, the senior man in the Bengal P.E.S. He studied science at the Presidency College for four years (1878–82) up to the B.A. Standard under Sir John Eliot and Sir Alex. Pedler. In order to round off his education he proceeded to England in 1882 and studied at Edinburgh for 6 years (1882–88) 422

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and sat at the feet of eniment Professors of Science. He took the degree of B.Sc. in 1886 and that of D.Sc. in 1887. It is scarcely necessary to point out that for the latter qualification aptitude for original investigation is a sine qud non. Even after taking his D.Sc. he stayed on for another year so that he might continue his original researches and specialise himself in chemistry. At the completion of his six years’ studies he appeared before the India Office, backed by influential friends, and applied for a post in the education department; but his efforts were unsuccessful. He was advised to return to India and apply to the local government. The sequel to this narrative can be told in a few words. Dr. Ray entered the Education Department in 1889 on a pay of Rs. 250/- per month and served on that remuneration for 7 years, at the end of which period he was promoted to the Rs. 400/grade and after some 17 or 18 years’ service he got to the top of the ladder and was entitled to the maximum pay of the Provincial branch, namely, Rs. 700/- per month. Other members of the service with distinguished European qualifications, e.g., Dr. D. N. Mallik, Dr. Ganesh Prasad, Messrs. J. N. Das Gupta and M. Ghosh have met with a similar fate. I have given an unvarnished statement of my own case in order to present a vivid picture to the Commission of the differential treatment accorded to the two branches of the service. In the “Indian” educational branch the initial pay is Rs. 500/- with the guaranteed increment of Rs. 50/- per annum, or in other words, in 10 years an officer gets Rs. 1,000/- per month; then he is entitled to a further allowance of Rs. 100 per mensem and in special cases he gets a Principalship with a further allowance of Rs. 250/- to Rs. 400/- per month as also house allowance. As far as I am personally concerned I may be allowed to state that the pursuit of science for its own sake has been sufficient reward and stimulus to me; at the same time it is my duty to point out that the prospects held out even to the most deserving members of this service have failed to attract men of brilliant parts to the Educational Service; they have fought shy of seeking a career in this department. I shall relate a short story here. While I was serving on Rs. 250/- for years, a gentleman holding a high position in society asked my advice as to the future career of two of his sons who were my pupils. As he was anxious to give his boys the benefit of an education in England, I naturally suggested that they should study some branches of science and enter the educational service. “What, another P. C. Ray!” he exclaimed. From his own point of view I think he was fully justified, for both his sons competed for and entered the Civil Service. The present system also penalises the intellectual activity especially the pursuit of science amongst our countrymen. India is a backward country—her people compared to that of the western countries lack in public spirit and self-help and in the power of organisation. Here the State is often called upon to undertake duties which in England are taken up with alacrity by the people themselves. Scientific education is the crying want of India and one naturally looks up to the State for fostering and encouraging it. One of the ways in which the government can do its duty in this matter is by providing employments to the scientifically trained 423

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Indians, but by a bitter irony of fate the Indian has been virtually excluded not only from the higher appointments in the educational service but also from the Geological Department, and rigidly denied admission in the Great Trigonometrical Survey, the Meteorological Department, the Botanical Survey, as also from the “Imperial” branch of the Pusa Agricultural Institute and the Forest and Telegraph departments, and so forth. The denial of a suitable career takes away all incentive for the specialised study of sciences either at home or abroad. An embargo has thus been placed upon the cultivation of science in this country. The present method of selection by the Secretary of State is open to serious objection for more reasons than one. It is now a matter of common knowledge that only men of indifferent attainments care to come out to India, and the filling up of posts by them has seriously lowered the standard of scholarship in India. A raw graduate fresh from college, even if he can boast of First Class honours, is a dark horse. The committee of the Dacca University have fully realised this evil as they observe: “In general, men of about 40 years of age will be best, as younger men will not have had the necessary experience. At this age, too, successful men will have acquired habits of study and research which should withstand the effects of climate and environment. Young Englishmen, however brilliant, who, having only just finished their examinations, and started original work, come out to India find in many cases their enthusiasm weakened by the lack of an inspiring environment, and their difficulties exaggerated by the absence of the accustomed facilities and the help of older men. Under such circumstances a few men of exceptional calibre and strength of character will still manage to advance knowledge and earn a reputation, but the many, who might have been successful under more favourable conditions, will very soon drop original work altogether.”—p. 56. The method of recruitment in vague has created serious discontent amongst the members of the Provincial Educational Service. The differentiation between the two services is based upon racial ground and not on merit, for it cannot be said that the higher service is filled with men of higher intellectual calibre. If sound scholarship, life-long devotion to the subject of choice and capacity for original researches be accepted at tests and criteria of an efficient teacher, I believe the “Provincial” men will on the whole score over the “Imperial.” Pandit Hara Prasad Sastri, C.I.E., as an antiquarian, Professor Monomohun Ghose, poet and literatour, Dr. D. N. Mallik (wrangler) on whom the University of Dublin conferred the degree of D.Sc. on account of original researches in mathematical physics, Professor Jadunath Sarkar, who is rightly regarded as a higher authority on “India under Aurangzib” have had few equals in the service. Under the existing artificial and arbitrary mode of filling up vacancies in the Imperial branch, the best local men—natives of India—some of whom have earned a European reputation by their researches are excluded, while third rate men of great Britain and Ireland find easy admission. It is a sad mistake also to take for granted that merely because a man has been educated in an Indian University he is necessarily of inferior calibre and attainments. The competition lies 424

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between the third rate men brought out from England and first rate Indians. In this connection I cannot do better than reproduce here the short speech which I delivered at the last “Congress of the Universities of the Empire” in my capacity as a delegate of the Calcutta University. “I rise, my Lord, to associate myself with the weighty remarks made by my brother delegates from the Colonies, Prof. H. B. Allen (Melbourne) and Prof. Frank Allen (Manitoba). “The Indian graduate also is placed under peculiar disadvantages when he undertakes to pursue his post-graduate studies in a British University. My Lord, I plead for a more generous recognition of the merits of an Indian graduate; he has, I am afraid, the badge of inferiority stamped upon him simply because he happens to be an Indian-made ware. I can speak with some degree of confidence about the particular subject which I have the honour to profess, namely Chemistry. Now, of late there have been some brilliant students engaged in post-graduate researches and as their communications find hospitable reception in the columns of the leading British Chemical Journal, I take it that they are considered as of a fair degree of merit and yet it is a strange anomaly that when the authors of these investigations come over here and aspire for a high British degree, they are made to go through the trodden path in the shape of having to pass the preliminary examinations and this has a depressing and deterrent effect upon the enthusiam of our youths. I think the suggestion made by a previous speaker that such a scholar should only be made to pass through a probationary period under the guidance of a teacher whom he chooses and if he fully satisfies him the Colonial or Indian student should at once be allowed to go up for the highest degree on the strength of his thesis alone. “Sir Joseph Thomson has spoken about the rich endowments and scholarships required to encourage a post-graduate scholar. The Calcutta University has already founded a good few post-graduate scholarships and expects to have more. But I beg, however, to remind the representatives of the British Universities present here that we in India have from time immemorial held aloft the high ideal of plain living and high thinking and that with even comparatively poor stipends and bursaries we hope to achieve much. “My Lord, I do not for a moment claim that the teaching our Universities impart is of the same degree of efficiency as in the sister British Universities—in fact we have much to learn from you—but I beg leave to remind you that in spite of their many defects and drawbacks, our Universities have produced some of the brightest ornaments of our country. The foremost lawyer of Calcutta—a man renowned throughout India for his high forensic attainments—is a graduate of the Calcutta University. Three of the most eminent physicians and surgeons of Calcutta, who have attained to phenomenal success in their professional career are, again, graduates of my own University and last but not least the present Vice-Chancellor of our University, who enjoys the unique distinction of being three times in succession elected to his onerous duties by the Chancellor of the University, who is no other than the Viceroy himself,—I say, Sir A. T. Mookerjee is also a product of the same University. 425

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“My Lord, before I resume my seat I once more plead for a more generous recognition of the teaching imparted in our Colleges.” In the sphere of original researches in science, especially in Chemistry, some of our graduates at the Presidency College are showing remarkable capacity—their investigations are being published in the leading scientific journals in England, Germany and America (vide the annexed reprint of an article in the “Modern Review”) and yet whenever any vacancies occur in the department, their claims are cooly ignored and the sad spectacle is witnessed of the posts being filled up by raw graduates from England, who are admittedly their inferiors and who have got no original work to their credit. The Indian graduates suffer a grievous injustice and the obvious way to remedy it would be to throw the gates of admission wide open to merit alone irrespective of racial considerations. Recruitment should be in the first place local and the power of selection should also be entrusted to a thoroughly representative Board of Literary and Scientific Experts in India. In case of a vacancy, the Board should be empowered to advertise in the local papers and to receive applications. It is only in the contingency of a suitable candidate not being available on the spot, a requisition should be made to the Secretary of State. In the next place there should be one Educational Service in the country and the system of two compartments of the service, one called the Indian Educational Service and the other the Provincial Educational Service, should be done away with. The proposed service will have one cadre of appointments with equal pay and prospect and the consideration of fitness and merit will be the only criteria for promotion to the highest posts of the service. In the case of Europeans appointed in England a special allowance not exceeding one-fourth of their ordinary pay may be given to them in view of their service in a distant country. In other respects the rights and privileges of the Europeans and the Indians in the service should be absolutely similar. There is another strong reason in favour of employing Indian agency. A European naturally looks to India as a land of exile and his thoughts are always turned homeward. As soon as he joins his apointment he begins to look forward to his furlough and even during summer holidays he often runs home. Socially speaking, the European lives quite apart and it is only in rare cases that he is found to mix on equal terms with his pupils. The result is that he fails to create anything like an intellectual atmosphere. Moreover, the European when he retires from the service leaves India for good and all the experience which he gathered during his tenure of office are clean lost to the country. But the mature experiences of an Indian after retirement are always at the disposal of his countrymen; he is in fact a valuable national asset.

DR. P. C. ROY called and examined. 83,684. (Chairman.) The witness said his main contention was that no organisation of the Educational Service could be satisfactory which was based on race, 426

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and not on the nature of the work done. The Indian and the Provincial Educational Services should be merged into one. The present arrangement only gave rise to heart-burning, whilst a great many officers smarted under sense of positive injury. It was not consistent with a sense of self-respect that men equally educated, doing the same kind of work and of equal calibre, should be ranked in two different services. At present there was practically no difference between the kind of work done in a college by a Provincial and an Imperial man. The Provincial Professor was doing precisely the same kind of work, was teaching the same classes and giving the same quality of instruction to those classes as his Senior Professor. 83,685. Recruitment should be made by the local Government, and not by the India Office. The India Office would not give a fair chance to Indians. The posts should be advertised first in the local market, and if suitable men were not forthcoming—and then alone—the local Government should send to England for a qualified man. If there was an eligible Indian in England, the local Government ought to appoint him with the aid of a committee of experts in India. The Secretary of State should have nothing to do with the matter. The local Government would be in a position to give better advice on the subject, even although the Indian resided in England. As bearing out his contention, he mentioned that the Calcutta University had managed to bring out such men as Dr. Young, F.R.S., and Professor Jacobic without the help of the India Office at all. 83,686. Recruitment for the more responsible posts in the service should be both by direct appointment from the Universities in India and by promotion. He preferred the method of direct recruitment, but certain posts should certainly be reserved for promotion from the lower ranks. 83,687. He set some store on the average Indian man undergoing a European course. A man with this experience would often be a more efficient officer than one who had been appointed straight from an Indian University. He desired to point out, however, that there were very eminent men in India, e.g., Sir A. T. Mukherji, Dr. Rash Behary Ghosh and Mr. Gokhale, who had never had any sort of education in Europe. There could be no hard-and-fast rule on the point. 83,688. With regard to salary, many of the witness’s colleagues were in favour of two classes of pay, but he (the witness) deprecated any such system. He would give all members of the service the same pay, but to those who had shown extraordinary merit he would add something in the shape of a compensation allowance. 83,689. The bare fact that a man was a European, and had been educated in a British University, did not mean that he was likely to turn out a successful teacher. It was too often assumed that, because a man had been brought out from England, he was therefore an expert and a specialist. This was quite inaccurate. 83,690. All the divisional inspectorships and practically all the principalships of the colleges had now been reserved for the Indian Educational Service. That had been done four or five years ago whilst Sir Archdale Earle was Dierctor of Public Instruction. The few principalships in the Provincial Service, which had been promised at the time of the reorganization scheme, had been snatched away. 427

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There was only one divisional inspector now left in the Provincial Educational Service, and there was no knowing when that post would also be taken away. 83,691. There was a sufficient staff in his college for the work to be done. 83,692. (Lord Ronaldshay.) The education which an Indian received in India was ordinarily quite sufficient to enable him to carry out the duties which would be required of him when he joined the Educational Service. He did not think any period of training in Europe in addition to an Indian education was essential, but it had its uses. 83,693. The recommendation that a special allowance, not exceeding onefourth of their ordinary pay, might be given to Europeans appointed in England, in view of their service in a distant country, expressed the view which the members of the service now generally held, but they thought it should be applied only to exceptional cases. The authority making the appointment would decide in each case whether the candidate had made a name for himself or not. 83,694. (Sir Theodore Morison.) The scale of salary for the proposed amalgamated service might run from Rs. 300 to Rs. 1,500, but in exceptional cases, such as the head of a department, higher pay should be granted. The proposal that there should be five grades beyond the time-scale was the view of his colleagues, and not of himself. 83,695. The amount of the monthly increments should depend on whether the officer was an average man or was of exceptional ability, and had made a name for himself by his researches. For an average man a suitable arrangement would be to begin at Rs. 300 and to rise to Rs. 700 or Rs. 800 by annual increments of Rs. 30. If among the officers recruited at Rs. 300 a month a man of unusual capacity was discovered, he should either he promoted over the heads of his seniors to the Rs. 500 grade, which would no doubt cause some heart-burning, or be given a special personal allowance. 83,696. (Mr. Gokhale.) There were exceptional facilities for carrying on original research at the Presidency College, and there was as good material in the country as elsewhere for this purpose. Two of his own pupils, for instance, over and above their academic distinctions, which were of the highest, had contributed papers to all the leading scientific journals in England, Germany and America. Again, only last week he had received a letter from Sir Henry Roscoe, in which that gentleman congratulated him, not so much on account of his own researches, as of the brilliant work done by his pupils. If some of his pupils had the further advantage of visiting some of the laboratories in Europe and seeing the kind of work which was done there, and coming in contact with the great men in their subject, they could fill the chairs of chemistry in India with the greatest success, and would do the work as well or better than any young man who could be brought out fresh from the European Universities, who is more or less of the nature of a dark horse. 83,697. (Mr. Fisher.) Recruitment should be in the hands of the local Governments, and they should advertise appointments both in England and in India. In this way each local Government would have three alternatives before it on the occurrence of each vacancy; it might either promote in the foot of the cadre a 428

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junior who was already in the service, or appoint a freshly graduated Indian of distinction over the heads of those who were already in the service, or it might call in a man from Europe, either an Indian or an Englishman. 83,698. Promotion within the service should very largely be regulated by distinction in original research, but it would also be necessary at times to advance men who had done no research work but who had other important educational qualifications. He quite admitted that in an Indian college, as in an English college, a great deal of the educational work was on a very much lower plane than the plane on which he and Dr. Bose conducted their researches, and that it was primarily important to obtain men who were efficient teachers and guides of youth. Such men would very often not possess great scientific attainments, but yet might be a most valuable element on the teaching staff of the college. It followed from that that it was really in the interests of advanced college education in India that exclusive stress should not he laid upon power to conduct original research. That must always be the prerogative of the rather highly talented man. 83,699. (Mr. Macdonald.) The witness was aware that he might be charged with sacrificing teaching to original research, but he had found that in England a man who was appointed to professorial duties could only rise to that distinction by reason of the work which he had produced. When a chair fell vacant in England, the Board of Selection was guided more by a man’s original contributions in the particular branch of study than anything else. Moreover, the best teachers were ordinarily these who were the best original workers and experimentalists. 83,700. (Mr. Madge.) He agreed that there was room for improvement in the present system of education in Indian Universities, but the Universities were now starting on a new phase, and the present state of things would not continue for very much longer. 83,701. (Mr. Abduc Rahim.) An Indian, who received a European education, did acquire thereby a certain advantage, in that his outlook on life was widened and his views broadened. He did not at all under-rate the value of European education, but he found the custom was for a man to take a Cook’s holiday trip, spend six months or a year abroad, and then return with some indifferent degrees and claim credit over his Indian colleagues. 83,702. With regard to the suggestion that a certain European element in the Educational Service was of great advantage in modelling the character of young men, the witness said that was a very delicate subject. It entirely depended upon the personality of the teacher. The right man would produce a very wholesome influence, and the wrong man just the opposite effect. His contention was that an Indian teacher could produce a much greater effect than the European, because the former lived and moved and had his being amongst Indians whereas a European, however well disposed he might be, lived in a world apart. He quite admitted that there were certain exceptions to that rule, and there was no denying the fact that Europeans had to a large extent built up the educational system of India. 429

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83,703. (Sir Valentine Chirol.) It could be assumed that a graduate of an Indian University possessed the same educational equipment as a graduate of a British University of the same degree. 83,704. (Sir Murray Hammick.) Professor Young had come out for three or four years on a salary of Rs. 1,000 a month and house allowances; Dr. Oldenbergh was to be a University reader for a few months at a special fee, and Professor Sylvain Lévi was in the same position. Mr. Leslie had been appointed Assistant Professor of Political Economy. Dr. Strauss’s salary was Rs. 600 a month. The latter appointment was for a certain number of years. 83,705. (Mr. Biss.) While there was only one Indian Divisional Inspector, it was true that there were only two European Inspectors in Bengal. 83,706. The Presidency College had no monopoly of research work. At Dacca, Professor Watson was doing research, and some of his pupils were giving a good account of themselves. Professor Watson was doing excellent work, and the University of London had conferred the degree of Dr. on him during the present year. 83,707. It was the fact that the European Professors of the Presidency College had for a very long time been asking for quarters to enable them to come into closer contact with the students. 83,708. He could not conceive of any considerations which could be urged in favour of the employment of Englishmen as Englishmen. 83,709. (Mr. Gupta.) Under his scheme for the amalgamation of the Provincial and the Indian Educational Services the laboratory assistants in the Department of Chemistry should come into the subordinate service; but if they showed exceptional merit, they should be promoted to the higher service. 83,710. Indian Professors on the Art side should be placed on the same footing as graduates of English Universities, and the same pay and privileges should be extended to them. One effect of the inauguration of the Provincial Educational Service some years ago had been to scare away the best intellects of the country from the Educational Department. The general interests of education in Bengal had suffered very much on that account. (The witness withdrew.)

Notes 1. Signed by Dr. P. C. Roy on behalf of the members of the Provincial Educational Service, Bengal. This written statement was subsequently modified by the supplementary and the further supplementary written statements, which follow. Dr. P. C. Roy’s own evidence will be found in paragraphs 83,675–83,710. 2. The term “Indians” has been used throughout this note in the sense of “Statutory Natives of India.” 3. Dr. P. C. Roy also submitted a written statement on behalf of the members of the Provincial Educational Service in Bengal, vide paragraph 83,667. 4. The memorandum referred to will be found in paragraph 83,567.

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THE NACULAR MEDIUM VIEWS OF AN OLD TEACHER § 1. Charges against our graduates. IN all civilised countries, next to religion educational questions provoke the greatest differences of opinion and even engender heat. If this criticism of the educational system and methods prepares the ground for constructive reform, it should be welcomed; because such discontent with the existing system is a healthy sign of interest in education and of the spirit of progress in the community. But judging from the public discussions on the subject, there seems to be something essentially wrong with the present system of education in India; the evil is deeper than the mere unsuitability of this or that detail. The whole system is denounced for inefficiency and barrenness. We are told that the first products of English education in India,—namely, the scholars of the old Hindu College of Calcutta and of Dr. Duff’s missionary college; were giants; they produced masterly writers of English prose, leaders of society, and creators of new branches of vernacular literature. But the numerous graduates turned out of our University factories now-a-days are a puny race, whose slovenly English is kept in countenance only by the slipshod style of European journalism in India. The new race of our graduates, it is asserted, lack originality and depth; they are fit to be clerks and pleaders, but not masters of literature, either in erudition or in creative power. The second proof of the alleged rottenness of the present educational system is the heavy “massacre” of B.A. candidates,—sometimes amounting to 80 p.c., as in Madras and Allahabad in recent years. We are not concerned today with investigating the cause of such excessive “ploughing,”—whether it is due, to irrational severity on the part of the examiners, inefficiency on the part of the teachers, or a cruel leniency in the lower examinations leading up to the B.A. We only desire to point out the frightful waste of young lives and energy that such heavy failures at examinations involve. Who is responsible for it, and how long will it continue without being remedied? Where lies the remedy? That is worth inquiring into.

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The aim of education is not to pump information into a man, but to develop his latent faculties. If we study two plays of Shakespeare at college, it is only to train ourselves in the art of understanding other plays of the same writer without the help of a teacher. Then, again, the educated man must prove himself fitter for his duties than his uneducated brother, otherwise his education has no justification. How far has this been the case with us during the last generation? The charges brought against our graduates, by our own countrymen even oftener than by foreigners, are— (a) Our studies are not kept up after leaving college; and, hence, English education does not become a part of our life, nor does it influence our outlook upon the world. The chasm between the (English) school and the (Oriental) home remains unbridged. (b) We acquire too much of book learning, mere knowledge of the theory of things, but lack general intelligence and the power of readily and successfully adapting ourselves to new things. (c) Few or none among our graduates reach the position of experts or attain to perfection in their particular branches. We are an army of mediocres. (d) No addition has been made by us to the world’s stock of knowledge; in the temples of Saraswati in England, Germany and France the modern Indians are regarded as “intellectual Pariahs.” § 2. The charges examined. The last two of these charges refer to very ambitious ideals, and we shall leave them out of our consideration here. Time is, also, supplying an answer to them. We turn to the general intellectual level of our graduates, which is rather low. (People who know both the countries say that it is no higher for the “Poll” or Pass B.A. degree at Oxford or Cambridge. But then England and English Society have certain curatives which we lack.) True University education must, no doubt, form the character, develop the intellect, and infuse the spirit of searching for and accepting the truth. Apart from the influence of well-organised corporate life in residential colleges, and the personal example of good teachers in all colleges, we can influence our students only through books. We must give them good books, and we must make them read them, think on them, and then try to apply their knowledge to the world around them. It, therefore, logically follows that our teaching misses its highest possible results in proportion as our pupils do not revert to books in later life. Where this is the case it is due to three causes: (1) The high standard of living we have recently adopted, which requires strenuous work in professional life in order to secure the necessary income. We cannot afford to rest or enjoy ourselves or even take a holiday, (as Europeans invariably do, with the result of lengthening their lives). (2) Modern Indian society has counter attractions, even among the things of the mind, which lure us away from English books. 432

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(3) We have to use an abnormal medium of instruction. This last brings me to the main point of my discourse. § 3. Intellectual effects of using a foreign tongue. If the end of education is to make men think, then it is unquestionably abnormal teach us in a language in which we do not think,—a language which we do not use at home, in the market-place, in the workshop—and often not even in the club,—a language the use of which always requires a straining (however secret) of the mental powers, even on the part of the greatest among us. A process of perpetual translation cannot be a mental recreation. The experience of other countries may help us to understand the situation in India better. In the Middle Ages education in England was imparted through the medium of a foreign tongue, viz., Latin, and students had to answer questions in the same language. Hence culture was confined to a very small section of the community, and intellectual barrenness was the result. Some good lawyers and theologians were, no doubt, produced, but not a single original thinker or writer. In Scotland, lectures on philosophy were delivered in Latin up to 1700, when the mother tongue of the students was adopted in teaching and examination; and the Scottish intellect at once flowered in an array of philosophers who are the glory of English literature—Hamilton, Reid, Stewart, and others. In England to-day many students read advanced works written in German or French, but they are taught and examined in their mother tongue. In Japan, German or English is compulsory as a second language, and not as the principal medium of instruction and examination. Hence their knowledge is real and deep, while ours is often rudimentary or mere book-learning dissociated from life. Take an example. A Matriculation candidate in India is usually 16 or even 17 years old. He may be fairly compared with a 6th form boy in a school in England. The Indian boy is taught and examined in a history of India written in English, and because English is a foreign tongue to him, in order to diminish the pressure on him, the size of this history of India has been wisely reduced to about 150 printed pages. He therefore reads a very elementary work, which merely gives a hazy picture and burdens his memory, without teaching him the philosophy of history, or unfolding the full panorama of India’s growth through the ages. The English boy of a corresponding standard reads a history of his country written in his mother tongue; he can therefore easily and unaided by his teacher study a truly instructive and large history of England like John Richard Green’s great work. Thus, our insistence on the English medium for Indian boys, compels our sons when 17 years old to read works meant for little boys of ten and thus cramps their minds, while English Matrics come equipped with advanced knowledge suited to their age. Supposing that English 6th form boys were taught Roman history written in Latin, and asked to write their answers in Latin, their historical knowledge would be extremely scanty and puerile, though their knowledge of the Latin tongue would be a trifle better. Knowledge of things would be 433

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sacrificed to mere knowledge of words. That is the unhappy condition of Indian students to-day. § 4. The rival schools of educational experts on the vernacular medium. The evil had attracted the attention of many Indian educationists and wellwishers of our boys very early. As far back as 1897 or so, at the instance of Sir Gurudas Banerji and Babu Hirendra Nath Dutt, the Bengali Sahitya Parishad consulted more than a hundred experienced teachers and public leaders and published their views on the subject in one volume. Opinion was then found to be sharply divided into two schools: The first, ably represented by Mr. N. N. Ghosh (Principal, Metropolitan Institution, Mr. H. M. Percival (Professor, Presidency College, Calcutta), and Rai Bahadur Radhika P. Mukherji (Inspector of Schools), held that the best way to improve a boy’s knowledge of English is to make him read English books in all subjects, and not to relegate English to the position of a second language. Mr. Ghosh wished our College students to swim in an ocean of English literature and thus make it almost a mother tongue to themselves. Prof. Percival held that the vernacular medium of teaching and examination might do for those who wanted to stop at the Matriculation examination, but for those who wanted to go through a college course English should be the medium in all subjects from as early a stage in the school as possible, otherwise they would find it difficult to follow lectures and read text-books in English in the college classes. Radhika Babu strengthened his view by referring to the well-known fact that the Middle English Examination passed students (who had been accustomed to English as a second language only), when they join a Matriculation school, (usually in the 3rd class or 4th form), no doubt show remarkable superiority to the boys trained from the beginning in H. E. Schools in Mathematics, History and Sanskrit through the English medium, but this superiority rapidly disappears in a few years, while their deplorable inferiority in English continues throughout their academic career. The other party, whose chief exponent was the poet Rabindranath Tagore, held that by teaching Mathematics, History, Science and Geography in our mother tongue, we can not only secure greater thoroughness but also effect a reduction of the time taken in teaching these subjects, and the time so saved may be used in giving the boys a more thorough knowledge of English. Thus, according to him, the vernacular medium would ensure a deeper knowledge of things and of the English language also, at the same time. § 6. Objections to the vernacular medium answered. Mr. N. N. Ghosh’s view was based upon a misconception. From the example of our exceptional scholars he imagined that when our average school boys are asked to prepare a subject (such as History) in English, they read good pieces of literature bearing on that subject. He forgot that 99 boys out of a hundred would read only a cram-book, in which the information has been boiled down to the smallest 434

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compass, and literary beauties pruned away as useless! Or, oftener, they would commit to memory a catechism on the subject, or so-and-so’s Fifty Questions with Answers, which are certified as infallible at the Matriculation examination! The actual result, as every school-master in India knows, is neither the acquisition of a real knowledge of facts nor a decent mastery of the English language. Even our very best boys suffer to some extent from this abnormal system. The present writer, if he may be pardoned for referring to his own case, was one of the best scholars of his university in English; but he frankly confesses that he did not at the time of his first reading it understand certain passages in Hunter’s Brief History of the Indian People, an excellent piece of literature, which was his Matriculation Course. (He, however, did not use any crib. But that is immaterial to the question before us.) The necessity of the vernacular medium from the educational point of view has, I hope, been established beyond dispute. By large numbers of our countrymen, it is, however, objected to, from certain other points of view. The first objection is political: amidst the Babel of India’s tongues, English is the only possible universal language and the only means of communication and national union to the various races inhabiting this vast continent of a country. My answer to this objection is that English is at present an instrument of thought and medium of expression to only a few lakhs of men out of a population of 31 crores. A few lakhs more can talk “pigeon English” like the Chinese at Canton, but their mastery of the language is not sufficient to enable them to write letters or read books in it, and the use to which they at present put their English can be equally well served by the “railway traveller’s Hindustani” which all of us possess. Political union by means of a thorough knowledge of English is feasible only in the case of our “upper ten thousand”. But what means of union do you propose for the middle ten millions who can not read English daily papers nor speak anything but pigeon English? Happily, community of language is not so important an element in nationbuilding as community of thought and life. Language is only an instrument for the purpose of national union, but thought or life is the essential thing. Readers of De Tocqucville’s Ancien Regime will remember how that gifted writer shows that a wonderful sameness of thought had spread over France on the eve of the Revolution of 1789 and made the Revolution possible, though the immense majority of Frenchmen in that age were illiterate. In India today this sameness of thought or uniformity of culture is being effected by our vernacular newspapers and magazines, which, I admit, merely reproduce the thoughts and spirit of our English papers. But the agency that actually and directly effects our national union is vernacular and not English. There is a wonderful sameness between the best Bengali, Marathi, Hindi and Gujrati magazines, and even newspapers. And this sameness would certainly not cease when our boys are taught and examined in their mother tongue, because the English papers conducted by Indians would remain, the English language and literature would remain for the instruction of the upper ten; only the middle ten millions would 435

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then begin to talk intelligently and think rationally in their mother-tongue instead of talking in pigeon-English and not thinking at all. § 7. Practical difficulties considered. The second objection is based upon the unequal development of the different Indian vernaculars; for example Bengali, Marathi, Gujrati, Hindi and Telugu have each a more advanced, more varied and more numerous literature than say Panjabi, Kanarese or Sindhi; and therefore while collegiate instruction can be immediately given in the former group of vernaculars it is impossible with the latter group. My answer is, why should the backward races drag the more advanced races down to the pit of intellectual barrenness and mere verbal knowledge? Why should the only rational education be denied to millions simply because a few hundred thousands of other people are not ready for it? A third objection is that where the population is composed of the members of two or three different tongues, and only the vernacular of the majority can be adopted in the class-room, the minority speaking the other vernaculars will be excluded from instruction. Not necessarily, I reply. These minorities may be concentrated in their special schools, where their mother-tongue would be used. A few isolated students, like Madrasi boys in a Bengal town or Bengali boys in a Panjab town will suffer, no doubt. But that is no reason for denying true education to the immense mass of Bengalis or Panjabis. And even these minorities need not suffer. If they use text-books written in their own vernaculars up to the prescribed standard of their province, they will scarcely feel the absence of a teacher familiar with their vernaculars, because where books are written in one’s mother tongue even boys can read them unaided. The difficulty will be only in examining them in small isolated places. And supposing that they have to read the vernacular of the province, they will be hardly worse off than now. Every average Bengali school boy can derive no less instruction from a Hindi history of India than he at present does from a history of the same country written in English which he understands imperfectly. The only sufferers will be a few, viz., the best boys foreign to the province, who are very strong in English. After all, these minorities cannot turn the scale against millions who will benefit by the vernacular medium. To serve a few we are now content with a low “general” standard for all by making that standard English. § 8. The true objections. As a practical teacher, I anticipate that the most serious obstacle to the extended use of the vernaculars in colleges will be their present poverty in scholarly books. The stage to which university instruction (as distinct from school teaching) can be carried on in a vernacular depends on the amount, variety and value of the literature already available in that vernacular. An example will make my meaning clear. Bengali is said to be the richest among the Indian tongues; but even in Bengali

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there is no translation of Vincent Smith’s Early History of India, Macdonell’s History of Sanskrit Literature, Tout or Oman’s School History of England, Bury’s Greece or Shuckburgh’s Rome,—not to speak of more advanced or specialised treatises in English. Our poverty is even greater in respect of scientific works. To this it is answered that as soon as the vernacular medium is recognised by the university, good books in all subjects would be written in our mother-tongue. A horde of hungry literary hacks are, no doubt, waiting for that day. But what would be the value of their works? I have heard it openly argued in our Literary Conferences and Academies that the introduction of the vernacular medium in our colleges was necessary as the best means of enriching our literature and giving bread to our starving authors! This is putting the cart before the horse. It should never be forgotten that the great literature of England is not the creation of textbook writers; it has grown out of the patronage of a body much larger and far wiser than our Central Text-book Committees and Boards of Studies. To my mind the most fatal objection to the extension of the vernacular medium above the Intermediate standard is not the lack of suitable text-books (for that want can be very soon and very easily removed), but the utter absence of higher works in our vernaculars. Such a state of things would inevitably lower the intellectual level of the vernacular university, were one created just now. Where all the scholarly books, works of reference, learned journals, and special treatises are written in English and the students have a limited mastery of English, their knowledge is sure to be confined to their (vernacular) textbooks and their teachers’ lectures; they cannot supplement these two scanty sources by private reading, and they miss the true end of university education; they cannot gain intellectual freedom and they cannot become true scholars. If, for instance, I have to study the ancient Hindu remains of Siam and IndoChina, in which subject all the best books are in French, and I possess only an elementary knowledge of that tongue, it will be a slow and painful task to me to read those French books, and I should, if I were a student preparing for an examination within a limited time, be tempted to confine myself to my (English or vernacular) text-book on the subject and my professor’s spoken words without any means of correcting or supplementing them. If, however, the introduction of the vernacular medium does not result in a lowering of our boys’ knowledge of English, the above objection cannot hold good. Actual experience alone can show whether such will be the result or not. The example of our Middle-English-passed school boys, however, does not incline one to be optimistic. § 9. What is practicable at present. To sum up, I think it is practicable and necessary at the present day to make Bengali the medium of teaching and examination in our schools and also in our colleges up to the Intermediate standard only. The boys may read English books, but they must answer in Bengali. In scientific subjects, English technical terms

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should be freely either written in English or transliterated in Bengali. But angels and ministers of grace defend us from the philological horrors coined by the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad and the Nagri Pracharini Sabha in their “Glossary of English Scientific terms translated into the Vernacular” (Baijnanik Paribhasha). I do not share the linguistic purist’s horror of such mixture of tongues. The English themselves have it, e.g., gas is a word of Dutch origin and not English, but it has been bodily taken into the English vocabulary. Why then should not we naturalise it in our tongue unchanged instead of adopting a polysyllabic monstrosity of Sanskrit origin to express its meaning? Our pandits have been the greatest enemies of the introduction of the vernacular medium, by their insistence on a difficult artificial literary Bengali style, which is often more obscure than English to us. Allow a simple unadorned vernacular style in the answers at University examinations as the best means of ensuring true knowledge. JADUNATH SARXAR.

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BY K.M, PANIKKAR, B.A. (OXON.), M.R.A.S., DIXON SCHOLAR OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. THE PROBLEMS OF INDIAN EDUCATION. The questions of national education, answer them as you will, touch the life and death of nations.—Viscount Morley of Blackburn.

I. THOUGHT and word, it has been well said, are inchoate action; and every institution that considers its moral or legal right as an insufficient guarantee for its continued existence tries to control not only men’s actions but their thoughts and words. Every government that is interested in maintaining the status quo thus finds itself invariably trying to mould the thoughts and opinions of men, not merely in those spheres that directly affect the governmental institutions but in all the varied phases of human activity. The best method of such a control has been at all times recognised to lie in the effective manipulation of the educational machinery of the community. The extreme republicanism of the government of France is being imposed upon the community by its educational policy, just in the same way as the autocratic monarchy of Prussia tries to perpetuate itself by a State control of the universities. This principle, which has been from time immemorial the mainstay of every party in power, is best illustrated by the educational policy of the British government in India. Indeed, education seems to have been at no time free and unhindered in our country. Brahminical India used all the power which it possessed in trying to impose a status education which would perpetuate its own supremacy. It is easy for a critic to find exact parallels for our present educational disabilities in the general policy of Brahminical India. If we now object that education is given to us through the medium of a foreign language, it could effectively be pointed out that Brahminical India did the same thing, insisted on education through Sanskrit, which was somewhat like a foreign language to the vast majority of the inhabitants of that time as English is today. If we now object that naval and military 439

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education is prohibited and opportunities for higher engineering and constructive skill are denied to us under the British government, it could be pointed out that the punishment for a Sudra hearing the sacred words of the Vedas was mutilation. And that at no time of Indian history were educational disabilities so wide, and so rigorously enforced as in Brahminical India. Such an argument does our cause no harm. It only establishes beyond doubt our principle that the powers that be has always tried ‘to continue to be’ by an effective control of opinion through the educational machinery. In India under Britain, as in India under the Brahmins, the preservation of racial supremacy is the fundamental and apparently unalterable maxim of policy. This distrust of freedom is the basic fact that we have to face, and any reconstruction of Indian Educational values must be preceded by a change in this essentially wrong attitude towards social growth. Indian education is now wholly under the control of the State. The State manages and moulds educational policy and ideal as thoroughly and as effectively as ever the Brahmans or the Jesuits did. The universities are founded on government charter and exist on its sufferance. Their governing bodies are government controlled. Their examinations are the only gateway to government appointment, thus discouraging all independent educational attempts. It inspects the curriculum, discourages the study of certain subjects, encourages the extensive diffusion of certain others, and tries to circumscribe the intellect in narrow grooves. It limits the activity of the teacher, prohibits him from having opinions on vital questions, imposes upon him obligations which no honourable and patriotic citizen could accept. The history of the educational policy in India is the history of the progressive systematisation of this distrust of freedom, of the progressive adoption of the principle of status education, of the progressive elaboration of the methodology to realise that principle. This distrust of freedom which thus makes a constructive nationalist educational ideal imperative is seen not only in higher education, but more significantly in the policy pursued by the bureaucracy with regard to primary education. In studying it, one fact seems patent: the bureaucracy are afraid of educating the people. Nothing shows better the moral weakness of the British bureaucracy in India than the undoubted fact that they have definitely discouraged compulsory primary education. By raising the cost of higher education they have tried to limit the higher education of the people. By refusing them universal primary education they have tried and in a very great measure succeeded in keeping the people ignorant. The universal control of our educational institutions by the bureaucracy is the most demoralising fact in the complicated problem of our national existence. Even such institutions as the Benares Hindu University, which comes into existence with the blessings of the Government, do not by any means escape this vigorous and all-embracing control of the Indian bureaucracy. It is suspected and watched. The Government reserves the right of disapproving the nomination of any professor. It refuses to sanction Hindi as the medium of education. When 440

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even such a satellite institution is under suspicion, it is impossible that independent experiments such as the Gurukula and the Santiniketan should be left alone. The Government is keeping a watchful eye on them and we may be certain that it would never allow those institutions in any way to interfere with its general policy of educational servility. This however is not the only defect of our educational policy. An education for the express purpose of maintaining status relations necessarily tends to become formal. Its methodology becomes rigid and loses its meaning. As it is animated by no principle of progression but only by a desire to better the machinery, its formalism comes to be of the most deadening type ensuring a ‘Chinese’ type of stationary society. Such a process is inevitable and the educational policy of the British Government since 1834 has shown this more conclusively than ever. Macaulay wrote his omniscient minute in that year. It laid once and for ever the basis of the Anglo-Indian system of education. We are not concerned here with a criticism of that system; our business in this essay is to analyse and interpret the Educational Ideal of Indian Nationalism. What we have to recognise with regard to the Anglo-Indian system is that from 1834 its tendency has been to become progressively unreal, so that today it is a machinery which stunts our growth, a mass of unreality expressing no meaning and capable of expressing none, a system which tortures us by its elaboration and kills our mind and soul by its barrenness. Lord Curzon was the only viceroy who came to India with any ideas on education. He recognised the mischief that had been done in the preceding 65 years and valiantly tried to reform it. In an address to the Educational Conference at Simla he expressed in his own magniloquent style all the glaring defects of the AngloIndian system. He declaimed with vehemence against the ‘attempt to transplant the smaller educational flora from the hot houses of Europe’ into an entirely different atmosphere. The never-ending revolution of the examination wheel by which the educational fate of a man was settled met with the violent disapprobation of Lord Curzon. Indian education, he admits, is restricted in its aims and destructive in its methods. ‘It is of no use’, says he, ‘to turn out respectable clerks, munsiffs or vakils if this is done at the expense of the intellect of the nation.’ Lord Curzon’s criticism of the educational policy of the British Government was crushing and conclusive. But his reformative attempt, it must be admitted, ended in a total failure. His ideal was not free education, but an education controlled by the State. The Apostle of Efficiency cannot tolerate a variety of institutions with different ideals and methods. They must needs be regulated by the State. The Universities already under Government influence must become directly Government controlled; otherwise they won’t be efficient—as though efficiency were the end of educational institutions. The Raleigh Commission reported very much as Lord Curzon desired. In spite of the vigorous protest of Sir Gurudas Bannerjea, the Commission came to the conclusion that the cost of higher education should be raised and that a greater control of the university by the Government will tend to educational efficiency. 441

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The Indian national movement had watched with great anxiety the restless activity of Lord Curzon in this field. The Congress awoke at last to the extreme importance of the problem when the meddling hand of Lord Curzon showed them that the future of their country was being trilled with by an Anglo-Indian Committee. Till now the Congress had shown a fatuous indifference to this supremely important subject. The pressing necessity of a national programme in education and the fatal danger of allowing an alien Government full control of the training of the youth of the nation, patent enough to ordinary observers of political life, were completely ignored by the Congress until this time. It is true that a few devoted spirits of the Congress movement had for a long time seen the imperative character of this problem. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Surendra Nath Bannerjea, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and a few others had very early in their careers recognised the necessity of national control in education and had realised that the problem of national education touched very vitally the life and death of nations. They had in their different spheres tried to solve that problem independently of the Government. But the Congress itself confined its activities to the strictly political problems as if the source from which all political action derived its motive force was not a question of politics at all. But the threatening activity of the viceregal meddler awoke the Congress from its characteristic slumber. The changed character of the Congress, its new and unbending nationalism, its gradual emancipation from the Bombay clique, all contributed to the general activity and life which that movement showed during the latter part of the Curzonian regime. Lord Curzon’s attempt to raise the cost of higher education was therefore met with a direct challenge. The Congress at Benares enunciated the formula of ‘National Education under National Control.’ Later events showed that this formula was interpreted in two entirely different ways by the two different parties. The vital difference between the two parties showed itself even in the interpretation of this non-political programme. To the Moderates of the Gokhale type national education and national control meant only an extension of the field for Indians in the Service and a greater study of Indian subjects in the universities. To the Nationalists this formula meant something very different. They interpreted it to mean the complete nationalisation of educational machinery and absolute boycott of all the institutions where the hand of the Government was suspected. Thus the Congress committed itself to an undefined formula which only covered, as all formulae are perhaps meant to cover, fundamental differences of opinion. Behind the united demand for national education under national control which the Congress put forward in 1905, it was easy for the acute observer to see the uncompromising hostility between the Moderates and the Nationalists. The cleavage of opinion on the matter became vital when from the domain of congressional discussion an attempt was made to translate it into the field of action. Bengal instituted a Council of National Education and it seemed for a time that the educational monopoly of the Government was passing out of its hands. But the Bengal attempt failed as it was bound to fail. A division between the purse and the brain of a concern cannot indeed conduce to its success. The moderates 442

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headed by Rashbehari Ghose commanded the purse; the nationalists headed by Arabindo Ghose commanded the brains. The Hindu revival which was at the basis of the new nationalist movement had scarcely affected the moderates. They were still the ‘crowning product of the British rule,’ as one of them expressed it. They still looked to England for inspiration. They were unwilling to nationalise education completely, lest ‘the crowning product of the British rule’ might become extinct. Arabindo and his party had no such fears. They looked not to Europe but to India itself for inspiration. To them, all the faith of the moderates in the wonderful effects of the western education was but one of the many vile superstitions which the Anglo-Indian system had sedulously cultivated. As the experiment of national education progressed, this divergence of opinion came more and more to the front. In a few years’ time the whole system had completely broken down. Few tears need be wasted on the failure of this scheme. It only emphasised once more the fundamental political truth that all great institutions that shape and mould the destiny of nations begin in individuals, and not in collective organised groups. The great pre-revolutionary educational force in Europe was the Society of Jesus and it had its origin in the brain of Ignatius Loyola. Comenius, Pestallozzi and Froebel and all the rest of the great teachers that have revolutionised the educational systems of the world and thus directed the thought and evolution of mankind into widely different moulds were individuals and the institutions that they set up did not owe their origin to the collective initiation of a group but to individual attempts to realise what society had generally laughed at as impracticable dreams. In this matter as in others real progress can come only by the action of individuals and the Bengal National Council of Education had this ‘basic fault.’ It was left for an individual, the most eminent that Bengal has produced after Chaitanya, to realise the ideal of National Education and Rabindranath Tagore’s school at Bolpur can in this way be said to be the contribution of Bengal to the solution of this problem. We shall examine it later. The Bengal Council was perhaps the most typical attempt of modern Anglicised and ‘progressive’ India in the educational field. But the most remarkable experiment both in educational ideal and pedagogic methodology came not from Bengal but from the Punjab. The Arya Samaj and the Hindu revival brought with them not only a new interpretation of the doctrines of the Aryan religion but also a new outlook on life, and anew conception of mental training. The Aryas recognised more fully than the congressionists that the development of an independent system of education must precede all attempts at reconstruction and readjustment of the bases of Indian society. This new attitude and outlook materialised in the Gurukula at Hardwar. The Gurukula ideal of education is essentially different, not only from the Anglo-Indian system but from the educational ideals of any of the modern countries. It is an attempt to revitalise the ascetic spirit of the ancient Hindu Culture. It is an experiment in assimilating as much of modern science as is essential with the spirit of our ancient civilisation. The Gurukula tries to found an Indian University, Indian in every sense, out of which would arise a new Indian nation breathing the 443

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old and sacred atmosphere of the Vedas but tasting and relishing all that is useful and fine in the thought, literature and science of the modern nations. This is, we might say at once, the right ideal. But in the systematic elaboration of its methodology the Gurukula system tends both to an ascetic severity, and a cast-iron formalism. In taking the children away from the realities of domestic life and interning them for very nearly 18 years in the unreal surroundings of a Himalayan monastery, the Arya Samaj theorists show an absolute ignorance of the fundamental ideas of education. They forget the essential truth that an education which does not keep the child in touch with the realities of domestic life is no education at all; that to be left after 20 years of restless mental activity in an unexplained and to him inexplicable environment is not only harmful but positively destructive; that such a divorce of life in knowledge and life in reality can only lead to intellectual insincerity absolutely incompatible with true education. The answer which the Aryasamajists make to this argument is that family influence in India is on the whole detrimental to the full development of the child and that the less he sees of his family in his formative years the better. This line of argument takes for granted that it is for his elders to settle what is good for the child, and in effect that the mind of the child is soft clay to be moulded and shaped as his elders desire. This is the doctrine against which the great Comenius and the no less great Rousseau preached with such unanswerable logic. The child’s mind is not a virgin soil to use the famous metaphor of Comenius, to be sown by the teacher in a formal pattern. This is the basic flaw of the Gurukula system. It treats the children as so much raw material to be manufactured by a longtime process into pious, patriotic, philosophical and literary citizens capable of carrying the Message of the Great Arya Civilisation to all the known parts of the world. Another and perhaps more effective criticism on the Hardwar ideal is that it is essentially revivalistic and therefore lacking in the element of progression. The ideals of yesterday are useless if they are not interpreted from the point of view of the life of today. The Garukalas were prevalent full 2000 years ago and it is a vain attempt even if it were possible to re-vitalise an institution which flourished under widely different conditions and in a very different time. No nation can go back and least of all could we who boast of having had a continuous civilised existence for 2000 years, afford to go back to a particular phase of our national evolution. Societal traditions have their place in educational systems and in India, or at least in the India of the Indians, such traditions are stronger than even a traditionalist could wish. Every system of education should have both the binding conservatism of the social tradition and the fluidal mobility of a progressional element. The former is the hold of the past. The latter is the problem of the present and the call of the future. In Indian institutions the former is predominant; the latter is deplorably lacking. The Gurukula of Hardwar shows this defect of our institutions more conspicuously than anything in modern India. The principle of individual freedom so crushed out in Hardwar for uniformity of pattern is found to be the fundamental principle of the Santiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore. The Bengal Council was not an educational experiment; it was 444

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solemn futility meant to be an educational demonstration. But that unrest which drove the fatuous Congress to do something in its own extremely futile manner led the most fertile mind of modern Bengal to embark on an educational experiment the most unique of its kind in India. The School at Bolpur showed once more that experiment must begin, especially when the raw material on which it is begun is the most precious element in the nation, with the tested instincts of creative genius, and not by the commercial application of a uniform principle. The Santiniketan grew out of Tagore’s brains as the Academy grew out of Plato’s and the Bonnal School out of Pestalozzi’s dreams. Educational practice has from time immemorial been divided, as Mr. Richmond well puts it, into that which works through rules more than through sympathy, and that which puts sympathy before rule. The Hardwar system exemplifies the first: the Bolpur system exemplifies the second. The Hardwar system works through the class, assumes a uniformity of intelligence and interest. Santiniketan works through the individual, treats ‘each case on its own merit’ with no uniformity of pattern and preconceived notions as to what the child ought to be when grown up. It assumes that every child is born good but with different degrees of instinct, feeling and intelligence. The aim of all is the same but the capability of realising it differs in degree. Thus each individual should be ministered to in the fashion that fits him and brings out and developes his qualities and not in the measure of another’s wants and desires. The teaching of tradition tends to societal control: individual liberty tends to social freedom; but societal control and individual freedom are not incompatible when we recognise that, individual liberty finds its highest and truest expression only under societal control. But though they are not necessarily incompatible popular instinct is right when it draws a dividing line between the rigid formalism of the traditionalist and the sympathetic guidance of the individualist. The Gurukula stands for the control therefore for the limitation of the future by the experience or the realised ideal of the past. Bolpur stands for the ideal of free development deriving inspiration from tradition, but hindered as little as possible by the dead weight of a desire to bring back into existence an institution out of which life had flown centuries ago. Both the Gurukula and the Santiniketan are only individual attempts at the solution of a national problem. Realisation of great principles can only come through the spontaneous energy of individuals: but institutions meant for remedying crying evils have to originate, not in the creative genius of a single man, but in the general consciousness of a nation and its collective initiative. The Benares Hindu University is essentially a work of this kind. It is not the realisation of a great principle or ideal but simply an attempt to remedy the most conspicuous of all the evils of the Anglo-Indian system of education. Macaulay had written with the sublime impudence that characterised his peculiar talents that the Indian risorgimento can come only through the wide diffusion of European culture and that Indian civilisation, whatever it may have been worth, was as dead as the Assyrian. The palpable falsity of this view was manifest from its beginning. Its importance lies 445

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on its results rather than on its merits. From that day dates the deplorable divorce of Indian education from Indian thought and Indian feeling. The universities of India were but factories where a few were manufactured into Graduates and a good many more wrecked in the voyage of their intellectual life. What the Hindu University has at tempted to do is to bring Indian education into conformity with Indian culture. With its many and patent faults we need not concern ourselves. What we should recognise clearly is that the Hindu University differs essentially from the Anglo-Indian Universities in that the former exists for the express purpose of interpreting Hindu culture, and as the material and tangible expression of the cultural unity of India. Thus the Benares University is a far-reaching experiment remedial in its primary character but creating a new atmosphere vitalising old traditions, interpreting racial ideals and spreading the thought and feeling of ancient and modern India. Here we have the right ideal. But in the execution of that ideal lies unsolved the problem of national education. The Benares University is as effectively controlled by the Government as its own institutions. The watchful eye of the Bureaucracy is on it and it is independent only in name. The experiment is so important, the probable effects from it so far-reaching, the success or failure of it so vital, that the Government acting on its irrational distrust of free and unshackled education considered itself justified in imposing its own authority on it. But when all is said of the influence of an alien Government, of the reactionary character of any institution that exists to interpret ancient ideals and not primarily to search for truth, of the mischief that it may originate due to its sectarian character, of the great and crying evils such as the caste system which it may perpetuate, when all is said, the Benares Hindu University remains a capital fact which is bound to influence our national evolution certainly in a much better way than the AngloIndian institutions. Its chief defect we have noticed before. It is remedial and therefore supplementary. It does not solve the educational problem of nationalist India. It does not even face the issues boldly. But this must be admitted that it is a great step forward. It is the natural nucleus of any national experiment in education. Around it would gather institutions united in their diversity, inspired by the majestic flow of the sacred Ganges from whom, as it was written of yore, is bound to flow all that is good and great in India. II. Up to now our work has been entirely critical and estimative. The greater task of stating and analysing the problem and interpreting the tendency of the new nationalists towards it remains. What most strikes anyone who approaches the problem of Indian Education from any point of view, is its appalling magnitude. Here is a country with a population of 315 millions whose future salvation depends greatly upon the careful study and the right solution of this problem. Here is a not inconsiderable portion 446

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of the human kind whose destiny depends a great deal upon those who have the foresight to see and the energy and the enthusiasm to realise a right educational ideal. The problem is indeed bewildering in its variety. It is as if one entered a primeval forest, thick and crowded with trees, with no gleam of light to guide one’s steps, with soft grass and wild creepers covering many a pitfall. But if it is difficult, nay almost impossible to traverse, we must also admit the temptation to persevere in the attempt is as great, seeing that beyond this dark and untraversed forest lies the promised land, the land of a free and educated population. Out of the wild variety of this problem three factors stand out towering above the rest. They are the questions of a common language, of the education of women, and of the general policy and the institutions by which to realise it. The first question is whether India should be treated as a cultural unity, whether a new All-Indian language, a modified Arya Bhasha embodying not only the culture of Ancient India, but assimilating the contribution of the Mussalman inhabitants should be consciously evolved out. The second question is whether we should perpetuate the status relation between men and women in education, whether an absolute equality of sexes in educational practice is not bound to affect adversely the free progress of a family and social development. Whether a different educational ideal for women is not desirable, possible and practicable. The third question is the question of the educational principles and institutions; whether a uniform general policy is desirable, if desirable how far it should be carried, whether the realisations of great principles does not come from the co-ordination of tested units, whether it would be more desirable to nationalise interest than to universalise it. Such are the main outlines of the problem which the nationalist has to face not only when India governs herself but even today, because without at least a partial solution of the educational problem Swaraj would remain an unrealised ideal. The first question—that of a common language, is one of the most pressing of our problems not only from an educational, but from a general nationalist point of view. Without it all our efforts at united action must forever remain virtually ineffective. It is true that before the British dominion India was one in feeling, thought and culture. But today by the influence of a foreign language her different provinces are tending to a difference even in these vital points. This process of disintegration can be arrested only by a common language. Is such a thing possible; if possible, can Indian Nationalists unaided by the all-pervading machinery of government realise it? This is the first question we have to answer. That English can never serve the purpose of a common language is a manifest fact that requires no argument to prove. It is so utterly foreign to us that education in it involves an enormous waste of mental power. This waste is suffered not only by those whose natural gifts are so overflowing as to be indifferent to its effects but by everyone who desires to be educated in India. This is the explanation of the enormous number of failures in our universities, and of that unique and therefore all the more heartrending phenomenon of the Indian educational world the “failed B.A.” English can never become anything but the language for 447

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a microscopic minority of our inhabitants—the cidevant Eurasian. For us Indians it is and it will ever be a language in which to commit literary suicide, a tongue which stifles our expressive faculties, a medium of expression which kills all the thinking power of our mind. The use of a foreign language as the medium of our higher education leaves us without a national genius in literature, in sciences and in thought. Lord Curzon was essentially right, though in a negative sense, when he said that the raising of the cost of higher education would tend to the betterment of India. Such an administrative act would limit the classes who would be affected by this intellectual ravage. It would confine the intellectual exploitation to the very few who are rich. The ordinary man, though he does not gain, surely does not lose by this arrangement. Setting aside therefore the impossible supposition that English can at any time be the common language of India we are left with two alternatives, to wit:—that we should choose as our common language either an unused language—a dead language as it is erroneously called—Sanskrit, Prakrit, or Classical Persian, or, one of the chief Indian vernaculars, such as Hindi, Bengali or Tamil. Of these two possible alternatives we can dismiss the first with a few words. True that Sanskrit has the merit of being known and studied all over India. It has also the merit of being the common basis of all the Indian languages. But at no time does it seem to have been extensively spoken in India and it is hardly possible that such a perfect language with all its different verbal forms could ever be spoken by the ordinary man. Persian, of course, has little claim to be the common language, and Prakrit, less. Thus we are left with the indubitable fact that the common language of India can only be one of the three or four chief vernaculars of India. The problem more plainly stated becomes this: which language are we to choose, from among the great vernaculars of India as the medium of higher education and the basis of higher communal life? The apparent contest is between Hindi, Bengali and Tamil. But the contest seems to me to be only an apparent one. Neither Tamil nor Bengali, however cultivated their literatures be, can claim to be anything but the language of a particular province, a language spoken by a sub-nationality. But the case of Hindi is different. The Hindi-speaking people do not inhabit a particular marked-out portion of India. It is in fact understood all over North India. It is understood in a slightly different form by all the Mussalman inhabitants of India and this fact alone makes its claim a matter of incontestable weight. Also it has a double alphabet which, peculiarly enough, is in this case not a hindrance but an additional claim. Its Nagari character makes it acceptable to all Hindus; its Urdu character makes it acceptable to all Mussalmans. Thus an acceptance of Hindi would preserve the continuity of our civilisation both for our Muslim brethren and for ourselves. It is an interesting and supremely important subject which we would have liked to discuss with greater elaboration had the limits of this essay permitted it. However before entering into the consideration of the next question we would attempt to answer one important objection that is commonly raised against the evolution 448

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of an Indian common language. Will not the adoption of any one Indian language, say Hindi for example, as our lingua franca adversely affect the growth of our vernaculars? Will not the language in which Chandidas and Rabindranath Tagore wrote, say these, become in course of time, like Gaelic in Ireland, merely a dead tradition. Will not the sublime Tirukural, and the no less sublime Songs of Ramdas, become like the wonderful poems of the Welsh bards, or the reputed epics of the Aztecs mere objects of curiosity for the antiquarians? The fear is legitimate, though groundless. The unique greatness of India lies in its wonderful diversity, and the ideal of a great India must always remain a diversity-ideal. Is the attempt to create a common language an attempt to create a uniformity of thought and expression? If it is, it is treason to India. But under no conceivable circumstances can it be so. A second language taught and spoken as such can never replace a well cultivated mother tongue. The Bengali would be proud of his tongue as the Tamilian, the Gujerati, the Punjabi and the Malayali would be. They would be cultivated with greater zest and interest as the knowledge of the other Indian languages grew among the people. The objection therefore is groundless. The proper education of women is the next problem. We have noticed that this problem has to be treated in three main lines, which are—first, whether we should perpetuate the status relation between men and women in education, secondly, whether the Indian family life does not demand a peculiar consideration in our educational problem, thirdly, whether a different educational ideal for our women cannot without breaking the continuity of our culture be evolved from our past. The Indian nation can never be free till the Indian woman has ceased to be a slave. The Indian nation can never be educated till the Indian woman has ceased to be ignorant. I am not saying that the Indian womanhood is bound in slavery, or that it is blinded by ignorance. But the fact is that both in the relative status of sexes and in the idea of their education our present system affords room for very considerable modification. Is that modification to come through the activities of the social reformers or by the extensive diffusion of education. The difference between the two processes is great indeed. The social reformers try to impose their ideas on the generality, believing implicitly in the infallibility of the reforms they advocate. The social reform temperament is the temperament of the missionary. On the other hand the process of social evolution through the wider diffusion of education is essentially a process of raising the general standard of opinion and thus making social reform the real expression of the conscious will of the community. The question however arises whether we are to perpetuate the status relation of sexes in our educational system. The process of human evolution has surely been in the progressive differentiation of sexes which has now become a dominant and capital fact in all organised societies. The question of sexual status and education affects us in an entirely different way. At present the education of our females, such as it is, is entirely in relation to the family and not to the community. It is designed so as to make the child as it grows up a sweet and docile wife, an ideal mother, and when she reaches that age a self-sacrificing widow and able head 449

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of the family. This ideal is absolutely right as far as it goes. But it does not go far. It gives no place for the relation of women to the community. That relation is only implied in a very limited sense in the ideal mother. The business of the mother, as far as the community is concerned, according to this ideal, is to rear up ideal citizens. Naturally the question arises: does the social relationship of women end with rearing up excellent soldiers and sagacious politicians? Is she merely a means and not an end in herself? Can her faculties be fully and freely developed except in relation to the organised community, and, by limiting her to the smallest possible community, the family, are we not limiting the development of her faculties? It is therefore evident that any comprehensive solution, of the educational problem must include the final destruction of the artificial limitation of feminine relationship to the family. This brings us to the second question whether such an extension of feminine activity through a different ideal of education which, while perpetuating the healthy status relation of sexes, does not limit the female to the family, would affect adversely that vital point of our civilisation—the joint family system. It is by no means clear whether a higher individuation of the units that compose the family would tend to its breakup and it does not seem to be true that a freer interpretation of the position of women in society must lead to a disintegration of the family. What seems quite clear is that the joint family system as it is, with all its merits, tends very considerably to be a dead weight in the matter of freer, fuller and healthier family life, and a purification of it in its essentials can come only through the increased intelligence of women. Female education as long as it is imparted with the view of perpetuating the status relation of the sexes or on the other hand is based on the idea that such differences ought not to exist, would remain wholly unreal, disturbing the whole fabric of social organisation and sapping the very vital roots of all social existence. The education of women, such as is given in India today, inclines to the second alternative of ignoring the existence of sexual differences. That is why female education in India has been a totally disturbing, instead of a consolidating, factor in social life. The Indian joint family life being indeed the realised truth of a thousand generations requires a peculiar consideration in our educational problem. Our ideal should not be to destroy but to purify it. Does this ideal mean a break in the continuity of our civilisation? In spite of the opinion of Sir C. Sankaran Nair, no sensible man has ever believed that according to Hindu ideals woman is created to minister to man’s wants. The Hindu ideal of womanhood has been the ideal—not the European conception of a helpmate for man soothing his distracted hours—of a necessary counterpart without whom man by himself cannot attain salvation. What Sri Krishna asks his old playmate Kuchela when that pious devotee visited the Lord, is whether the female rishi suited him in every way. Indeed, according to the Hindu ideal man and woman are like the twin blade of a pair of scissors each important and insufficient in itself and capable of action only in combination. There is no superiority or inferiority in their relations. The right ideal is to make both the blades as keen as possible. 450

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This not only does not mean a break in the continuity of the Hindu tradition but is in entire conformity with its spirit. Such is the opinion of those who have devoted their life work to the cause of female education. Prof. Karve in founding the women’s university has the same ideal. The Gurukula authorities in establishing an institution for girls gives the authority of orthodox Hinduism to this ideal. Now it remains to discuss whether a general educational programme under these conditions is possible, and whether such a policy would be desirable as laying down the main lines of our educational development. A general policy means at least an attempt on the part of the powers that be to lay down certain things as the essential minimum of education. This power in the hands of a government generally tends to a control of the educational system. That is eminently undesirable, even it is comes from a strictly nationalist Indian Government. Education, unless we want to travesty it as a governmental instrument, must necessarily be free and unhampered. Thus a general policy can be laid down only to this extent, that is, the Government while encouraging, by every means in its power, should leave education outside the scope of its general activities except in so far as to remedy such manifest evils as a monopoly by any particular community, or a general inactivity in any particular field. The Government should make primary education free and compulsory, but in no case should it insist on a general curriculum for the whole of India. It should be left to the discrimination of the local authorities prescribing however that in such subjects, as elementary Arithmetic of which the realised experiments of the past centuries have convincingly proved the utility, a minimum standard should be set. Only up to this has the Government any right of interference. In its educational policy the Government’s activity should be one of co-ordination of educational institutions. How then are we to realise this ideal of free and compulsory primary education, absolutely under local control, with the least possible interference from the governmental authorities? Is it by a system of free universities as in America or by a system of local effort supplemented by board schools as in England? The answer is difficult. But this much we can say without any fear of contradiction: A national programme of education in a country like India whose greatness lies in the rich diversity of her people, her ideals and her life, must essentially be a programme of local effort, of individual experiment and of provincial and national co-ordination. The Government can therefore never lay down an educational policy. If it did, such a policy would only create a mechanical process of instruction without any local colour, without any conformity with the realities of life, without any attempt to create intellectual sincerity. The realisation of any ideal, however good, can come only through the general prevalence of individual experiments in that direction. A state can never successfully impose it on the community without transforming the character of that ideal. To summarise what we have said till now. The nationalist movement in India is threatened today by a grave danger, that of an inquisitorial control by the Government of the educational machinery. On the face of it, therefore, a nationalist programme in education becomes an imperative necessity. From the earliest days of 451

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the national movement the more far-sighted among them had seen this. But their efforts remained mainly local until the meddling hand of Lord Curzon imposed on an unwilling Congress the necessity of ennunciating a general policy in education. The translation of that policy from the realm of speech to that of action ended in complete failure. But other experiments, such as the Gurukula which attempts to revive the ascetic spirit of the ancient Hindus and the Santiniketan which tries to realise the principle of individual freedom, arose out of that educational unrest. The Benares University expressed in a tangible form the dissatisfaction of the best moderate mind with the Anglo-Indian system of education. But a really nationalist ideal in education has not yet been authoritatively elaborated. Such an ideal must take into consideration the problem of a common language, which in the opinion of the present writer can only be Hindi. It must also give particular attention to the education of our women without attempting to disintegrate the joint family system. Finally, a national educational programme must be a programme of local effort and national co-ordination. It is unnecessary to forecast whether such an ideal is immediately practicable. Any diversity-ideal can only be a matter of growth though not necessarily slow. The nationalist effort in education, therefore, should be directed not chiefly towards any attempt to mould the governmental policy but in building up local institutions of a great variety of character and embodying different national ideals and culture. Therein alone lies the hope of nationalism, for nationalism ignorant is nationalism ineffective. Let us remember this and then we shall have no more fear of the future. In the past India was great: the present is not without hope: but with our united effort her future shall indeed be greater than either her present or even her past. It depends upon us and let it not be said of us that the Spirit of Time in determining the fate of our Motherland tried us in the ordeal of fire and found us wanting.

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EDUCATION ON NATIONAL LINES. SWAMI VIVEKANAND. We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of the nation. Do you understand that? You must dream, you must talk, and you must think and you must work. Till then there is no salvation for the race. This education that you are getting now has some good points but it has a tremendous evil at its back, and this evil is so great that the good things are all weighed down. In the first place, it is not a man-making education, it is merely and entirely a negative education. A negative education or any training that consists negation is worse than death. The child is taken to School and the first thing he learns is that his father was a fool, the second his grandfather was a crazy lunatic, the third that all his teachers were hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books were lies! By the time he is sixteen, he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result is that fifty years of such education have not produced one man in the three Presidencies. Every original man that has been produced has been educated elsewhere and not in this country, or they have gone to the old Universities once more to cleanse themselves of superstitions. This is not education. Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and running riot there, undigested, making a battle of Waterloo all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who can give by heart a whole library. “The ass carrying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of the Sandalwood.” If education means information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world and encyclopaedias are the Rishis. The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands and it must be on national lines, through national methods, as far as practicable. Of course this is a very big scheme, a big plan. I do not know whether it will ever work itself out but we 453

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must begin the work. How? For instance, take Madras. We must start a temple, must have a temple, for, with Hindus religion must come first. Then you say, all sects will quarrel about the temple. We will make a non-sectarian temple giving only “Om” as the symbol, the greatest symbol of any sect. If there is any sect here which believes that “Om” ought not to be the symbol it has no right to be Hindu. All will have the right to interpret ideas, each one according to his own sect, but we must have a common temple. You can have your own images and things in other places, but do not quarrel with the other people. There should be taught there the common grounds of our different sects and at the same time the different sects should have perfect liberty to come there and teach their doctrines, with only one restriction—not to quarrel with other sects. Say what you have to say, the world wants it; but the world has no time to hear what you think about other people, keep that to yourselves. Secondly, along with this temple there should be an institution to train teachers and preachers. These teachers must go about preaching both religion and secular knowledge to our people; they must carry both as we have been already carrying religion from door to door. Let us along with religion carry secular education from door to door. That can be easily done. Then the work will extend through these bands of teachers and preachers, and gradually we shall have similar temples in other centres, until we have covered the whole of India. That is the plan. It may appear gigantic. But that is needed. You may ask where is the money. Money is not needed. Money is nothing. For the last twelve years of my life I did not know where the next meal would come from, but money and every thing I want must come, because they are my slaves and not I theirs; money and every thing else must come. Must, that is the word. Where are the men? That is the question. I have told you what we have become. Where are the men? Young men of India,1 my hope is in you. Do you respond to the call of your nation? Each one of you has a glorious future if you dare believe me. Have the tremendous faith in yourselves which I had when I was a child and I am working it out. Have that faith, each one in yourself, that eternal power is lodged in every one of our souls. You will revive the whole of India. Aye, we will go to every country under the sun and our ideas must be within the next ten years a component of the many forces that are working to make up every nation in the world. We must enter into the life of every race inside India and outside India; we will work. That is how it should be. I want youngmen. Say the Vedas: “It is the strong, the healthy, of sharp intellect and young that will reach the Lord.” This is the time to decide your future—with this energy of youth, when you have not been worked out, not become faded, but still in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work, this is the time for the freshest, the most untouched and unsmelled fresh flowers, alone to be laid at the feet of the Lord. He receives. Get up, therefore, greater works are to be done than picking quarrels and becoming lawyers and other things. Far greater is this sacrifice of yourselves for the benefit of your race, for the welfare of humanity, for life is short. What is in this life? You are Hindus and there is the instinctive belief in you that life is eternal. Sometimes I have youngmen in Madras coming and talking to me about Atheism. I do not believe a Hindu can become an atheist. 454

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He may read European books and persuade himself he is a materialist, but only for five months, mark you. It is not in your blood. You can not believe what is not in your constitution; it would be a hopeless task for you. Do not attempt that sort of thing. I once attempted when I was a boy! But it could not be. Life is short, but the soul is immortal and eternal, and therefore one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal and give up the whole life to it. Let this be our determination, and may He, the Lord, who “comes again and again for the salvation of His own people,” speaking from our scriptures—may the great Krishna bless us and lead us all to the fulfilment of our aims!—From the lecture on “The Future of India.”

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS IN INDIA AND WESTERN COUNTRIES. THE HON’BLE Mr. G. K. GOKHALE. C. I. E. An American legislator, addressing his countrymen more than half a century ago, once said that if he had the Archangel’s trumpet, the blast of which could startle the living of all nations, he would sound it in their ears and say: ‘Educate your children, educate all your children, educate every one of your children.’ The deep wisdom and passionate humanity of this aspiration is now generally recognised, and in almost every civilised country, the state to-day accepts the education of the children as a primary duty resting upon it. Even if the advantages of an elementary education be put no higher than a capacity to read and write, its universal diffusion is a mattar of prime importance, for literacy is better than illiteracy any day, and the banishment of a whole people’s illiteracy is no mean achievement. But elementary education for the mass of the people means something more than a mere capacity to read and write. It means for them a keener enjoyment of life and a more refined standard of living. It means the greater moral and economic efficiency of the individual. It means a higher level of intelligence for the whole community generally. He who reckons these advantages lightly may as well doubt the value of light or fresh air in the economy of human health. I think it is not unfair to say that one important test of the solicitude of a Government for the true well-being of its people is the extent to which, and the manner in which, it seeks to discharge its duty in the matter of mass education. And judged by this test, the Government of this country must wake up to its responsibilities much more than it has hitherto done, before it can take its proper place among the civilised Governments of the world. Whether we consider the extent of literacy among the population, or the proportion of those actually at School, or the system of education adopted, or the amount of money expended, on primary education, India is far, far behind other civilised countries. Take literacy. While in India, according to the figures of the census of 1901, less than 6 per cent. of the whole population could read and write, even in Russia, the most backward of European countries educationally, the proportion of literates at the last census was about 25 per cent; while in many European countries, as also the United States of America, and Canada and 455

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Australia, almost the entire population is now able to read and write. As regards attendance at school, I think it will be well to quote once more the statistics which I mentioned in moving my resolution of last year. They are as follows:—‘In the United states of America, 21 per cent. of the whole population is receiving elementary education; in Canada, in Australia, in Switzerland, and in Great Britain and Ireland, the proportion ranges from 20 to 17 per cent; in Germany, in Austria-Hungary, in Norway and in the Netherlands the proportion is from 17 to 15 per cent; in France it is slightly above 14 per cent; in Sweden it is 14 per cent; in Denmark it is 13 per cent; in Belgium it is 12 per cent; in Japan it is 11 per cent; in Italy, Greece and Spain it ranges between 8 and 9 per cent; in Portugal and Russia it is between 4 and 5 per cent; whereas in British India it is only 1 9 per cent.’ Turning next to the systems of education adopted in different countries, we find that while in most of them elementary education is both compulsory and, free, and in a few, though the principle of compulsion is not strictly enforced or has not yet been introduced, it is either wholly or for the most part gratuitous, in India alone it is neither compulsory nor free. Thus in Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United states of America, Canada, Australia and Japan, it is both compulsory and free, the period of compulsion being generally six years. Though in some of the American states it is now as long as nine yeare. In Holland, elementary education is compulsory, but not free. In Spain, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Servia and Rumania, it is free, and, in theory, compulsory, though compulsion is not strictly enfored. In Turkey, too, it is free and nominally compulsory, and in Russia, though compulsion has not yet been introduced, it is for the most part gratuitous. Lastly, if we take the expenditure on elementary education in different countries per head of the population, even allowing for different money values in different countries, we find that India is simply nowhere in the comparison. The expenditure per head of the population is highest in the United states, being no less than 16s; in Switzerland, it is 13s, 8d. per head; in Australia, 11s. 3d; in England and Wales, 10s; in Canada, 9s. 9d; in Scotland, 9s. 7½d; in Germany, 6s. 10d; in Ireland, 6s. 5d; in the Netherlands, 6s. 4½d; in Sweden, 5s. 7d; in Belgium, 5s. 4; in Norway, 5s. 1d; in France, 4s, 10d; in Austria, 3s. 1½d; in Spain, 1s. 10d; in Italy, 1s. 7½d; in Servia and Japan, 1s. 2d; in Russia, 7½d; while, in India, it is barely one penny. From—The Speech delivered on 16th March 1911 in the Imperial Legislative Council, India.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.2 LALA LAJPAT RAI. It has now more than abundantly been established that the efficiency of a nation depends upon the amount and nature of brain power which it can put forth in the affairs of life. In an address delivered some two years back, Sir John Lockyer, the illustrious President of the British Association, traced conclusively and 456

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convincingly the intimate relation that exists between the provision made by a nation for the higher education of its people and the position taken by that nation in the ceaseless competition between the great countries of the world. Relying upon facts and figures, he compared the educational facilities and the intellectual out-put of Great Britain and Ireland with those of its rivals, Germany and United States, and came to the conclusion that the latter were much in advance of the former. Nay, he went a step further and held out young Japan as an example to be followed with profit in the matter of intellectual efforts. Those who are in touch with the current literature of the West, must have been struck by the extreme importance which all the civilized nations of the world have, by experience, begun to attach to education as the foundation of all national greatness both in point of wealth as well as of intellect. If, then, in the struggle for life, education and educational efforts are matters of supreme importance to advanced, independent and self-governing nations like the English, the German and the American, it only stands to reason that they are of still greater importance to a country like India where ignorance and superstition reign supreme, where penury and poverty, are the order of the day, where want and, starvation are generally prominent, where independence of thought and action is almost unknown, and where the destinies of the nation are completely in the hands, and at the mercy, of a handful of foreigners who, in spite of all the generosity and benevolence of intentions that they can put forth in the Government of this country, are loth to admit the sons of the soil to any decent share in the management of the affairs of their own land. In a country where the economic circumstances brought about by an alien rule force the people to look to other countries for even the necessaries of life, where the unlimited resources provided by a bountiful Providence are closed to the sons of the soil and are only accessible to clever, energetic, and enterprising foreigners, where the wealth of the country is being daily drained out of the country, and where a fairly intelligent population are, for want of education, and opportunities, being reduced to the position of drawers of water and hewers of wood, education, I say, is a question of life and death. Our future principally depends upon the amount and the sort of education we shall receive. Having once put the educational machinery into motion, our rulers have of late been showing signs of great dissatisfaction with the results. The history of English education in this country shows that originally the framers of Government Educational policy were actuated partly by selfish and partly by philanthropic and high motives. To quote the words of the Government of India resolution of 1904: “They regarded it as a sacred duty to confer upon the natives of India those vast moral and material blessings which flow from the general diffusion of useful knowledge. They hoped by means of education to extend the influence which the Government was exerting for the suppression of demoralizing practices, by enlisting in its favour the general sympathy of the native mind. They also sought to create a supply of public servants to whose probity, offices of trust might with increased confidences be committed, and to promote the material interest of the country by stimulating its inhabitants to develop its vast resources.” 457

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The italics are mine. This policy appears to have been faithfully carried up to 1882, by which time the out-turn of the educational activity in the land had come to be immensely in excess of the requirements of the administration merely. To quote the resolution again: ‘The growth of schools and colleges proceeded most rapidly between 1871 and 1882 and was further augmented by the development of the Municipal system, and by the Acts which were passed from 1865 onwards providing for the imposition of local cesses which might be applied to the establishment of schools. By the year 1882, there were more than two million and a quarter of pupils under instruction in public institutions. The Commission of 1882–83 furnished a most copious and valuable report upon the state of education as then existing, made a careful inquiry into the measures which had been taken in pursuance of the Despatch of 1854, and submitted further detailed proposals for carrying out the principles of that Despatch. Thy advised increased reliance upon, and systematic encouragement of private effort and their recommendations were approved by the Government of India. The italics are again mine. This was the first step towards reaction. The AngloIndian bureaucracy raised a cry against high education and bitterly complained that the Government was entirely wrong in-spending large sums out of their resources on high education. It was thus laid down as a principle of policy to gradually withdraw from the work of secondary and high education and confine the energies of the State to the task of extending Primary Education. In pursuance of this policy some Government Colleges were abolished, a few transferred to private management, and the fees in all Government and aided colleges were greatly raised. To the great misfortune of those provinces which had only recently come under the British rule and where education had only very recently been introduced, as the Punjab, the policy formulated by the Government of India in 1882 affected them most injuriously and was very effectual in retarding high education therein. As a natural result of this policy, however, the people of the country began to look up for themselves, and systematic efforts were made by them to provide against the loss likely to follow from the partial withdrawal of Government from the field. This withdrawal of Government, or the contraction of Government expenditure on high education, and the raising of fees, have had different effects in different provinces, but so far it has had only a most disastrous effect in the Punjab. The truth of this remark will appear from a glance at the following table in which the 5 large provinces range themselves according to fee incidence:— Punjab ... ... Bengal ... ... Madras ... ... Bombay ... ... United Provinces

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

5·4 3·9 3·5 3·0 3·0

The following figures show that of all the 5 important provinces into which British India proper is divided, the Punjab is only next to the most backward of them in the matter of University education.

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The following table gives the number of boys of school-going age of which one is in an Arts College, in the 5 University provinces of India:— Bengal Madras Bombay Punjab U. P.

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... 711 ... 755 ... 1,029 ... 1,319 ... 2,502

The following table shows the increase in all British India in the total number of collegiate students in the 3 quinquenniums that have elapsed since 1882:— 1887–88 to 1891–92 1891–92 to 1896–97 1896–97 to 1901–02

... ... ...

... ... ...

... 4,364 ... 1,509 ... 3,215

Thus it took full 10 years for the private colleges to develop in order to reduce the decrease that was so marked and startling in the second quinquennium of this reactionary period. During the last quinquennium while Bengal gained 1,766 pupils (collegiates) Bombay ... Madras ...

... ...

... ...

... ...

... ...

... ...

877 239

Punjab with the N. W. F. P. only gained 160 while the U. P. fared still worse and only gained 44. In 1896–97 the number of scholars receiving education in Arts Colleges in the Punjab was 1,101. In 1899–00 it rose to 1,180 and in 1900–01 it was only 1,152, The following figures show that but for the private colleges, the collegiate education in India would have fared disastrously, as in 1901–02 there were only 4,000 students in Government Colleges and 12,000 in privately managed colleges, 54 per cent. of the latter only being in aided institutions—the unaided colleges of Bengal alone educating no less than 4,541 of them. The figures of increase in the number of students in different classes of institutions show to what extent during the last quinquennium alone, private enterprise in education has come to the rescue of high education in this country. This increase is divided as follows:— Government Colleges Aided Colleges ... Unaided Colleges ...

... ... ...

... ... ...

... 448 ... 998 ... 1,695

With the exception of Bengal, where the average annual cost of educating a college student is the lowest because of the very large numbers receiving education in cheap private colleges, the cost is the lowest in the Punjab, as shown by the following table:— U. P. Madras Bombay Punjab Bengal

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

459

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

278 195 188 136 97

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while the total expenditure on collegiate education stands thus:— Bengal Madras U. P. Bombay Punjab

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

8¼ lacs. 61⁄3 lacs. 4¼ lacs. 3½ lacs. 1¾ lacs.

Of these 25⅔ lacs, only 8,96,000 are furnished by Provincial Revenues while fees contribute 9¾ lacs, i. e. 80,000 over and above the contribution of Government. During the last quinquennium the expenditure from Public Revenues has actually diminished by Rs. 67,000 while that from fees has increased by Rs. 2,31,000. Compare with the above the amount of money contributed by the Government of Great Britain and Ireland on University education alone, viz. £1,55,600. The University of London alone gets a grant of £8,000 (see Contemporary Review of December 1903, P. 838); the University of Berlin gets a grant of £1,68,780 from its Government and the University of Tokio (in 1895) £1,30,000. SECONDARY EDUCATION. Descending a step lower and looking at secondary education we shall find that altogether a sum of Rs. 126,84,000 is spent on secondary schools, of which only Rs. 32,76,000 are contributed by public funds (Imperial and Provincial Revenues, Local and Municipal Funds all together) and Rs. 60,76,640 by fees only, the balance being made up from private sources. In the Punjab the fee-ratio of expenditure is shown in the following quotation from the Review of H. H. the Lieutenant-Governor on the Education report for 1900–01. “It is interesting to notice that on the average native parents are called upon to pay Rs. 1-3-0 per annum for the education of a son in a Primary School; Rs. 11-8-6 in a Secondary School; and over Rs. 80 in an Arts College. These figures, however., do not take into account assistance given in the form of scholarships.” In the Nineteenth Century for Oct. 1903 appeared an article on “London Education” from the pen of the Hon’ble Mr. Sydney L. C. C, in which the writer has noticed the work of the London county council in providing improved educational facilities for London boys and suggested desirable reforms and changes. Commenting upon the facilities which exist in London for secondary education the writer remarks that:— “Every year about eight hundred of the ablest boys and girls in the public elementary or lower secondary schools, between eleven and thirteen years of age, are picked by competitive examination for two to five years of higher education. These two thousand scholarships provide for the cleverest children of the London wage-earners a more genuinely accessible ladder than is open to the corresponding class in any American, French, or German city. In addition to these maintenance scholarships there are free places at most of the London secondary 460

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schools. from St. Paul’s downwards, which are utilised, as is found to be the case with all-provision of merely gratuitous secondary education, by the lower middle and professional classes. Above these opportunities stand the intermediate and senior county scholarships, and others provided by various trust funds, probably altogether about two hundred in each year, for candidates between fifteen and nineteen years of age. These serve partly to carry on the best of the junior scholars; partly to admit to the highest secondary schools the ablest children of parents ineligible for the lowest rung of the ladder; and partly to take the very pick of London’s young people to the technical college and the university. This scholarship scheme has now necessarily to be revised, to bring it into accord with the changes lately made in the school-leaving age and the pupilteacher system. Practically all children now stay at school until fourteen, and it is no longer necessary for any substantial payment towards the maintenance of the scholarship to begin before that age. On the other hand, there is a consensus of opinion that, when a child passes from an elementary to a secondary school, it should do so before the age of twelve and should remain for not less than four years. It looks as if the limit of age for the normal junior scholarship should be reduced from thirteen to twelve, and its duration extended from two to four years, whilst the annual maintenance allowance up to the age of fourteen might be reduced to 51, rising to 10l. and 15l. in the last two year. And if the need for pupil-teachers causes the number of scholarships to rise to 2,000 a year, it would perhaps be possible to effect the further desirable reform of beginning the selecting process by a preliminary examination, conducted, by the head-teachers themselves, in their own schools. Of all the children who had attained the fifth standard before the age, of twelve; and of undertaking to award the scholarships, not to any fixed number of winners but to all who, in the subsequent centralised competitive examination, reached a certain percentage of marks. Such a reform would organically connect the scholarship system with all the public elementary schools, instead of, as at present, only about a third of them; and would bring London’s ‘capacity catching machin’ to bear on every promising child. There must, however, be an adequate supply of efficient secondary schools for these picked scholars to attend, not to mention the needs of those who can afford to keep their boys and girls at school until seventeen or nineteen. There is a common impression that the public secondary schools of London are few and inefficient. Yet, including only Foundations, of which the management is essentially public in character, London has to-day certainly not less than 25,000 boys and girls, between seven and nineteen in its secondary schools, actually a larger number than either Paris or Berlin. In the back-ground, and not included in this calculation, stands the horde of private adventure ‘commercial academies’ and ‘colleges for young ladies’ of the genteel suburbs. These we may leave gently on one side. The publicly managed schools number about ninety, well dispersed over the whole country, ranging from those like Parmiter’s School (Bethnal Green) and Addey’s School (Deptford), where the 461

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leaving age is sixteen or seventeen, through the dozen admirable institutions of the essentially public Girls’ Public Day School Company, up to such thoroughly efficient ‘first-grade’ schools as the North London Collegiate, for girls (St. Pancras) and Dulwhich College (Camberwell) and St. Paul’s (hammersmith) for boys. Yet so dense is London that, with one or two exceptions, the very existence of these schools is forgotten by the ordinary citizen, and is often ignored by the legislator or administrator. Many a middle class family which could well afford to send its boys and girls to secondary schools is unfamiliar with those which exist within a mile of its home. Even to the best informed educational administrators the real state and quality of the London secondary schools taken as a whole, are far less accurately known than those of the elementary. All the information points to the conclusion that the efficiency varies, immensely from school to school; that nearly all of them have good buildings, mostly well provided with science laboratories and suitable equipment; and that, where any school falls below the mark, the weak point is the staffing. In at least a third of the London secondary schools the income from fees and endowment is insufficient to provide more than one good salary which goes to the head teacher whilst the assistants, who are to be university graduates, are paid, for the most part, less than is earned by an ordinary certificated teacher in a board school. Yet even recognising all the shortcomings of these schools, the department of secondary education is not one which will give the London County Council any serious trouble. About forty of the publicly managed schools are sufficiently well off to be independent of its aid, and these, nearly always charging highfees, and providing an education of high grade may be left to themselves. The other fifty, including practically all those in need of help, have already shown by their cordial co-operation with the Technical Education Board their willingness to fall into line. It would, of course, be necessary to disturb the present governing bodies, on which the local authorities are already well represented, and it would be unwise for the Council to interfere in the details of administration. In no department is it so important to maintain variety and independent experiment as in the secondary schools. But construct what scholarship ladder we will, the secondary schools can be used only by a small fraction of the population. For the secondary education of the masses there has been organised, by the School Board on the one hand, and the Technical Education Board on the other, an extensive assortment of evening classes; providing instruction in every imaginable subject of literature, science, art, and technology. The classes of the School Board, which enrol, over 1,20,000 students for the winter session and have an average attendance of half that number, are conducted in 400 of its day-school buildings, mainly by the younger and more energetic of its staff of day teachers. The work of the Technical Education Board, dealing usually with a more advanced stage and older scholars, is concentrated in the forty polytechnics, art schools, and technical institutes under its management or control, which have in the aggregate about 50,000 students. Here the lecturers and teachers are specialists in 462

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their respective subjects, teaching in institutions specially equipped for their work. At six of the polytechnics, the highest classes have been included in the faculties of the reorganised London University. These two schemes of evening instruction have now to be co-ordinated, differentiated, and developed. There can be no question of stopping either the one or the other; on the contrary, both sides of the work will have to be increased. It ought not to be too much to ask that every boy or girl who leaves school at fourteen or fifteen should, up to twenty-one, be at any rate enrolled at some evening-class institution, even if attendance is confined to an hour per week. Yet there are in London over 6,00,000 young people between 14 and 21 not a third of these are at present members of any sort of institution, recreational or educational. Out of 84,000 boys and girls between fifteen and sixteen, only 21,000 are on the rolls. What is happening to the others? We cannot, as yet, compel them to come in, as the Bishop of Hereford proposes, though this is done in various parts of Germany and Switzerland. But we might try the experiment of using the school attendance officer to look after those who have not joined an evening school, using the method of persuasion, just as they look after the younger defaulters from the day school. Meanwhile we could bring the whole of the evening instruction in each borough into a single harmonious organisation; we could allocate the work in such a way as to provide appropriately for each age and each grade, and avoid overlapping; we could take care that each subject is taught under the most effective conditions, and properly coordinated with more advanced instruction elsewhere; and we could arrange for the progression of the students from stage to stage until they reach the highest classes of the nearest polytechnic, or the technical college itself.” The italics are everywhere mine and adopted to enable the reader to compare the existing state of things in India with the existing state of things in London or with what in the opinion of the writer in the Nineteenth Century should be the state of things there. It will thus appear that while the London authorities are anxious to see that every boy and girl, whether rich or poor, is in receipt of some sort of secondary education up to the age of 21, the authorities in India have ruled that the classes in the rural schools be so formed as to exclude the possibilities of scholars reading in them joining the ordinary secondary schools in towns. The statement that in at least a third of the London secondary schools the income from fees and endowoment taken together is insufficient to provide more than one good salary which goes to the head-teacher whilst the assistants who ought to be university graduates are paid for the most part less than is earned by an ordinary certificated teacher in a Board school, is significant and may with profit be pondered over by the educational authorities in the Punjab who are so strict towards the private schools and are at times inclined to exact higer standards of efficiency than even those observed by some of the Board and Mission Schools in the province. If even London tolerates the existence of inefficient secondary schools wherein the income from the fees and endowment together is so meagre, 463

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surely there can hardly be a case against similar schools in India which is educationally so backward. PRIMARY EDUCATION Coming down to the Primary Schools we find the state of things still gloomier. The total expenditure on Primary Education is Rs. 1,05,45,000 to which the Public funds (Revenues, Local and Muncipal) all contribute only Rs. 60,50,000 while from fees are reailsed Rs, 31,15,211. The Provincial and Imperial Revenues contributed only 13⅓ laces (see page 178 of report). As compared with the magnificent figure of 13⅓ lacs of Rupees spent by British Goverment on Primary Education in India, the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland voted £1,24,17,368 for elementary education in those islands in 1901 alone. The extent and enormity of the evil have been recognised by the Government of India in their resolution of 1904, Paras 14, 15, and 16. “How, then, do matters stand in respect of the extension among the masses of primary education? The population of British India is over two hundred and forty millions. It is commonly reckoned that fifteen per cent of the population are of school-going age. According to this standard there are more than 18 millions of boys who ought now to be at School, but of these only a little more than 1⁄6 are actually receiving primary education. If the statistics are arranged by Provinces, that out of a hundred boys of an age to go to school, the number attending primary schools of some kind, ranges from between eight and nine in the Punjab and the United Provinces, to twenty-two and twenty-three in Bombay and Bengal. In the census of 1901 it was found that only one in ten of the male population, and only seven in a thousand of the female population were literate. These figures exhibit the vast dimensions of the problem, and show how much remains to be done before the proportion of the population receiving elementary instruction can approach the standard recognised as indispensable in more, advanced countries. While the need for education grows with the growth of population the progress towards supplying it is not now so rapid as it was in former years. In 1870–71 there were 16,473 schools with 607,320 scholars; in 1881–82 there were 82,916 with 2,061,541 scholars. But in 1891–92 these had only increased to 97,109 schools with 2,837,607 scholars, and the figures of 1901–02 (98,538 schools with 3,268,726 scholars), suggest that the initial force of expansion is some what on the decline, indeed the last year of the century showed a slight decrease as compared with the previous year. On a general view of the question the Government of India cannot avoid the conclusion that the primary education has hitherto had insufficient attention and an inadequte share of the public funds. They consider that it possesses a strong claim upon the sympathy both of the supreme Government and of the Local Governments, and should be made a leading charge upon provincial revenues; and that in those Provinces where it is in a backward condition, its encouragement should be a primary obligation.” 464

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It may be remarked that these obligations were also admitted in 1882–83, but little was done to fulfill them, as will be clear from a perusal of the following facts and figures which we cull from Vol. II of the Government of India’s reports on the progress of Education between 97–98 to 1901–02. NO. OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS FOR BOYS. 1886. 91–92. 96–97. 1901–02. 84,673 91,881 97,881 92,226

which means an actual decrease of 5,655 in the last 5 years. The Punjab showed this decrease to the extent of 42, i. e. in 1901–02 there were 42 Primary Schools less in the Punjab and N. W. Frontier Provinces combined. In 96–97 there was one school for a group of 5·8 towns and villages. In 1901–02 there was one for a group of 6·2. In the Central Provinces there is one Primary School for 23·4 towns and villages, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh one for 15·6 and in the Punjab one for 14·5. In the Central Provinces the mean average distance in miles between each boy’s Primary School is 8·2 miles and in the Punjab 7·1. This does not mean that schools are equally distributed over the whole area. The fact is that in some districts there is no school for many tens of miles. During the last 5 years, while the number of Schools fell by 5,655, the average strength per school rose only by 2 (i. e. from 31 to 33 per school). The following figures will show the progress made by primary education in the number of scholars receiving education. In 96–97, 30 lacs and 28 thousand boys received instruction in Primary Schools for boys but in 1901–02 the number fell to 30 lacs and 9 thousand (a fall of 17,000). In the Primary Schools attached to secondary schools the numbers in 96–97 were 31 lacs and 83 thousand and in 1901–02 the numbers were 31 lacs and 84 thousand i. e., an increase of 1,000. Total loss 16,000. In the Punjab and N. W. F. Province (combined) the numbers in the former schools were 10 lacs and 8 thousand in 96–97 and the same in 1901 and 1902, but in the latter class of schools it rose slightly, i. e., by 4,000.

Notes 1. Substituted for the original word “Madras”—Ed. 2. The conclusions and comments noted above are based on the figures of 1901–1902. We know that since then something more has been done by the Government of India towards extending the scope and sphere of education in this country. An examination of what has been done in these years and whether that justifies the policy and attitude of the Government towards private enterprise in education may better form the subject of a separate artiole wherein we may compare the results achieved by the Government of American and European states in the matter of Education.

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COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

COLONIAL EDUCATION AND INDIA 1781–1945

Edited by Pramod K. Nayar Volume V Indian Responses

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Pramod K. Nayar; individual owners retain copyright in their own material. The right of Pramod K. Nayar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-7655-2 (set) eISBN: 978-1-351-21216-8 (set) ISBN: 978-0-8153-8084-9 (Volume V) eISBN: 978-1-351-21192-5 (Volume V) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Publisher’s Note References within each chapter are as they appear in the original complete work.

CONTENTS

VOLUME V INDIAN RESPONSES 1 Aurobindo Ghose, extract from A System of National Education (Madras: Tagore & Co, 1921), 1–67

1

2 J. Ghosh, extract from Higher Education in Bengal under British Rule (Calcutta: The Book Company, 1926), 104–197

17

3 Lokmanya Tilak, ‘National Education’, in Bal Gangadhar Tilak: His Writings and Speeches (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1922, 3rd edn), 81–88

57

4 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, extracts from Basic National Education (Wardha: Hindustani Talimi Sangh, 1939), ix–x, 3–5, 14–22, 25–28, 57–70, 75–76, 79–89

61

5 Extracts from Messages to Indian Students (An Anthology of Famous Convocation Addresses) (Allahabad: Students’ Friends, 1936), 40–80, 91–119, 120–127

88

6 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘Thoughts on the Reform of Legal Education in the Bombay Presidency’, in Hari Narake et al (eds), Writings and Speeches Vol. 17, part 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), 5–18

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7 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘Memorandum of Association of The People’s Education Society, Mumbai, 8th July 1945’, in Hari Narake et al (eds), Writings and Speeches Vol. 17, part 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), 429–438

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8 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘On Grants for Education’, Bombay Legislative Council Debate, 1927, in Hari Narake (ed.), Writings and Speeches Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014, 2nd edn), 39–44

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9 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘On the Bombay University Act Amendment Bill 1’, Bombay Legislative Council Debate, 1927, in Hari Narake (ed.), Writings and Speeches Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014, 2nd edn), 45–53

147

10 B. R. Ambedkar, ‘University Reforms Committee Questionnaire – Responses by Ambedkar, 1925–26’, in Hari Narake (ed.), Writings and Speeches Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, 2014, 2nd edn), 292–312

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Index

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1 AUROBINDO GHOSE, EXTRACT FROM A SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION (MADRAS: TAGORE & CO, 1921), 1–67

I. THE HUMAN MIND The true basis of Education is the study of the human mind, infant, adolescent, and adult. Any system of Education founded on theories of academic perfection, which ignores the instrument of study, is more likely to hamper and impair intellectual growth than to produce a perfect and perfectly equipped mind. For the Educationist has to do, not with dead material like the artist or sculptor, but with an infinitely subtle and sensitive organism. He cannot shape an educational masterpiece out of human wood or stone; he has to work in the elusive substance of mind and respect the limits imposed by the fragile human body. There can be no doubt that the Educational System of Europe is a great advance on the many methods of antiquity, but its defects are also palpable. It is based on an in-sufficient knowledge of human psychology and it is only safeguarded in Europe from disastrous results by the refusal of the ordinary student to subject himself to the processes it involves, his habit of studying only so much as he must to avoid punishment or to pass an immediate test, his resort to active habits and vigorous physical exercise. In India the disastrous effects of the system on body, mind and character are only too apparent. The first problem in a National System of Education is to give an Education as comprehensive as the European and more thorough, without the evils of strain and cramming. This can only be done by studying the instruments of knowledge and finding a system of teaching which shall be natural, easy and effective. It is only by strengthening and sharpening these instruments to their utmost capacity that they can be made effective for the increased work which modern conditions require. The muscles of the mind must be thoroughly trained by simple and easy means; then, and not till then, great feats of intellectual strength can be required of them. The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an Instructor or Taskmaster, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to

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suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface. The distinction that reserves this principle for the teaching of adolescent and adult minds and denies its application to the child is a conservative and unintelligent doctrine. Child or man, boy or girl, there is only one sound principle of good teaching. Difference of age only serves to diminish or increase the amount of help and guidance necessary, it does not change its nature. The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. There can be no greater error than for the parent to arrange beforehand that his son shall develop particular qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues, or be prepared for a prearranged career. To force the nature, to abandon its own dharma is to do it permanent harm, mutilate its growth and deface its perfection. It is a selfish tyranny over a human soul and a wound to the Nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a man could have given it and is forced to accept instead something imperfect and artificial, second rate, perfunctory andcommon. Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it. The chief aim of Education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use. The third principle of Education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be. The basis of a man’s nature is almost, always, in addition to his soul’s past, his heredity, his surroundings, his nationality, his country, the soil from which he draws sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds, habits to which he is accustomed. They mould him not the less powerfully because insensibly, from that then we must begin. We must not take up the nature by the roots from the Earth in which it must grow or surround the mind with images and ideas of a life which is alien to that in which it must physically move. If anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on the mind. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development. There are souls which naturally revolt from their surroundings and seem to belong to another age and clime. Let them be free to follow their bent; but the majority languish, become empty, become artificial, if artificially moulded into an alien form. It is God’s arrangement that they should belong to a particular nation, age, society, that they should be children of the past, possessors of the present, creators of the future. The past is our foundation, the present our material, the future our aim and summit. Each must have its due and natural place in a National System of Education. 2

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CHAPTER II THE POWERS OF THE MIND The instrument of the Educationist is the mind or antahkarana, which consists of four layers. The reservoir of past mental impressions, the chitta or storehouse of memory, which must be distinguished from the specific act of memory, is the foundation on which all the other layers stand. All experience lies within us as passive or potential memory; active memory selects and takes what it requires from that storehouse. But the active memory is like a man searching among a great mass of locked-up material; sometime he cannot find what he wants; often in his rapid search he stumbles across many things for which he has no immediate need; often too he blunders and thinks he has found the real thing when it is something else irrelevant if not valueless, on which he has laid his hand. The passive memory or chitta needs no training, it is automatic and naturally sufficient to its task; there is not the slightest object of knowledge coming within its field which is not secured, placed and faultlessly preserved in that admirable receptacle. It is the active memory, a higher but less perfectly developed function, which is in need of improvement. The second layer is the mind proper or manas, the sixth sense of our Indian Psychology, in which all the others are gathered up. The function of the mind is to receive the images of things translated into sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, the five senses and translate these again into thought-sensations. It receives also images of its own direct grasping and forms them into mental impressions. These sensations and impressions are the material of thought, not thought itself; but it is exceedingly important that thought should work on sufficient and perfect material. It is therefore the first business of the Educationist, to develop in the child the right use of the six senses; to see that they are not stunted or injured by disease, but trained by the child himself under the teacher’s direction to that perfect accuracy and keen subtle sensitiveness of which they are capable. In addition, whatever assistance can be gained by the organs of action should be thoroughly employed. The hand, for instance, should be trained to reproduce what the eye sees, and the mind senses. The speech should be trained the perfect expression of the knowledge which the whole antahkarna possesses. The third layer is the intellect or buddhi, which is the real instrument of thought and that which orders and disposes of the knowledge acquired by the other parts of the machine. For the purpose of the Educationist this is infinitely the most important of the three I have named. The intellect is an organ composed of several groups of functions, divisible into two important classes, the functions and faculties of the right hand, the functions and the faculties of the left hand. The faculties of the right hand are comprehensive, creative and synthetic; the faculties of the left hand critical and analytic. To the right hand belongs judgment, imagination, memory, observation; to the left hand comparison and reasoning. The critical faculties distinguish, compare, classify, generalise, deduce, infer, conclude;they 3

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are the component parts of the logical reason. The right hand faculties comprehend, command, judge in their own right, grasp; hold and manipulate. The right hand mind is the master of the knowledge, the left hand its servant. The left hand touches only the body of knowledge, the right hand penetrates its soul. The left hand limits itself to assertained truth, the right hand grasps that which is still elusive or unascertained. Both are essential to the completeness of the human reason. These important functions of the machine have all to be raised to their highest and finest working-power, if the Education of the child is not to be imperfect and one-sided. There is a fourth layer of faculty which, not as yet entirely developed in man, is attaining gradually a wider development and more perfect evolution. The powers peculiar to this highest stratum of knowledge are chiefly known to us from the phenomena of genius—sovereign discernment, intuitive perception of truth, plenary inspiration of speech, direct vision of knowledge to an extent often amounting to revelation, making a man a prophet of truth. The powers are rare in their higher development, though many possess them imperfectly or by flashes. They are still greatly distrusted by the critical reason of mankind because of the admixture of error, caprice and a biassed imagination which obstructs and distorts their perfect workings. Yet it is clear that humanity could not have advanced to its present stage if it had not been for the help of these faculties, and it is a question with which Educationists have not yet grappled, what is to be done with this mighty and baffling element, the element of genius in the pupil. The mere instructor does his best to discourage and stifle genius, the more liberal teacher welcoms it. Faculties so important to humanity cannot be left out of our consideration. It is foolish to neglect them. Their imperfect development must be perfected, the admixture of error, caprice and biassed fancifulness must be carefully and wisely removed. But the teacher cannot do it; he would eradicate the good corn as well as the tares if he interfered. Here, as in all educational operations, he can only put the growing soul into the way of its own perfection.

CHAPTER III THE MORAL NATURE In the economy of man the mental nature rests upon the moral, and the education of the intellect divorced from the perfection of the moral and emotional nature is injurious to human progress. Yet, while it is easy to arrange some kind of curriculum or syllabus which will do well enough for the training of the mind, it has not yet been found possible to provide under modern conditions a suitable moral training for the School and College. The attempt to make boys moral and religious by the teaching of moral and religious text-books is a vanity and a delusion, precisely because the heart is not the mind and to instruct the mind does not necessarily improve the heart. It would be an error to say that it has no effect. It throws certain seeds of thought into the antahkarana and, if these thoughts become habitual, they influence the conduct. But the danger of moral text-books 4

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is that they make the thinking of high things mechanical and artificial, and whatever is mechanical and artificial, is inoperative for good. There are three things which are of the utmost importance in dealing with a man’s moral nature, the emotions, the samskaras or formed habits and associations, and the swabhava or nature. The only way for him to train himself morally is to habituate himself to the right emotions, the noblest associations, the best mental, emotional and physical habits and the following out in right action of the fundamental impulses of his essential nature. You can impose a certain discipline on children, dress them into a certain mould, lash them into a desired path, but unless you can get their hearts and natures on your side, the conformity to this becomes a hypocritical and heartless, often a cowardly compliance. This is what is done in Europe, and it leads to that remarkable phenomenon known as the sowing of wild oats as soon as the yoke of discipline at School and at home is removed, and to the social hypocrisy which is so large a feature of European life. Only what the man admires and accepts, becomes part of himself; the rest is a mask. He conforms to the discipline of society as he conformed to the moral routine of home and school, but considers himself at liberty to guide his real life, inner and private, according to his own likings and passions. On the other hand, to neglect moral and religious Education altogether is to corrupt the race. The notorious moral corruption in our young men previous to the saving touch of the Swadeshi Movement, was the direct result of the purely mental instruction given to them under the English System of Education. The adoption of the English System under an Indian disguise in Institutions like the Central Hindu College is likely to lead to the European result. That it is better than nothing, is all that can be said for it. As in the education of the mind, so in the education of the heart, the best way is to put the child into the right road to his own perfection and encourage him to follow it, watching, suggesting, helping, but not interfering. The one excellent element in the English Boarding School is that the master at his best stands there as a moral guide and example, leaving the boys largely to influence and help each other in following the path silently shown to them. But the method practised is crude and marred by the excess of outer discipline, for which the pupils have no respect except that of fear, and the exiguity of the inner assistance. The little good that is done is outweighed by much evil. The old Indian System of the Guru commanding by his knowledge and sanctity, the implicit obedience, perfect admiration, reverent emulation of the student, was a far superior method of moral discipline. It is impossible to restore that ancient system; but it is not impossible to substitute the wise friend, guide and helper for the hired Instructor or the benevolent Policeman which is all that the European System usually makes of the pedagogue. The first rule of Moral Training is to suggest and invite, not command or impose. The best method of suggestion is by personal example, daily converse and the books read from day to day. These books should contain, for the younger student, the lofty examples of the past given, not as moral lessons, but as things 5

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of supreme human interest, and, for the elder student, the great thoughts of great souls, the passages of literature which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, the records of history and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and aspiring ideals. This is a kind of good company, satsanga, which can seldom fail to have effect so long as sententious sermonising is avoided, and becomes of the highest effect if the personal life of the teacher is itself moulded by the great things he places before his pupils. It cannot, however, have full force unless the young life is given an opportunity, within its limited sphere, of embodying in action the moral impulses which rise within it. The thirst of knowledge, the self-devotion, the purity, the renunciation of the Brahmin, the courage, ardour, honour, nobility, chivalry, patriotism of the Kshatriya,—the beneficence, skill, industry, generous enterprise and large openhandedness of the Vaisya,—the self-effacement and loving service of the Sudra,—these are the qualities of the Aryan. They constitute the moral temper we desire in our young men, in the whole Nation. But how can we get them if we do not give opportunities to the young to train themselves in the Aryan tradition, to form by the practice and familiarity of childhood and boyhood the stuff of which their adult lives must be made? Every boy should, therefore, be given practical opportunity as well as intellectual encouragement to develop all that is best in the nature. If he has bad qualities, bad habits, bad samskaras whether of mind or body, he should not be treated harshly as a delinquent, but encouraged to get rid of them by the Rajayogic Method of Sanyama, rejection and substitution. He should be encouraged to think of them, not as sins or offences, but as symptoms of a curable disease alterable by a steady and sustained effort of the will, falsehood being rejected whenever it rises into the mind and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by sacrifice and renunciation, malice by love. Great care will have to be taken that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the overflowings of an excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified, not discouraged. I have spoken of morality; it is necessary to speak a word of religious teaching. There is a strange idea prevalent that by merely teaching the dogmas of religion children can be made pious and moral. This is an European error, and its practice leads, either to mechanical acceptance of a creed having no effect on the inner and little on the outer life, or it creates the fanatic, the pietist, the ritualist or the unctuous hypocrite. Religion has to be lived, not learned as a creed. The singular compromise made in the so-called National Education of Bengal making the teaching of religious beliefs compulsory, but forbidding the practice of anushtana or religious exercise, is a sample of the ignorant confusion which distracts men’s mind on this subject. The prohibition is a sop to secularism declared or concealed. No religious teaching is of any value unless it is lived, and the use of various kinds of sadhana, spiritual self-training and exercise, is the only effective preparation for religious living. The ritual of prayer homage, ceremony is craved for by many minds as an essential preparation and, if not made an end in itself, is a great help 6

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to spiritual progress; if it is withheld, some other form of meditation, devotion or religious duty must be put in its place. Otherwise, Religious Teaching is of little use and would almost be better ungiven. But whether distinct teaching in any form of religion is imparted or not, the essence of religion, to live for God, for humanity, for country, for others and for oneself in these, must be made the ideal in every School which calls itself National. It is this spirit of Hinduism pervading our Schools which—far more than the teaching of Indian Subjects, the use of Indian methods or formal instruction in Hindu Beliefs and Hindu Scriptures—should be the essence of Nationalism in our Schools distinguishing them from all others.

CHAPTER IV SIMULTANEOUS AND SUCCESSIVE TEACHING A very remarkable feature of modern training which has been subjected in India to a reduction ad absurdum is the practice of teaching by snippets. A subject is taught a little at a time, in conjunction with a host of others, with the result that what might be well learnt in a single year is badly learned in seven and the boy goes out ill-equipped, served with imperfect parcels of knowledge, master of none of the great departments of human knowledge. The system of Education adopted by the National Council, an amphibious and twynatured creation, attempts to heighten this practice of teaching by snippets at the bottom and the middle and suddenly change it to a grandiose specialism at the top. This is to base the Triangle on its apex and hope that it will stand. The old system was to teach one or two subjects well and thoroughly and then proceed to others, and certainly it was a more rational system than the modern. If it did not impart so much varied information, it built up a deeper, nobler and more real culture. Much of the shallowness, discursive lightness and fickle mutability of the average modern mind is due to the vicious principle of teaching by snippets. The one defect that can be alleged against the old system was that the subject earliest learned might fade from the mind of the student while he was mastering his later studies. But the excellent training given to the memory by the ancients obviated the incidence of this defect. In the future Education we need not bind ourselves either by the ancient or the modern system, but select only the most perfect and rapid means of mastering knowledge. In defence of modern system it is alleged that the attention of children is easily tired and cannot be subjected to the strain of long application to a single subject. The frequent changes of subject gives rest to the mind. The question naturally arises: are the children of modern times then so different from the ancients, and, if so, have we not made them so by discouraging prolonged concentration? A very young child cannot, indeed apply himself; but a very young child is unfit for School teaching of any kind. A child of seven or eight, and that is the earliest permissible age for the commencement of any regular kind of study, is capable of a good deal of concentration if he is interested. Interest is after all, the basis of 7

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con-centration. We make his lessons supremely uninteresting and repellent to the child, a harsh compulsion the basis of teaching and then complain of his restless inattention! The substitution of a natural self-Education by the child for the present unnatural system will remove this objection of inability. A child, like a man, if he is interested, much prefers to get to the end of his subject rather than leave it unfinished. To lead him on step by step, interesting and absorbing him in each as it comes, until he has mastered his subject is the true art of teaching. The first attention of the teacher must be given to the medium and the instruments, and, until these are perfected, to multiply subjects of regular instruction is to waste time and energy. When the mental instruments are sufficiently developed to acquire a language easily and swiftly, that is the time to introduce him to many languages, not when he can only partially understand what he is taught and masters it laboriously and imperfectly. Moreover, one who has mastered his own language, has one very necessary facility for mastering another. With the linguistic faculty unsatisfactorily developed in one’s own tongue, to master others is impossible. To study Science with the faculties of observation, judgment, reasoning, and comparison only slightly developed, is to undertake a useless and thankless labour. So it is with all other subjects. The mother-tongue is the proper medium of Education and therefore the first energies of the child should be directed to the thorough mastering of the medium. Almost every child has an imagination, an instinct for words, a dramatic faculty, a wealth of idea and fancy. These should be interested in the literature and history of the Nation. Instead of stupid and dry spelling and reading books, looked on as a dreary and ungrateful task, he should be introduced by rapidly progressive stages to the most interesting parts of his own literature and the life around him and behind him, and they should be put before him, in such a way as to attract and appeal to the qualities of which I have spoken. All other study at this period should be devoted to the perfection of the mental functions and the moral character. A foundation should be laid at this time for the study of history, science, philosophy, art, but not in an obtrusive and formal manner. Every child is a lover of interesting narrative, a hero-worshipper and a patriot. Appeal to these qualities in him and through him, let him master without knowing it the living and human parts of his Nation’s history. Every child is an inquirer, an investigator, analyser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to those qualities in him and let him acquire without knowing it the right temper and the necessary fundamental knowledge of the Scientist. Every child has an insatiable intellectual curiosity and turn for metaphysical enquiry. Use it to draw him on slowly to an understanding of the world and himself. Every child has the gift of imitation and a touch of imaginative power. Use it to give him the ground work of the faculty of the artist. It is by allowing Nature to work that we get the benefit of the gifts she has bestowed on us. Humanity in its education of children has chosen to thwart and hamper the rapidity of its onward march. Happily, saner ideas are now beginning to prevail. But the way has not yet been found. The past hangs about our necks with all its prejudices and errors and will not leave us; it enters into our most 8

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radical attempts to return to the guidance of the all-wise Mother. We must have the courage to take up clearer knowledge and apply it fearlessly in the interests of posterity. Teaching by snippets must be relegated to the lumber-room of dead sorrows. The first work is to interest the child in life, work and knowledge, to develop his instruments of knowledge with the utmost thoroughness, to give him mastery of the medium he must use. Afterwards, the rapidity with which he will learn, will be found that, where now he learns a few things badly, then he will learn many things thoroughly well.

CHAPTER V THE TRAINING OF THE MIND There are six senses which minister to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, mind, and all of these except the last, look outward and gather the material of thought from outside through the physical nerves and their end-organs, eye, ear, nose, skin, palate. The perfection of the senses as ministers to thought must be one of the first cares of the teachers. The two things that are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensitiveness. We must first understand what are the obstacles to the accuracy and sensitiveness of the senses, in order that we may take the best steps to remove them. The cause of imperfection must be understood by those who desire to bring about perfection. The senses depend for their accuracy and sensitiveness on the unobstructed activity of the nerves which are the channels of their information and the passive acceptance of the mind which is the recipient. In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell. This can easily be understood if we study the action of the eye as a crucial example. A correct image is reproduced automatically on the retina, if there is any error in appreciating it, it is not the fault of the organ, but of something else. The fault may be with the nerve currents. The nerves are nothing but channels, they have no power in themselves to alter the information given by the organs. But a channel may be obstructed and the obstruction may interfere either with the fullness or the accuracy of the information, not as it reaches the organ where it is necessarily and automatically perfect, but as it reaches the mind. The only exception is in case of a physical defect in the organ as an instrument. That is not a matter for the educationist, but for the physician. If the obstruction is such as to stop the information reaching the mind at all, the result is an insufficient sensitiveness of the senses. The defects of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, anoethesia in its various degrees, are curable when not the effect of physical injury or defect in the organ itself. The obstructions can be removed and the sensitiveness remedied by the purification of the nerve system. The remedy is a simple one which is now becoming more and more popular in Europe for different reasons and objects, the regulation of the breathing. This process inevitably restores the perfect and unobstructed activity of the channels and, 9

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if well and thoroughly done, leads to a high activity of the senses. The process is called in Yogic discipline, nadi-suddhi, or nerve-purification. The obstruction in the channel may be such as not absolutely to stop in however small a degree, but to distort the information. A familiar instance of this is the effect of fear or alarm on the sense action. The startled horse takes the sack on the road for a dangerous living thing, the startled man takes a rope for a snake, a waving curtain for a ghostly form. All distortions due to actions in the nervous system can be traced to some kind of emotional disturbance acting in the nerve channels. The only remedy for them is the habit of calm, the habitual steadiness of the nerves. This also can be brought about by nadi-suddhi or nerve-purficiation, which quiets the system, gives a deliberate calmness to all the internal processes and prepares the purification of the mind. If the nerve channels are quiet and clear, the only possible disturbance of the information is from or through the mind. Now the manas or sixth sense is in itself a channel like the nerves, a channel for communication: with the buddhi or brainforce disturbance may happen either from above or from below. The information outside is first photographed on the end organ, then reproduced at the other end of the nerve system in the chitta or passive memory. All the images of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are deposited there and the manas reports them to the buddhi. The manas is both a sense organ and a channel. As a sense organ it is as automatically perfect as the others, as a channel it is subject to disturbance resulting either in obstruction or distortion. As a sense organ the mind receives direct thought impressions from outside and from within. These impressions are in themselves perfectly correct, but in their report to the intellect at all or may reach it so distorted as to make a false or partially false impression. The disturbance may effect the impression which attains the information of eye, ear, nose, skin or palate, but it is very slightly powerful here, in its effect on the direct impressions of the mind, it is extremely powerful and the chief source of error. The mind takes direct impressions primarily of thought, but also of form, sound, indeed of all the things for which it usually prefers to depend on the sense organs. The full development of this sensitiveness of the mind is called in our Yogic discipline Sushmadrishti or subtle reception of images. Telepathy, clairvoyance, claraudience, presentment, thought-reading, character-reading and many other modern discoveries are very ancient powers of the mind which have been left undeveloped, and they all belong to the manas. The development of the sixth sense has never formed part of human training. In a future age it will undoubtedly take a place in the necessary preliminary training of the human instrument. Meanwhile there is no reason why the mind should not be trained to give a correct report to the intellect so that our thought may start with absolutely correct if not with full impressions. The first obstacle, the nervous emotional, we may suppose to be removed by the purification of the nervous system. The second obstacle is that of the emotions themselves warping the impressions as it comes. Love may do this, hatred may do this, any emotion or desire according to its power and intensity may distort 10

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the impression as it travels. This difficulty can only be removed by the discipline of the emotions, the purifying of the moral training and its consideration may be postponed for the moment. The next difficulty is the interference of previous associations formed or ingrained in the chitta or passive memory. We have a habitual way of looking at things and the conservative inertia in our nature disposes us to give every new experience the shape and semblance of those to which we are accustomed. It is only more developed minds which can receive first impressions without an unconscious bias against the novelty of novel experience. For instance, if we get a true impression of what is happening and we habitually act on such impressions true or false if it differs from what we are accustomed to expect, the old association meets it in the chitta and sends a changed report to the intellect in which either the new impression is overlaid and concealed by the old or mingled with it. To go farther into this subject would be to involve ourselves too deeply into the details of psychology. This typical instance will suffice. To get rid of this obstacle is impossible without chittasuddhi or purification of the mental moral habits formed in the chitta. This is a preliminary process of Yoga and was effected in our ancient system by various means, but would be considered out of place in a modern system of education. It is clear, therefore, that unless we revert to our old system in some of its principles, we must be content to allow this source of disturbance to remain. A really national system of education would not allow itself to be controlled by European ideas in this all important matter. And there is a process so simple and momentous that it can easily be made a part of our system. It consists in bringing about passivity of the restless flood of thought sensations rising of its own momentum from the passive memory independent of our will and control. This passivity liberatest he intellect from the siege of old associations and false impressions. It gives it power to select only what is wanted from the storehouse of the passive memory, automatically brings about the habit of getting right impressions and enables the intellect to dictate so the chitta what samskara or associations shall be formed or rejected. This is the real office of the intellect to discriminate, choose, select, arrange. But so long as there is not chitta-suddhi, instead of doing this office perfectly, it itself remains imperfect and corrupt and adds to the confusion in the mind channel by false judgment, false imagination, false memory, false observation, false comparison, contrast and analogy, false education, induction and inference. The purification of the chitta is essential for the liberation, purification and perfect action of the intellect.

CHAPTER VI SENSE-IMPROVEMENT BY PRACTICE Another cause of the inefficiency of the senses as gatherers of Knowledge, is insufficient use. We do not observe sufficiently or with sufficient attention and closeness and a sight, sound, smell, even touch or taste knocks in vain at 11

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the door for admission. This tamasic inertia of the receiving instruments is no doubt due to the inattention of the buddhi and therefore its consideration may seem to come properly under the training of the functions of the intellect, but it is more convenient, though less psychologically correct, to notice it here. The student ought to be accustomed to catch the sights, sounds etc, around him, distinguish them, mark their nature, properties and sources and fix them in the chitta so that they may be always ready to respond when called for by the memory. It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the sense and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual occurence. To get rid of this; imperfection will go a long way towards the removal of error. It can be done by training the senses to do their work perfectly which they will do readily enough if they know the buddhi requires it of them, and giving sufficient attention to put the facts in their right place and order in memory. Attention is a factor in knowledge, the importance of which has been always recognised. Attention is the first condition of right memory and of accuracy. To attend to what he is doing, is the first element of discipline required of the student, and, as I have suggested, this can easily be secured if the object of attention is made interesting. This attention to a single thing is called concentration.One truth is however, sometimes overlooked; that concentration on several things at a time is often indispensable. When people talk of concentration, they imply centring the mind on one thing at a time; but it is quite possible to develop the power of double concentration, triple concentration, multiple concentration. When a given incident is happening, it may be made up of several simultaneous happenings or a set of simultaneous circumstances, a sight, a sound, a touch or several sights, sounds, touches occuring at the same moment or in the same short space of time. The tendency of the kind is to fasten on one and mark others vaguely, many not at all or, if compelled to attend to all, to be distracted and mark none perfectly. Yet this can be remedied and the attention equally distributed over a set of circumstances in such a way as to observe and remember each perfectly. It is merely a matter of abhyasa or steady natural practice. It is also very desirable that the hand should be capable of coming to the help of the eye in dealing with the multitudinous objects of its activity so as to ensure accuracy. This is of a use so obvious and imperatively needed, that it need not be dwelt on at length. The practice of imitation by the hand of the thing seen is of use both of detecting the lapses and inaccuracies of the mind in noticing the objects of sense and in registering accurately what has been seen. Imitation by the hand ensures accuracy of observation. This is one of the first uses of drawing and it is sufficient in itself to make the teaching of this subject a necessary part of the training of the organs.

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CHAPTER VII THE TRAINING OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES The first qualities of the mind that have to be developed are those which can be grouped under observation. We notice some things, ignore others. Even of what we notice, we observe very little. A general perception of an object is what we all usually carry away from a cursory half-attentive glance. A closer attention fixes its place, from nature as distinct from its surroundings. Full concentration of the faculty of observation gives us all the knowledge that the three chief senses can gather about the object, or if we touch or taste, we may gather all that the five senses can tell of its nature and properties. Those who make use of the six senses, the Poet, the Painter, the Yogin, can also gather much that is hidden from the ordinary observer. The Scientist by investigation ascertains other facts open to a minuter observation. These are the components of the faculty of observation, and it is obvious that its basis is attention, which may be only close, or close and minute. We may gather much even from a passing glance at an object, if we have the habit of concentrating the attention and the habit of Satwic receptivity. The first the teacher has to do is to accustom the pupil to concentrate attention. We may take the instance of a flower. Instead of looking casually at it and getting a casual impression of scent, form and colour, he should be encouraged to know the flower—to fix in his mind the exact shade, the peculiar glow, the precise intensity of the scent, the beauty of curve and design in the form. His touch should assure itself of the texture and its peculiarities. Next, the flower should be taken to pieces and its structure examined with the same carefulness of observation. All these should be done not as a task, but as an object of interest by skilfully arranged questions suited to the learner which will draw him on to observe and investigate one thing after the other until he has almost unconsciously mastered the whole. Memory and judgment are the next qualities that will be called upon, and they should be encouraged in the same unconscious way. The student should not be made to repeat the same lesson over again in order to remember it. That is a mechanical burden-some and unintelligent way of training the memory. A similar but different flower should be put in the hands and he should be encouraged to note it with the same care, but with the avowed object of noting the similarities and differences. By this practice daily repeated the memory will naturally be trained. Not only so, but the mental centres of comparison and contrast will be developed. The learner will begin to observe as a habit the similarities of things and their differences. The teacher should take every care to encourage the perfect growth of this faculty and habit. At the same time, the laws of species and genus will begin to dawn on the mind and by a skilful following and leading of the young developing mind, the scientific habit, the scientific attitude and the fundamental facts of scientific knowledge may in a very short time be made part of its permanent equipment. The observation and comparison of flowers, leaves, plants, trees will lay the foundations of botanical knowledge without loading the mind with names and that dry, set acquisition of informations which is the beginning of 13

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cramming and detested by the healthy human mind when it is fresh from nature and unspoiled by natural habits. In the same way by the observation of the stars, astronomy, by the observation of earth, stones, etc., geology by the observation of insects and animals, etymology and zoology may be founded. A little later chemistry may be started by interesting observation of experiments without any formal teaching or heaping on the mind of formulas and book knowledge. There is no scientific object the perfect and natural mastery of which cannot be prepared in early childhood by this training of the faculties to observe, compare, remember and judge various classes of objects. It can be done easily and attended with a supreme and absorbing interest in the mind of the student. Once the taste is created, the boy can be trusted to follow it up with all the enthusiasm of youth in his leisure hours. This will prevent the necessity at a later age of teaching him everything in class. The judgment will naturally be trained along with the other faculties. At every step the boy will have to decide what is the right idea, measurement, appreciation of colour, sound, scent, etc., and what is wrong. Often the judgments and distinctions made will have to be exceedingly subtle, and delicate. At first many errors will be made, but the learner should be taught to trust his judgment without being attached to its results. It will be found that the judgment will soon begin to respond to the calls made on it, clear itself of all errors and begin to judge correctly and minutely. The best way is to accustom the boy to compare his judgments with those of others. When he is wrong, it should at first be pointed out to him how far he was right and why he went wrong; afterwards he should be encouraged to note these things for itself. Every time he is right, his attention should be prominently and encouragingly called to it so that he may get confidence. While engaged in comparing and contrasting, another centre is certain to develop, the centre of analogy. The learner will inevitably draw analogies and argue from like to like. He should be encouraged to use his faculty while noticing its limitations and errors. In this way he will be trained to form the habit of correct analogy which is an indispensable and in the acquisition of knowledge. The one faculty we have omitted, apart from the faculty of direct reasoning, is Imagination. This is